Evolution of spirit | Erik Lindbergh | TEDxPugetSound
our last speaker this evening is an artist a philanthropist of pilot and i'm super excited to hear him talk here is eric lindbergh with his presentation the evolution of spirit i'd like to take you on a little journey from the past to the present and and really look into the future but let me tell you a little bit about myself when i was young my friends had a nickname for me they called me eric because i was really comfortable flying through the air on my bike on my skis i had a really strong sense physical sense of self and at age 12 i was washington state champion gymnast and i climbed and skied mount rainier and i thought when i was in high school that if i ever got stuck in a job behind a desk pushing a pencil that that i couldn't live with that so that was that was all i was about when i was a senior in high school six of us decided we'd we'd water ski behind one boat all around bainbridge island and um 32 miles at about 32 miles an hour take about an hour and we decided well we shouldn't just do this for fun we should raise money we should we should get people to pledge per mile and someone picked the arthritis foundation and i thought in my 18 year old physical maybe egotistical sense of self that the arthritis foundation isn't that for old people that seems really lame little did i know just how lame it was when i turned 21 i was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and slowly i lost that physical sense of self and by age 30 i couldn't walk and really couldn't work in that time and and in 1996 i had both knees replaced totally replaced and a couple years later started taking a breakthrough biotechnology drug that really gave me another chance at life during that time i started working in my neighbor's shop um building furniture with materials that i found and and um sort of our exploring an artistic side that i didn't know that i had and then my neighbor and i started selling at the bainbridge farmers market and and it was it was i was actually almost making some money one of my customers who heard that that my grandfather was charles lindbergh started bugging me about building him a model of the spirit of st louis and i said no i can't i can't do that i do this very rustic you know weird funky furniture and you know you can buy one of those things out of the back of an aviation magazine and it'll be perfect and he said no no no i i like your rustic style and and i just love to have that essence of the spirit and and i said no because because really there's another thing my family has been diagnosed with a a real medical psychological issue called linbergophobia my grandfather was perhaps the most famous person on the planet for about 10 years straight and that really took its toll on him and and and worked its way down the family so to do anything lindbergh like or you know focus on the spirit of st louis was definitely taboo but he said you know my brother and i both are pilots now because we were inspired by your grandfather and we're both flying 747s across the atlantic right now and i'd love to give him one of these as a present for his birthday and and he worked on me enough that i said you know all right i'll all mess around in the shop and and when i started sanding on the wings of this airplane and looking at the waves of grain and in the wing thinking about the waves on the ocean and um huh what was that like and as it as the as the unique shape of the spirit came together i started flying it in my hands through the shop and putting myself in my mind's eye into the cockpit and and wondering what it was like for him in 1927 to fly for 33 hours across the atlantic in an unstable aircraft that flight that that really changed his life and and really changed my life as well and and indeed changed the world and i think it was those grains of sawdust or or seeds of thought that really led to an evolution in my spirit and this idea came that maybe i could since i had a second chance at life maybe i could do that flight myself i was trained as a flight instructor and and and got current again and i had enough of a physical life to actually try it so in 2002 i flew a small single-engine piston-powered aircraft that's about the only similarity to the spirit of st louis because i really didn't want to risk my life from san diego where the spirit was built in 1927 to st louis and then from st louis to new york and then new york to paris a 17-hour solo flight and and with that raised money ironically for the arthritis foundation the lindbergh foundation and for the x prize to talk about the future of flight in space so for a limburgophobe it was kind of intense they they decided to do youth aviation day at the uh spirit of st louis airport and had hordes of kids and their parents and of course like the lindbergh high school marching band just to freak me out and i'm trying to concentrate on my prime directive which is not necessarily to make it to paris but to survive because it was it was very intense putting myself out in into the public like that but it did it did a great job at at desensitizing me to lindbergh stuff so i took off from new york and and started this this 17-hour flight across the atlantic and since i've only got 49 more minutes to go i'll i'll skip that part but over the atlantic i i started to think you know i really need to do something symbolic when i get there when i land maybe something poignant and and i was reading ernest gann earlier and thinking about the the sailors way back when they would get to land and they would kiss the ground and i thought yeah i'll do that then of course i get there and you know there's like 75 year old tarmac for me to kiss and and it's my first trip to europe and it's it i flew myself and and this is france but that is not a french kiss so i love this slide it's it's um thank this man for changing the world's expectations on flight and i don't mean my grandfather on the left i mean the guy on the right his name is raymond ortig and in 1919 raymond ortig put up a 25 000 prize and a funny thing happened seven teams spent four hundred thousand dollars to try to win that twenty five thousand dollar prize that's extraordinary and ortig really leveraged his money by a factor of sixteen and all of that research and development went into long-distance air travel that's amazing people forget that aviation was developed primarily by two things warfare and prizes and being a sculptor this is one of my favorite of the of the early trophies the bendix trophy so how do we apply this lesson to the future of flight in 1996 we launched the x prize under the arch in st louis the largest cash prize in history for the first privately funded sub-orbital reusable space launch vehicle in english that's private manned space program and in 2002 actually five years ago next week no two weeks um bert rutan scaled composites backed by paul allen built spaceship one and the white knight carrier aircraft and they took off on a cold morning in mojave in front of a an amazing crowd of of people looking at a new era in space flight flew up to an altitude of about 50 000 feet and dropped the aircraft ignited and flew up above 328 000 feet or 62 miles to become the first um private manned space program that's um he of course survived his flight that's mike melviu who is ironically at this moment in time too old to fly for the airlines so just another little irony there so what happens when you give a guy like me another chance at life i can work again i can play i can ski i can even play a little hacky sack and i and i believe um i've been incredibly empowered to know that i was part of this team that somehow managed to get spaceship one on display in the air and space museum next to the spirit of st louis that empowers me every day imagine creating a future where this little guy can fly in an electric aircraft something that is quieter and safer and uses renewable fuels solving all of those issues that are are facing aviation today i imagine creating a future where this little guy can fly into space he can take us out there and and so that we can experience what the astronauts describe when they look back at this fragile planet and and all that we know and love and depend upon to survive is down here on this planet we need to make sure that that planet this planet our only really sustainable um self-contained spaceship that we have thrives and survives into the future i want to go there i want him to take us there i made this image in the shape of an embryo to symbolize our infancy in in in terms of human potential we've really only just scratched the surface i want to go there i want to take you with me i think that the sky is truly no longer the limit in fact our only limitation is our imagination thank you