Problem Solving and Reasoning

Jim Crocker was an engineer with a problem that was truly far out—in space. The Hubble telescope, the shining hope of astronomers, just wasn’t shining properly, having been outfitted and set into orbit with a flawed primary mirror. At a meeting arranged by NASA, Crocker and his team of engineers floated plan after plan for adjusting the optics on the Hubble, but each idea was ultimately shot down as too complicated or too dangerous for spacewalking astronauts. At an impasse, the team adjourned for a few months before scheduling another meeting in Munich, Germany. At his hotel before the meeting, Crocker, a tall man, reached up to raise the showerhead, which moved with a simple adjustment mechanism. Suddenly, the solution to his engineering problem flashed in his mind. Small optical adjusters could be fitted to correct each beam of information reflected by the Hubble’s flawed mirror, with each adjuster manipulated into its proper place by a simple mechanism conceptually related to the showerhead adjustment. And, it worked! Less than a year after Crocker’s insight solved the celestial problem, the Hubble telescope had already observed a comet smashing into Jupiter, an immense black hole the size of our solar system, and an ancient galaxy formed near the time of the big bang.