#test engineering

[ziggy-scardust]

Gah. I was an engineer at SpaceX on Crew Dragon for a few years, before it launched, during which time everything I learned about real integration & test engineering was from our NASA counterparts. I am 100% serious. I was fresh out of school and instead of the job I interviewed for, I was doing certification & test engineering for life support systems and answerable directly to the folks at NASA who had contracted SpaceX for Crew Dragon. I should not have been doing that job at that age.

yeah, I walked in having drunk at least some of the kool-aid. And I got schooled by my NASA counterparts, mostly 20-30 years my senior, all Shuttle alumni, who knew too well what could go wrong and were deeply suspicious of SpaceX’s cavalier attitude. They were the ones who taught me how test engineering actually should work and with them, I developed qualification & acceptance test plans that made damn sure we weren’t going to kill any astronauts. And y’know what? We didn’t. (*knocks on wood*) Crew Dragon couldn’t have in-flight iterations like that. Even when Elon, who was less nuts at the time, suggested not doing an in-flight abort test before Demo 2 (first human launch), that idea got killed. NASA Commercial Crew really held our feet to the fire and made us do it right. (Plus, Crew Dragon was starved of resources for years in favor of Falcon Heavy - we never got budget for technician & machinist time - so we straight up couldn’t have afforded to blow up anything anyway).

So I know for a fact that SpaceX is capable of doing proper integration testing. Unfortunately, a lot of the people I worked with were basically just rocket-flavored versions of techbros, and it was very few of us pushing back on their kool-aid. Many of the ones I knew pushing back have now left.

Then the space tech arena got flooded with techbros and VC bros in the 2020-2022 timeframe when interest rates were low and Elon worship was at its peak and VCs were on a space investment hype cycle and handing out money to anyone who could hire a former SpaceX engineer and say “give us money! We’re gonna build 3D-printed rockets/mine asteroids/do earth observation that’s indistinguishable from a bunch of stuff already being done by the public sector”. And now? Now we’re reaping this “hardware engineering but make it sprint/scrum style” legacy in a way that is driving me straight up the bloody wall. Agreed with @tehnakki that you can kinda get away with some of that in LEO (especially with cubesats & the like) - but I’m still skeptical of this bc LEO is FLOODED with junk and everything that goes there adds to the burden.

See, I went from SpaceX to JPL. And we had ONE shot with Perseverance. ONE. And we had to launch and land the damn thing in the middle of a pandemic and I had to run multiple four-day-long operational readiness tests with dozens of flight ops engineers for the critical events and keep the testbed operational with 20-year-old irreplaceable hardware which was all we could afford because this mission was only ever funded to begin with because we had spare parts from Curiosity. And it worked. The first goddamn time.

Everyone hates integration & test engineers because we cost money and we know what we’re talking about and expose it when other people don’t. But we also tend to not blow up whole vehicle stacks.

the number of spacecraft failures recently has been absolutely insane and it all comes down to tech bros barging into the industry going "it's not that hard wtf is nasa so bad" and then completely skipping out on any testing

[aero-mad]

I was "commissioned" to draw a test engineer from my internship holding a label maker and crying in frustration next to a "rat's nest" of cables.

[myxineye]

pixel tests :p

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Volkswagen T2 Allrad Prototype, 1978. VW made a 5 4x4 Transporter prototypes but decided against releasing the model. The T3 Transporter was made available as a Syncro model with 4 wheel drive

[wolfram-but-art]

practical espionage doodles for the soul

reblogs > likes if you will <3

[resdayn]

the only thing i even remotely care about in the oblivion remaster is martin septim. let me see his face. he is the one from my dreams...

[wackarat]

Mr. blue-eyed menace over here

still don’t get why his eyes are blue but i thinky it’s funny

[crow-caller]

started playing fallen london cause of your blog and i absolutely love it! Thank u :)

Excellent!!! If I have any power, let it be used to get people to play fallen london and its related games (sunless seas, sunless skies = Survival exploration, mask of the rose = visual novel)

[cheriecelestial]

Jacob Black’s Self Saving System and His Shenanigans™️

[krumpkin]

Wiesmann GT MF4 Roadster ( 1997 ) 😊

[fuckyeahfluiddynamics]

Derecho-Induced Skyscraper Damage

Derechos are short-lived, intense wind storms sometimes associated with thunderstorms. Last spring, such a storm passed through Houston, leaving downtown skyscrapers with more damage than a hurricane with comparable wind speeds.  (Image credit: National Weather Service; research credit: O. Metwally et al.; via Ars Technica) Read the full article

[aero-mad]

Guys...I'm not dead. See? Here's the evidence. I just completed an internship at an aviation startup that shall remain nameless!

