[AR] Re: new Glenn mockup
- From: David McMillan <skyefire@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 15 Nov 2021 18:43:39 -0500
On 11/10/2021 11:49 PM, Henry Spencer wrote:
The 20th-century engineer knew that his models and simulations were
only approximations to reality, and that the approximations might not
always be close enough. It's still true in the 21st century, but the
21st-century engineer often overlooks that little issue. Sometimes he
gets away with it. Sometimes he doesn't.
Having entered my industry just before practical simulation started
becoming a thing, and climbing that learning curve as one of the people
who kept getting shafted by inexperienced sim jockeys (and trying to
train them into /useful/ sim jockeys)... I've come to the conclusion
that an engineer's experience level can be closely inversely correlated
to how thoroughly they trust their simulation models.
"The map is not the territory" is a mindset that too few
engineering schools seem to teach. Mine did, but contrary to the
typical "old fart" story, I think I got lucky -- I encountered far too
many "ivy league" engineers of my own generation who didn't seem to
grasp it.
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