Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life

by Ozan Varol

Testing as you fly requires a multilayered approach. Rocket scientists begin testing with the subcomponents—for example, the individual cameras that will form a rover’s vision system, as well as the cables and connectors. Once the cameras are fully assembled, the vision system is tested again as a whole. The reason for this approach is well summarized by a Sufi teaching: “You think that because you understand ‘one’ that you must therefore understand ‘two’ because one and one make two. But you forget that you must also understand ‘and.’”10 Components that otherwise function properly may refuse to play nice with each other after assembly. Put another way, systems may produce different effects than do the individual components standing alone.