M O D E R N ME DI CI NE
PERFECTLY RIGHT OR PERFECTLY WRONG: SOMETIMES DESIGN FEELS LIKE SPACE FLIGHT
On the subject of space flight, Chris Hadfield once said, “For an astronaut, especially at launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.” That’s putting it lightly. Underneath his calm demeanor, I think he is sharing an intimate moment with us. After years of dreaming and aspiring to reach space, you find yourself at last on the launch pad moments away from everything you’ve trained so hard for. You climb into your rocket—which you know is actually a bomb that will either explode perfectly right or perfectly wrong—and in this moment the main question on your mind will be, Wait, what the hell was I thinking? I remember a similar feeling in 2014 when I joined Intuitive Surgical as its first in-house industrial designer. I sat down at my cube, looked up into my future and dreamed about the studio we would build, the designers we would hire and the amazing things we would do. Then I looked back down at my cube.
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