I should explain ORM:

ORM is short for Operational Risk Management. When you are undertaking an "operation," you want to mitigate risks that may arise from the situation and conditions under which you are conducting your....y'know. Your operation. There are several things that can affect an operation and they are all outlined in this comic.

I decided to make a comic to thank my coworkers for my internship experience. In this fictional scenario, we checked all boxes for fulfilling conditions that affect ORM. (This would never happen IRL!)

[mindblowingscience]

The average glioblastoma patient survives 12-18 months after diagnosis. The crux of the diagnostic is a biochip that uses electrokinetic technology to detect biomarkers, or active Epidermal Growth Factor Receptors (EGFRs), which are overexpressed in certain cancers such as glioblastoma and found in extracellular vesicles. “Extracellular vesicles or exosomes are unique nanoparticles secreted by cells. They are big—10 to 50 times bigger than a molecule—and they have a weak charge. Our technology was specifically designed for these nanoparticles, using their features to our advantage,” says Hsueh-Chia Chang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Notre Dame and lead author of the study about the diagnostic published in Communications Biology.

Continue Reading.

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Mercedes-Benz C111 II, 1970. The death was announced this week of Bruno Sacco, who served as the head of styling at Mercedes-Benz from 1975 to 1999, having joined the company in 1958. A German-Italian who had studied mechanical engineering at the Polytechnic University of Turin, Sacco worked at both Ghia and Pininfarina before moving to Germany and joining Daimler-Benz AG. The C111 was a series of experimental cars used to test new engine technologies, including rotary, diesel and turbochargers, for which Sacco was lead designer.

[captainmvf]

 With a grunt they come to a stop at some sort of solid surface imbedded into the hill. Hydra groans and lays flat on their back, looking up at the overcast sky. His vision needs a moment to catch up and recalibrate back into one point of focus.

 What a fucking great birthday this has been turning out to be, eh?

 Slowly, Hydra sits up and rubs at their aching joints. Their neck needs to be looked at and he is in need of a good shower when he gets back to his shed. Probably a good dusting of his current gear. That would be a good way to end today. Getting a nice warm bath and snuggling up into bed with some comfortable clothes…

 That trail of thought ends as he finishes turning around to stare at the object jutting out of the face of the hill.

 A distorted face stares back at him. Eaten away synthetic skin and broken eyes revealing a faceless train.

 “WOAH- ACK!” Hydra begins to scream but tumbles backwards on their butt. They fall over onto their back with a surprised ‘oof!’

 They quickly find their bearings and scramble away from the scrapped train. His breathing hitches as he stares from a safe distance.

 A faceless train with corroded and dirty armor and exposed inner workings sits calmly with much of their chest and legs embedded into the dirt. Its jaw is missing a screw and wide open. Sharp triangle locomotive teeth in need of a good shine and sharpening. Hair mattered and chewed up by local pests. Grass, vines, and other plant life twisting atop of what remained of their clothes and armor.

 Hydra looks down at the train’s legs and notices more pieces of the train half-buried in the earth. Wires, bolts, nuts, steel, iron, chunks, cloth…

 A racing helmet.

 Tentatively, the hydrogen tanker crawls towards the rusted helmet. He wipes away at some grime and dirt to reveal the train’s numbers: 2-6-4

 A shaky breath escapes him. Steam locomotive wheels in his head churn like gears in his head.

 Oh.

 He brushes more dirt and crust off of the helmet. It’s burnt here and there with rusting but it’s a clear replica of a steam locomotive.

 Now he sits on his knees and holds the helmet in disbelief. Hydra’s eyes drift back towards the decaying train. A racer. A steam locomotive.

 Oh.

[From the fan writing 'Another Believer' by AlmondCakeFrosting. Only viewable with an AO3 account.]

[allastoredeer]

You think that Alastor ever makes moonshine in his bathtub for old time's sake?

10000%

He gets nostalgic for his bootlegging days. He’ll even pretend to sneak it out of the hotel and deliver it to Cannibal Town, just to feel that rush.

Well, as much of a rush as he can get being an Overlord smuggling alcohol in Hell.