Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The movie 'Apollo 13' does a fair job of showing how rapidly the engineers in Houston devised the [air scrubber] kludge and documented it, but because of time constraints of course they can't show you everything. NASA is a stickler for details. (Believe me, I've worked with them!) They don't just rapid prototype something that people's lives will depend upon. Overnight, they not only devised the scrubber adapter built from stuff in the launch manifest, they also tested it, documented it, and sent up stepwise instructions for constructing it. In a high-maturity organization, once you get into the habit of doing that, it doesn't really take that long. Something that always puzzles me when I meet cowboy engineers who insist that process will just slow them down unacceptably. I tell them that hey, if NASA engineers could design, build, test, and document a CO2 scrubber adapter made from common household items *overnight*, you can damn well put in a comment when you check in your code changes." -- Calli Arcale, comment at Respectful Insolence 2013-06-06 ( thanks to realinterrobang for quoting it earlier)

[To my friends observing Shiva Asar B'Tammuz, may you have an easy fast.]