ABSTRACT
In the 1995 film Apollo 13, there is a scene in which NASA scientists in Houston have to figure out how to make an improvised ‘air scrubber’ connection from materials on board the stricken spacecraft. A pile of random items is dumped on a table and the team leader says, “We gotta find a way to make this fit into the hole for this using nothin’ but that.” 1 As one might expect, this being Hollywood, they quickly come up with a solution. However, the scene is based closely on the actual transcripts of the Apollo 13 mission 2 , 3 and it demonstrates an important point. When working with what we have rather than what we pre-plan and pre-define, we employ direct, intuitive approaches that can lead to new insights and unexpected, often ingenious solutions.
