Lessons from Apollo: Redundancy

Right since its inception, NASA has been obsessed with redundancy. Every important component in the spacecraft has a backup, and in case of mission-critical systems, there are multiple backup systems. For example, consider the onboard computers of Space Shuttle that control critical phases of each mission. There are four computers working in parallel and in tandem, and -- in addition -- there’s another, fifth computer used as a backup, which uses a completely different architecture and programming.

The importance of having redundant systems has been highlighted time and again across many missions. And I feel that this approach deserves consideration in our personal lives as well.

We should inculcate a habit of asking a series of what-if’s.. What if this system breaks down? What if that approach doesn’t work? What if the particular person is not available? How do you recover important data if phone is lost? What if credit card is stolen? What if online bank account is hacked?… After asking each question, we ought to go further and come up with a tangible solution to each what-if and make sure that the solution is known to all the stakeholders.
Apart from making us ready to address the specific problems, this thinking prepares us to act quickly and efficiently even when an unforeseen problem appears. The mission control team had not specifically prepared for the contingency of an oxygen tank blowing up in space, but they had thought of so many other, similar points of failures and implemented built-in redundancies that they were ready to act when an explosion of catastrophic proportions occurred during the Apollo 13 mission.