I’m Bringing Duct Tape on a Desert Island

I know there are many great answers to the question, “what would you bring with you if you were stranded on a desert island?” Let me tell you why I’m bringing duct tape.

The most surprising thing I discovered when I worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the amount of duct tape that was used across the campus. I’m not sure what I expected when I first started working at NASA, but based on my imagination and what I’d seen in the movies, I was anticipating state of the art equipment, fancy lab supplies, and blinking upgraded technology.

What I found was duct tape. Duct tape holding corners of bookshelves together, duct tape in the clean room, duct tape being sent into space! I was shocked that there were so many uses for duct tape. I was also really inspired by the creativity and ingenuity in the ways that duct tape was used by the engineers at NASA. It was remarkable to see that my expectations for the fancy lab set up at JPL was completely different from my experience working there.

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