1. The author of the book, "Lessons Amid the Rubble," called engineering 'contradictory', because engineering has to be creative in the purpose of serving physical, financial, legal, and other constraints. The creativity is not to express oneself in the form of art, but for practical reasons such as finding the most efficient way to build a bridge as cheap, but also as strong as possible. This means that design for reliability is for problem solving as well as increasing convenience and safety for others to utilize, so engineering practice is ambiguous.
2. Launching systems and rockets like SpaceX's "Falcon Heavy" rocket have a lot of risks that engineers and designers have to take account for. For instance, when the rocket is being launched, there is a ton of vibration due to gaining as much momentum and energy as possible in a short amount of time. The engineers have to find a rocket model so that the vibrations do not unhinge the structure or else the rocket will fall apart. Having durable and strong material is essential for rockets so that it can take impact whether it is crashing into something or astral debris hits it. Weight should also be taken account for, because if the rocket is extremely heavy, it would require more energy to shoot it up towards space to fight against the force of gravity. And finally, one has to make sure that the rocket does not overheat or else it will cause a meltdown and possibly explode from having too much heat energy in its system.
he first three rockets built by SpaceX produced crash-and-burn videos akin to those Musk was forced to watch with his friends. The first barely made it off the ground, the second spun out of control five minutes into flight, and the third ended with a collision between its first and second stages only eight minutes after liftoff, spilling the cremated remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper and actor James Doohan— Star Trek’s Scotty—into the Pacific.
3. In the most recent engineering disaster news, Uber's self-driving cars have become commercialized after series of tests. However, just last week, a 49 year-old woman was struck by one of these self-driving cars and was fatally wounded. NY Times, a popular media source, has covered the incident in a dramatic demeanor; quoting the feelings and thoughts of witnesses of the accident to provoke more emotion from the reader instead of speculating as to how the accident happened. However, in contrast to that, the engineering publication, govtech, has stated only unbiased and unemotional information regarding the incident as well as reported what might've contributed to the car accident. This may have been due to not enough night vision sense tests.
Work Cited
https://www.success.com/article/2012-success-achiever-of-the-year-elon-musk