‘Mission’ Control

If you think planning for retirement is complicated… how about planning a landing on the moon?

 

We’ve just marked the 51st anniversary[1] of the first manned landing on the moon. Magical as was that Sunday night in 1969 when the world tuned in to grainy black-and-white images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin flickering across TV screens, the decade-long process that produced that “one small step for man” was long, meticulous, and fraught with peril: three separate programs (Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo) and years of having Americans enter space, circle the planet, exit their craft while circling the planet (at unimaginable speeds), practicing coupling and decoupling separate spacecraft, before finally leaving Earth’s orbit to first touch the lunar sky, and then—finally—setting foot upon that faraway soil, at what was dubbed “Tranquility Base.”

 

Students of history know that one of the contingency plans for the Apollo 11 mission was a presidential statement if those astronauts had crashed (they got pretty low on fuel before landing), or if they hadn’t been able to return to Earth (some engineer actually forgot to put a handle on the outside  of the lunar module door—and if they hadn’t noticed that and left the door open while they were on the surface, they might not have been able to get back inside the LEM). Fortunately, those contingencies are now simply interesting historical anecdotes. 

 

Indeed, if all we’d had to worry about was the journey there, it would have been immeasurably easier (and quicker). The great challenge of our space program was ensuring that those astronauts could return safely[2] to earth—as the experience of the astronauts in the ill-fated Apollo 13 would experience less than a year later when an oxygen tank exploded two days into their trip to the moon. That led to a reduction in power, loss of heat in the cabin, a shortage of drinkable water, and ultimately the need to jury-rig the system that removed carbon dioxide from the cabin. It was a near disaster that required the commitment and ingenuity of the individuals in that spacecraft, supported and guided by the staff of Mission Control on earth.

 

It doesn’t take much imagination to draw a correlation between the planning for a landing on the moon and a successful arrival in retirement (OK, so maybe it takes a little imagination). Both require a notion of what constitutes a successful arrival, an idea of the steps that will be required to get there, the tenacity and ingenuity to deal with the inevitable bumps along the way—and the specificity of a date certain to give some structure to those plans.

 

Similarly, it’s important to remember that, challenging as it is to get workers to a secure retirement, and even with lots of planning, contingency plans and shifting goals, it’s equally important—and arguably more complicated—to help them get through retirement. 

 

That’s why, in good times or not-so-good times, but particularly in times of crisis, when things don’t go as expected or when new challenges emerge, the success of that “mission” requires the involvement, engagement, experience—and guidance—of experts like you—Mission Control.

 

 

[1] Ironically, it also marks the anniversary (July 21, 2011) of a less memorable event: the landing of the last Space Shuttle flight. 

 

[2] Though, as the tragedies of Apollo 1 and the Columbia and Challenger Shuttle disasters still remind us, there was danger in every mission, and in the preparations for those missions.