Experienced engineer Hannes Hacker joins us to discuss:
-what engineering is
-the scientific roots of engineering

About Hannes: "I have almost thirty years of professional experience in space mission systems engineering with emphasis in flight dynamics, attitude control subsystems, and mission operations. This experience spans the entire spacecraft program lifespan from proposal writing through spaceflight operations. I have worked on the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, Iridium communications constellation, various Geostationary communications satellites, micro satellites for the Department of Defense, and the Dream Chaser space plane. I currently work for the Globalstar communications constellation. I have a bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame and a master of science in aerospace engineering from the University of Texas at Austin."



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Show notes.
1. Science is the inductive, integrated understanding of the nature of things and their cause-effect relationships.

2. Engineering is "the art or science of making practical application of the knowledge of pure sciences, as physics or chemistry, as in the construction of engines, bridges, buildings, mines, ships, and chemical plants." (https://www.dictionary.com/browse/engineering)

3. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel: https://www.amazon.com/Longitude-Genius-Greatest-Scientific-Problem/dp/B005LYERBI/

4. "The £2.5 million fighter jet system that’s so precise it's affected by the MOON'S gravity" Victoria Woollaston (Daily Mail Online, 09 Apr 2015): https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3030669/The-fighter-jet-s-precise-affected-MOON-built-using-lasers-floating-concrete-rafts.html

"To counteract even the slightest shifts in gravitational pull, experts must build the jet on 'floating' concrete rafts that move in sync with the moon. These rafts measure 59ft (18 metres) long and 9.8ft (3 metres) thick and are used to house the measuring equipment. Two laser trackers and nine jacks are positioned on a single surface, to make sure all movement is relative, and they control the alignment of the barges by cancelling out the subtle effects of the moon and the tides it creates. This means the jet will be in 'near perfect alignment whatever the moon may be doing,' said Martin Topping, Head of Typhoon Maintenance and Upgrade. 'Every time the moon pulls the tide in and out, the ground under our feet actually moves by between one and two millimetres,' he continued. 'That might not sound a lot, but given the tolerances we are working to on Typhoon, two millimetres is two millimetres too much.' "

5. Physicist Hans Schantz: https://www.spreaker.com/user/11043023/episode-38-hans-g-schantz-phd-physics-ta

6. Hans of Iceland by Victor Hugo. I am not sure who has the best translation, but here are two:
a. https://www.amazon.com/Hans-Iceland-Victor-Hugo-ebook/dp/B087N4JWZH/
b. https://www.amazon.com/Works-Victor-Hugo-Translated-Condemned/dp/1344008976/

7. Science
a. Few [scientists] are philosophers. Most are intellectual journeyman, exploring locally, hoping for a strike, living for the present." --E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge

b. A quote that illustrates the importance of philosophy and logic to science:
"In a debate involving two scientists and two philosophers, “Richard Dawkins said ‘You know, I’m not a philosopher, I’m a scientist. I’m only interested in truth.’
...
A Frenchman in the audience said ‘What is truth?’ “
—Dennis Noble, in Episode 2: Harnessing Randomness, of the Big Biology Podcast (https://www.bigbiology.org/podcast#episode2)

c. “Galileo’s radical renewal sprang, nevertheless, from the Aristotelian mind set, as it was taught at the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano: human reason has a basic ability to recognize and understand the objects registered by the senses. The objects are real. They have properties that can be perceived, and then ‘further processed’ according to logical rules. These logical concepts are also real (if not in exactly the same way as the physical objects).” --Galileo Galilei – When the World Stood Still, Atle Naess

d "I should even think that in making the celestial material alterable, I contradict the doctrine of Aristotle much less than do those people who still want to keep the sky inalterable; for I am sure that he never took its inalterability to be as certain as the fact that all human reasoning must be placed second to direct experience." --From the Second Letter of Galileo Galilei to Mark Welser on Sunspots, p. 118 of Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake, (c) 1957 by Stillman Drake, published by Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, New York.



Bio and picture courtesy Hannes Hacker.