End of the Line Engineering.com

A Ukrainian made reduction light sport aircraft, the Aeroprakt A-22, appears to have been the platform for a drone attack on a Russian factory in Tataristan, only 800 miles behind the lines and deep inside Russia. While hardly a high-performance platform for drone conversion, these are light sport aircraft has several advantages.
The aircraft is cheap and simple, and uses mechanical flight controls that are relatively easy to automate. It uses no special materials and a commercially available engine, and in flight, is indistinguishable to radar from aircraft and helicopters. The attack was highly successful, and it’s likely that more will be seen on the battlefield in the future
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The third test flight of the SpaceX Starship system ended in in the loss of the vehicle as both booster and the orbital vehicle failed. But both booster and space vehicle were far closer to mission success than either of the first two test flights, and changes are underway for flight four.
According to Jim Anderton, the reaction of the engineering team at SpaceX mission control was rather strange. The celebratory atmosphere and cheering make for a stark contrast to the very serious tone of NASA mission control in Houston during Space Shuttle and Apollo Saturn flights.
Is this youthful exuberance, or is there a generational shift in what was once an almost religious reverence for space vehicle launch operations?
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In complex systems, especially in aviation, it’s rarely possible to single out an individual or corporate unit for failures like those seen on Boeing aircraft recently. Several media outlets have been talking about a “bad week for Boeing” with Boeing aircraft losing wheels, experiencing engine fires and dropping vertically while in cruising flight, causing passenger injuries.
On the heels of the Alaska Airlines door plug incident, the optics are bad — but the simple fact is, these incidents involve completely different aircraft models, built over a span of decades. With different failures, and different failure modes, it’s unlikely that Boeing is the sole cause of each one. 
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A recent CNN story about a former Boeing employee who refuses to fly on the Boeing 737 Max went viral, throwing fuel on the fire over quality issues at the company.
For manufacturing professionals, missing bolts — although serious — are not especially surprising. It’s not widely understood, but it is true that even 100% human visual inspection of a specification or attribute will not even come close to achieving zero-defect production.
Part of the reason is because of the natural limitations in human inspection, but a major issue is that inspectors are subject to the same personal issues that degrade their performance as any other employee. Legal and illegal substance use and abuse, physical illness, mental health issues and physical disability can all play a part.
How a corporation deals with underperforming quality control personnel is another factor. Automation of inspection processes will help, but can sometimes introduce a new level of uncertainty in quality assurance processes. Perfection will always be elusive, but statistically, the accident rate for air travel is at historic lows.
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Kei cars are cute, fun, affordable and not available in America. 
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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.

Things are becoming obsolete, faster. Why? 
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Want to watch this podcast as a video? End of the Line is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as This Week in Engineering, Designing the Future, and, Manufacturing the Future.