On Mar 19, 2009, at 10:48 AM, William Conger wrote:
Push for getting the engineers and designers, with their rolled up
sleeves and
procket protectors back into the front windowed offices and reseat
the bespoke
suited salesmen in the inside offices where they don't have as much
authority
to tell a engineer to put a doo-dad in and take a washer out.
The development of microelectronics offers an interesting and converse
corollary to this.
In the 50s, the USSR "beat" the US to space with Sputnik and other
"firsts" because, among other reasons, they had developed far more
powerful rockets. They could just throw heavier things up into orbit.
The US rocket development teams couldn't match the Soviet pound for
pound for a long while, so in order to get comparable results from
lower throw-weights, the US had to reduce the bulk of the things being
put into orbit. Thus, the US led in the miniaturization of electronic
components because of the limitations of the launch engines.
Another thing: airplanes are far more dependent on functional design
of their outward shape than cars. If the shape of the plane is
deficient in some critical way, it might fall out of the sky from an
altitude of 10,000 or 30,000 or more feet. And the landing won't be
survivable. Not so the car. Ugly or beautiful, sleek or boxy, trinket
filled or spartan, they can all go 60 or 80 or 100 MPH, and they all
have comparable survivability. They won't fall far because, frankly,
they're already on the ground. Car shape has practically no
relationship to any critical functional demand, such as airworthiness.
I love the design of airplanes. They are wonderful things, and even
the ones that seem to depart radically from what we expect are
mesmerizing, such as the two stealth planes, the sharp-angled Stealth
Fighter (which looks like a flying doorstop in profile!) and the
Stealth Bomber (which frankly doesn't look like it can get aloft and
remain stable). One of my all-time favorite airplane designs was the
Lockheed Super Constellation. [See http://www.superconstellation.org/ ]
But I am making William's argument: these beautiful things were made
by engineers, not ad-men!
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
