October is my favorite month for publishing the FTSF, and though I don’t explicitly address all the reasons why in this edition, I do link to articles that attempt to explain it. The whimsical format of this month’s newsletter is one part nostalgia, one part history and heritage, one part carnival, and one part thrilling experience that one might expect during the Halloween season.
This month seems special, if only because SpaceX caught an enormous rocket on Sunday, October 13. It seems like something out of science fiction, and it could easily be the opening scene of a horror movie. Maybe someday we will remember this event like we remember other milestones in aerospace and flight test history, events like October 14, 1947, the day we broke the sound barrier.
This month always follows the annual SETP symposium, and Chia introduces some flight test safety papers that readers should check out. Remember, pointing you to these kinds of papers is one of the key goals of this newsletter. Today—as I write this—is the first day of SFTE’s annual symposium, and I hope they have some great papers to share when all is said and done. Chia also introduces new members of the Flight Test Safety Committee inside this edition.
If you want to submit your own whimsical observations about flight test safety and its adjacent news and notices, please email the Editor or Susan or anyone on the Flight Test Safety Committee.
Finally, scary topics like statistics get a lotof ink in this edition of the newsletter. Some things are normal. Some phenomena do follow a Gaussian distribution. And some don’t. Reminding ourselves of the flight test facts we do know to be true is a good way to not get fooled by shadows, by innocent things that wear scary masks, and creepy window dressings during the Halloween season.
Download Flight Test Safety Fact, 24-10.