The engineering of systems engineers

Abstract

The telephone companies serving the southeastern United States had taken great care to prepare for the inevitable day when a major hurricane would strike their service region. They had stockpiled poles, wire, and switches, provided back-up computer centers, vehicles, and more. No one had thought to include daycare centers, but if they had, it is likely that budget-minded executives would have asked what daycare centers have to do with keeping electrons and electromagnetic waves flowing. On August 24, 1992, hurricane Andrew struck the southeastern coast of the United States producing havoc throughout much of the region and providing the answer to their question. As had been so carefully planned, there were ample supplies of poles, wires and vehicles. In fact the only thing that seemed to be missing was the workers to use the poles, wires and vehicles. Many of these employees came from two-worker families - so that when the hurricane destroyed most of the daycare centers in the area, along with almost everything else, one member of the family had no choice but to remain home to care for the children - this during a time when the workers were critically needed at their jobs. Quickly assessing the problem, the telephone companies brought former employees out of retirement as volunteer daycare center managers, and soon the workforce was at full strength and the telephone system began its recovery. Helping propel the space shuttle into orbit is the large external fuel tank which also serves as the structural backbone for the space shuttle stack of solid rocket motors and the orbiter itself. The shuttle had been in operation for only a few years when an effort was initiated to reduce the weight of the external fuel tank by several thousand pounds in order to permit more payload to be carried into orbit. Given the size of the huge white external fuel tank (if the tank were laid on its side, the Wright Brothers’ famous flight could have taken place entirely inside of it) prospects for a significant weight savings seemed promising. All proceeded according to plan until it came time to eliminate the last 800 pounds - at which point the engineers were reduced to redesigning fasteners, seeking newer and more exotic materials, and considering ever thinner skin thicknesses. One particularly memorable day, a worker only peripherally associated with the project (and who would have made a fine systems engineer) stopped the engineers in their tracks by asking a rather profound question, ‘Wow about not painting the tank White?” “But,” protested the engineers, “space hardware is always white.”Which was in fact true