“When failure is not an option, success can be expensive.”
Conference paper https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264346445_The_Microsat_Way_in_Canada%5D Stibrany, P. and Carroll, K.A., "The Microsat Way in Canada," in Proc. ASTRO 2000 - 11th CASI Conference on Astronautics, Ottawa, Canada, 6-9 Nov. 2000.
The quote is a play on the title of Gene Kranz's autobiography, "Failure Is Not An Option". (See the Discussion page for further contextual information.)
The quote gained immediate currency within the MOST https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOST_(satellite) development team. It started to spread when one of the MOST team members, Henry Spencer (one of the fathers of the open-source movement, a well-known long-time contributor to the sci.space newsgroups, and also MOST's Software Architect) began using this quote as his Usenet newsgroups .sig ( this being one example https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/sci.space.history/Sl54b83g0jk%5B1-25%5D). The quote has gained wider currency since then, for example in this 2005 blog post by Rand Simberg. http://www.transterrestrial.com/archives/005132.html More recently, the quote has been stated numerous times by Chris Lewicki, the CEO of the asteroid mining company Planetary Resources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_Resources (e.g., here https://singularityhub.com/2017/08/17/space-startups-see-a-future-when-millions-of-people-live-and-work-in-space/?utm_content=buffer52ee3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter-su&utm_campaign=buffer), as well as by that company's Chairman, Peter Diamandis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_diamandis (e.g., here http://www.diamandis.com/blog/entrepreneurs-not-government-drive-innovation-heres-why), with others subsequently requoting them, such as here http://www.diamandis.com/blog/entrepreneurs-not-government-drive-innovation-heres-why and here http://vladdit.com/exponential-wisdom-episode-15-notes-driving-innovation/.
