The magic beans

This week, with a little delay, we reach position number three of our “different” aircrafts list. This rank is for the McDonell XG-85 “Globin”. This strange aircraft was a parasite fighter created to protect the B36 being transported in its interior. The USAF’s idea was that this fighter could escort the bomber which carried it in case of a foe attack.

The XF-85 was a tiny egg shaped craft with peculiar stabilizers. It was build and tested in 1948 but the performances were lower than the foe fighters. This fact and the enormous difficulty of the reattachment to the host aircraft caused the abandonment of the project.

There were two prototypes built, that flew seven times with a total flight time of 2 hours and 19 minutes. Only on three occasions the reattachment to the trapezium was achieved.

The only flight pilot that flew it was McDonell’s Edwin Scott.

Both units are shown in museums, one in the Wright-Patterson (Ohio) and the other at the Strategic Air and Space Museum in Ashland, Nebraska.

Despite its strange look, it flew reasonably good and the USAF continued the study of parasite aircrafts after the cancellation of the program, with even more strange aircrafts.

Here you can find an interesting video of the XF-85 “Goblin” that shows the difficulty of the reattachment.

At the beginning of each new year, we usually have all kind of purposes to improve those aspects of our lives, that have not left us completely satisfied during the last year. Naturally this year couldn´t be an exception and now we all have prepared our list of good intentions for this year.

As you can imagine I have done it too, but unfortunately as my good intentions are the same year after year, I do not waste my time writing them down.

One of the recurrent good intentions is to learn to say “No”. This is a sign of maturity that, despite my years, it seems I haven’t achieved yet.

One of the first things that you should try to learn as fast as possible when you start working for a company is to say no. This does not mean that you should be an outlaw or a rebel, but you have to know when a certain directive or order you receive surpasses the limits of what you consider reasonable.

I’m not talking here about the content or the scope of the work that to you, as a good professional, should be indifferent. I’m talking about the subtle pressure which in many occasions our managers or our customers create requiring technical solutions to problems that, sometimes, could lead to catastrophic and even ruinous results, but that are justified by the time schedule or the costs.

These kind of decisions, bad decisions, are usually taken by people that are deeply proud of their great vision of the world and business, but never take responsibility when anything goes wrong.

And it is exactly there, where the subtle or declared pressure on you starts, because you are the one who has to design a certain product and you start making mistakes. And nobody is going to excuse your errors.

When you happen to live such situations, you are quite tempted to give up, because you know very well that you are doing a bad job and sooner or later it will come out. But the fear of losing your promotion possibilities or in the worst case, your job, makes you look down and go on, hoping that the Goddess Fortune cares about you and allows you to  finish the project without too much damage.

This is the reason why many people who start his professional life with lots of power and enthusiasm decide soon, that they would rather be there where those who take the decisions without risks are. But as these is only granted to the GAAS, the rest of humans do not have any chance to get into this selected group and the only way to get there is start looking without rest after the “magic beans”.

As you might remember the story, Jack climbs the magic beanstalk and gets to the land of the giants where he manages to capture the goose that lays golden eggs and the magic harp and living happily ever after.

The magic beans represent in the real world this awesome idea that will make you earn  a lot of money and that will make you gain respect and recognition of your managers.

In a large company these awesome ideas are expressed in the form of patents. The way to get a patent is long and difficult. It starts at the basics, this means writing down the details of your idea. Up to this point everything is OK, but then this documentation reaches the patent department of your company, where after some time it returns to you as an indecipherable rigmarole written in a weird language of a pettifogger of the 19^th century decorated with pictures drawn by a comic artist.

And soon you realize that this issue is in the hands of lawyers who are dedicated to analyze and determine if your idea is in conflict with any other previous patent. Naturally, these people will rely on you to make their job and they will send you a pile of previous patents so that you can study them in order to find possible conflicts and, if so, look for the way to avoid them.

At this point you could assume that this is still normal and reasonable, but when you start reading the patents you got is when you start laughing. It all starts with this absurd language, in which they are written, that is probably very similar to the jargon of middle age peddlers, so it will take you a lot of time to understand the patent itself. But it gets really funny when you realize that most of the patents are referred to ideas and applications that are not even supported by the slightest technical analysis and you know from the first glance that they will never work. But nevertheless, they are patented.

You will find everything from perpetual motion machines of the first kind to curious devices where the author tries to cover with the patent any further use, even the basics.

Some patents border on the grotesque because, whatever the subject is, they could have been reduced to “I patent something that I don’t know if it works, but is useful for everything”.

When you tell the Patent Department people your concerns, they will say to you:

- “Don’t worry if your idea works or if it doesn’t. The important thing is that we can patent it!”

Of course, you will ask them for a reasonable explanation.

- “Listen to me young man”, they will tell you, “patents are only good to exchange them in case of a conflict with the competing companies, if we infringe one of them. This is why we should have as many as possible.”

This will leave you devastated because in your simple intellect you can not assume that patents are for companies the same as trade cards of football and baseball players were for you at school. But as this is not your war, you close your eyes and you sign the patent waiting for the revenues of your invention.

You can wait for them the rest of your life, because you will receive only a few coins at the end of the month as a reward for your initiative and your inventiveness.

You may think:

“May be next time I’m luckier”

But for sure you won’t.

A thought:

The good ideas do not help to make the world better. Good actions do.

See you

Be brave

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