The Martian

by Andy Weir

I tested the brackets by hitting them with rocks. This kind of sophistication is what we interplanetary scientists are known for.

There’s a great story (I don’t know if it’s true or not) about the difference between science and engineering. A toothpaste factory was having a problem. Once in a while, the assembly line would churn out an empty box with no tube of toothpaste in it. The empty box would end up packed with a bunch of normal boxes in a crates and sent off to stores. The retailers would then get mad that they got a factory dud. So the management called in experts to look over the assembly line. The experts did a bunch of analysis and found the problem. Unfortunately, it would cost millions to redesign the relevant parts of the assembly line and it would have to be offline for months during the retrofit. Management didn’t want to do that, so the experts offered the next best thing: They can’t fix the problem, but they could put a scale in at one point to identify the problem and automatically stop the production line. Then a worker could remove the bad box and they could start the line again. Management opted for that solution. For the first month or so, the line stopped once or twice a day as a result – each time due to an empty box. Problem solved! But then, after a month, the line never stopped again. Had the detection system stopped working? Management sent someone down to investigate. They discovered that the workers had positioned a large industrial fan next to the assembly line right before the detector. It was strong enough to blow an empty box off the conveyor belt but not strong enough to blow a full one off. They had solved the entire problem, permanently and at zero cost, because manually removing the box and restarting the line was a hassle. That’s the difference between a scientist and an engineer. Mark Watney is an engineer at heart.