I was struck, though, by this quote: "my Electrical System Engineer Al Gross threw me a curve. He said, 'Bob, we need to connect two new circuits with a couple

I was struck, though, by this quote: "my Electrical System Engineer Al Gross threw me a curve. He said, 'Bob, we need to connect two new circuits with a couple of diodes. I don't know where you are going to put them, but I don’t want to add them to the Recovery Programmer as this will trigger a requal program,' That would require a lot of work and paperwork to requalify the programmer." I don't know enough about aerospace to really follow this (or even to know what a "programmer" is in this context), but it certainly sounds strikingly similar to Boeing's use of ad-hoc engineering solutions to avoid expensive retraining of pilots. Perhaps technical corporate culture has always been a complicated relationship between finance and engineering. Triumphantly successful projects tend to make everyone forget about the tension, while miserable failures lead to more introspection.