Failure is not an option
Craig Piercy
cpiercy@ans.org
Wow, that was a banger! The 2023 Annual Meeting had the energy level of an ANS Student Conference. That’s no easy feat. I’ve had several requests for my opening plenary remarks. Here is a shortened version, edited for reading:
So, “Failure Is Not an Option.” I’ll be honest, I wasn’t sure about it in the beginning. It’s not anodyne like “Powering Our Future!” or some punny Indy reference like “Racing to the Finish.” It didn’t seem to fit our situation.
That phrase, popularized by the movie Apollo 13, has its origins in a time of crisis: three men trying to “eyeball” a free return trajectory to Earth while a team of NASA engineers figures out how to literally put a square peg into a round hole to save the astronauts’ lives.
Like many young and restless Ph.D. recipients, Tim Lucas was stricken with insatiable wanderlust. After completing his Doctorate in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tim cast off the shackles of his societal commitments to begin a new life as a roving vagabond. Tim, who lived on his beloved boat Slick throughout grad school, set sail from Boston two years ago. He first headed south to the Caribbean, then through the Panama Canal to the Galapagos. He drifted among the South Pacific archipelagos, embracing all the pleasures of peripatetic life. Eventually, he finagled his way across Asia and into the Mediterranean, where he now meanders through the Dodecanese.