No April Fool: Ron Dittemore's historic role in the history of manned spaceflight

Originally Posted in IASE Forum

A few years ago, a close friend but we are lost an important election, after coming from behind to become his party's nominee. Very early the next morning, he was still awake, and I wasn't. He roused me from a exhausted sleep to ask my opinion, which he hadn't much during the election. "What do you think went wrong?" he asked.

I stumbled around, offering platitudes, and finally, after hearing him repeat, over and over, like William Howard Taft after his crushing defeat in 1912, saying "I can't imagine what I might have done differently."

Unlike him, I could "imagine" quite a number of things, and kept thinking, "now you ask? Why
didn't you ask me months ago?"

This wasn't going to help. Here was a man in despair, rubbing salt in his grief wasn't the answer, and it wasn't what a man who was my friend needed to hear, and it wasn't what my role, however belated, as a friend, to play Monday morning quarterback, either.

It was my role to tell him the truth.

"We learn," I finally said, "by losing."

Which as much as anything may sum up our "rugged way to the stars" as well as the whole method of Science.
Edison, who was wrong about a lot of things, said it well when he talked about the 10,000 other elements he'd tried in inventing the incandescent light bulb which didn't work, before finding one that did.

Those who contribute to science by trying and documenting failure have helped prevent repeated mistakes, and this is why we study history. That same history shows us many, probably most of us involved in Space Entrepreneurship will not, after all is said and done, succeed... at least not in the way we presently imagine.

Documenting what has not worked for the rest of this community will be as much of a service as one day finding our place in this new industry. Most small businesses fail in the first year, but the economy of our world is depending on small business to provide more than eighty percent of job creation. So we must proceed as we can.

I know my partners are aware of these principles as much as I am, which is why we speak in humble tones. We know we have competitors for every idea we think is original, and this make us aware of the need to anticipate that someone, somewhere is working out the same kinks and in precisely the same systems that we are.

Our always assuming such competition exists gives us an edge, I think.

Rather than hope and be disappointed when that competition discloses itself with a better product, our constant imaginary friend is a similar Skunkworks we are always one step behind.

This puts us a step ahead, too.

So what can we learn from Ron Dittemore?

This tragic figure, the unwilling face of a man aught up and defending Orthodoxy, will never think the same way about Systems again. It's a sad role he had to play on our stage five years ago, surely, but that makes him a fundamentally human player.

It was the same at NASA after the Apollo fire, after Challenger and after Columbia. That it glaringly shows a flaw in all social institutions does not leave the entrepreneur outside the very same tendencies, and we can all benefit from his example. We owe him a great debt, not just for calming a grieving nation, but for showing us the stubborn side of Orthodoxy even as the villagers storm the gates.

And that example is an illustration of the Taxonomy of all social institutions.

Failure and "fault-tree-analysis" opens the door to revolutionary thinking, as the old Orthodoxy is shown to be dangerously flawed. The Agency, in this case, then takes those same ideas and they become new Reason For Being functions while the mission is renewed with renewed purpose.

In order for Reason for Being functions to be carried forward, however, ancillary functions and, more importantly, "self-continuity
functions" are institutionalized, committees are formed, workforces are reorganized, and a lot of good people end up elevated or, like Ron Dittemore, dismissed.

To sum up, inevitably, those same Self Continuity Committees and Directorates always tend to purposely crowd out the mission, and begin to believe their role and they themselves are the Reason for Being, and more important than the mission's Reason for Being itself.

In the end, Self-Continuity Functions actually become the Reason for Being. This may be why we say history repeats itself, and why things "move in cycles." That's because they do, and in very predictable ways.

As you negotiate through this minefield, always remember your TRUE reason for being, your mission. Don't end up, as government agencies do, with Reason for Being supplanted by Self-Continuity Functions, like tollbooths on the Interstate existing only to pay for the maintenance of the tollbooths, or like an abandoned and empty, perhaps even beautiful, church building in the wilderness taken over by the building fund.

In the end, this may be the real difference between entrepreneurship and agencies and other large institutions. We can adapt far more quickly, and we must adapt to the Battlefield as it is, and not as we planned it should be.

Welcome failure, and adapt quickly to changes, but never lose sight of the goal. The more successful you become, the more difficult this will be.

God bless you, Ron Dittemore, wherever you are! --All is forgiven.

By Joel Raupe
COO Lunar Pioneer LLP North Carolina
International Association of Space Entrepreneurs