I owe a certain amount of credit to a flying water tank.
About four years before I wrote my first book, I watched the inaugural test flight of a spaceship called Hopper on the southern coast of Texas. This was essentially a stainless steel water tower with a rocket engine mounted to the bottom. For a few seconds it lifted off, seemed to hover, and finally landed on another pad some distance away.
That was it.
But that was all it took.
A spark was lit inside me, and I was filled with a optimism that has yet to die. For the first time since I was a kid, I envisioned a future that was filled with wonders.
What Hopper did, and what successive generations of this spacecraft continue to do to this day, is show, in all its nitty gritty ups and downs, the thrill of building the future. It isn't a straight line, and it isn't filled with perfect steps. Some of the ship's crashed, some of them never made it off the pad. Some of them imploded during vacuum testing and yet, the engineers and dreamers at SpaceX persisted.
This was an iterative design in its rawest form. People coalesced around the site in Boca Chica, Texas and over time a whole culture developed that celebrated the ride from Hopper to Orbit and beyond.
I was immersed in the ride from the beginning, caught on the wave of fearless exuberance that saw each step as meaningful, even the failures. I watched, live, with hundreds of thousands other humans as each step took place. I rode the ships into the sky as each tried to achieve the impossible. I felt the thrill when they succeeded and felt the crush of smashed hope when they failed.
But through it all, everyone persisted.
I don't know how much the engineers and scientists designing the ship felt the weight of our support, but the community cheered them on the whole way. It was an amazing experience to be a part of and I did my best to watch every milestone live, if only to add one more number to the swell of encouragement.
When I sat down to write for the first time, I was still fully immersed in that boundless optimism and it easily bled into my books. I tried to capture it in the wonder my characters felt and the rush of advancement around them.
About this time I came across a scrappy company called Edison Motors from Canada. They had this idea to create a diesel electric semi truck and bring it to market. Who were these guys? Some tech startup? College Bros with a big idea?
They were loggers.
Simple, ordinary, everyday folks who had a big dream. I see the same kind of people everyday.
They filmed the whole process and uploaded it to YouTube. They built a prototype from scavenged parts and proved the concept. Then they built their first all new truck from scratch, figuring out the engineering hurdles and navigating many laws and procedures it takes to make a truck you can sell in Canada. They built their first all new truck in a tent in the backyard of the CEO's father.
They changed the future despite the odds against them.
I cannot begin to describe just how inspiring their story was and is to me. At the time of this article they've proven their idea, legalized their first truck and have a backlog of orders.
Before they can build a single truck, they need a factory. So far, they have land, but they need to build everything else. The pressure to deliver is intense but they handle it with grace and aplomb that rivals the effectiveness of many massive corporations.
Their story has added to the hope and optimism I pour into my stories and it's interesting to see just how much these random Canadians have come out in what I write. Maybe one day they'll read Vicar's Lark, Riding the Wind, or the Buchanan Brothers and see in there a similar spark of can-do attitude. See people change their futures, one persistent step at a time.
Edison Motors isn't SpaceX. They don't build spaceships, they build semi trucks, but in both those cases, watching people struggle and overcome is a story worth investing in.
I want my stories to be like that, where the characters are cheered by voices they never hear, and when the struggle is overcome, the reader can breathe a sigh of relief that the problem has been conquered. The trouble was overcome. The foundation for the future is secure.
So that when the next part of the story starts, the reader can say ‘You've got this, look how far you've come’ while telling themselves the same thing.
I want my stories to inspire people to build their own futures and show them that they hold within themselves the power to do it. I want to find a way to give people the slight push they need to accept their own abilities.
Each of us holds within us the unlimited power of shaping the future, but most of us have simply forgotten.
The butterfly effect is real, but you don't need to travel through time to make it happen. Flap your wings now and watch the whirlwind swirl into the future and change everything.
It's never too late.
*PS
Last night, SpaceX experienced an unprecedented setback when the newwest Starship was being tested. It blew up on the test pad, very likely wrecking the only test site they have. I haven’r seen any offficial word yet, but I will bet that they will redirect anyone they have that can help and the repairs will break records. It will be intresting to watch.
Failure and Setback are still steps in the right direction. You only lose if you quit moving forward.
It seems to me that starting in the 1500s, the human race started to divide itself. A small minority pulled up stakes, and journeyed to the New World (the Americas). It was a crazy thing to do, leaving a relatively safe, familiar existence in Europe, however small and confining, for the unknown, anarchic wilderness. That risk has worked out rather well, over time. I believe we are on the brink of another such division. There are no guarantees, only risks. But, I doubt hardships, dangers, or any number of unplanned, energetic disassemblies will dissude those determined to make the trip.