OT: "Put Down Engineers" Week (long and WAY OT)

From: Jim Arnott <jrasite_at_eoni.com>
Date: Thu Feb 1 23:49:29 2001

Continuing on an off-topic theme, my absolute favorite commentary on Engineering:


Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design


Engineering is done with numbers. Analysis without numbers is, at
best, only an opinion.
 
To design a spacecraft right takes a infinite amount of effort. This
is why it's a good idea to design them to operate when some things are
wrong.

Design is an iterative process. The necessary number of iterations is
one more than the number you have currently done. This is true at any
point in time.

Your best efforts will inevitably wind up being useless in the final design.
Learn to live with the disappointment.

(Miller's Law) Three points determine a curve.

(Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic
marker.

At the start of any design effort, the person who most wants to be
team leader is least likely to be capable of it.

In nature, the optimum is almost always in the middle somewhere.
Distrust assertions that the optimum is at an extreme point.

Not having all the information you need is never a satisfactory excuse
for not starting the analysis.

When in doubt, estimate. In an emergency, guess. But be sure to go
back and clean up the mess when the real numbers come along.

Sometimes, the fastest way to get to the end is to throw everything
out and start over.

There is never a single right solution. There are aways multiple wrong
ones, though.

Design is based on requirements. There's no justification for
designing something one bit "better" than the requirements dictate.

"Better" is the enemy of "good"

The ability to improve a design occurs primarily at the interfaces.
This is also the prime location for screwing it up.

The previous people who did a similar analysis did not have a direct
pipeline to the wisdom of the ages. There is,therefore, no reason to
believe their analysis over yours. There is especially no reason to
present their analysis as yours.

The fact that an analysis appears in print has no relationship to the
likelihood of its being correct.

Past experience is excellent for providing a reality check. Too much reality
can doom an otherwise worthwhile design, though.

The odds are greatly against you being immensely smarter than everyone
else in
the field. If your analysis says your terminal velocity is twice the
speed of
light, the chances are better that you've screwed up than that you've invented
warp drive.

A bad design with a good presentation is doomed eventually. A good
design with
a bad presentation is doomed immediately.

(Larrabee's Law) Half of everything you hear in a classroom is crap. Education
is figuring out which half is which.

When in doubt, document. (Documentation requirements will reach a maximum
shortly after the termination of a project.)

The schedule you develop will seem like a complete work of fiction up until
the moment your customer fires you for not meeting it.

Its called a "Work Breakdown Structure" because the Work remaining
will grow
until you have a Breakdown, unless you enforce some Structure on it.

Space is a completely unforgiving environment. If you screw up the
engineering, SOMEBODY DIES!
Received on Thu Feb 01 2001 - 23:49:29 GMT