[AR] Re: SN-10 launch attempt imminent?
- From: J Farmer <jfarmer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2021 15:55:08 -0500
On 3/4/2021 1:30 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
On Thu, 4 Mar 2021, Uwe Klein wrote:
Elon is a fan of the "Build it, run it, break it, fix it, run it
again",
rinse and repeat approach.
For much of engineering history that I recall, that was "Standard
Operating Procedure"...
if your "engineers" were raised from Tradespersons.
Historically, there was no sharp distinction between the two. (Which
is why, in English at least, "engineer" is also the word for a
locomotive driver or the head of a ship's propulsion operators.) Only
in recent times has it been possible to be an engineer without ever
getting oil on your hands.
Henry
And a serious argument can be made that something was lost in the
Profession of Engineering when that happened.
My Dad, as far as I know, was the only hourly craftsperson from Y-12 to
be listed as a co-author on a peer-reviewed journal article. He was a
refrigeration mechanic assigned to an engineering group from ORNL.
Group was full of engineers, materials scientists, all with MS/ME/PhDs,
etc. His job was to build the apparatus they needed for experiments in
energy efficiency, conservation, etc. More than a few times, they would
bring him a design, he would study it, tell them it wouldn't work and
why. Then show them how to re-design the apparatus to actually
accomplish the experiment.
When this happened with new engineers, they typically pitched "a purple
fit" (as my mother would say). Dept. head would tell Dad to build what
they wanted but keep his notes on what it really needed.. 99% of the
time, the "as designed" didn't work, but Dad's re-design did.
Finally they started to assign newly hired engineers to "shadow" Dad,
get their hands dirty building real apparatus, diagnosing problems with
heating and cooling systems, etc. One of his department heads told me
at his funeral that six months of working with my Dad taught the
engineers and scientists more about "how things worked" than graduate
school did.
And that's how he got listed as a co-author on at least one
scientific/engineering journal article. (Took the group writing the
article taking to the issue to the President's office of LM Energy
Systems before it happened...)
John (What can I say? I like bragging on my family. ME not so much.)
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