Spaceflight Engineering

The practice of designing, building, and testing the vehicles that carry humans and cargo beyond Earth's atmosphere, requiring a tolerance for risk that would be considered pathological in any other field. Spaceflight engineers must account for vacuum, radiation, extreme temperatures, and the fundamental hostility of the universe to human existence. They work with margins so thin that a single faulty O-ring can end a mission and lives. They then watch their creations launch, knowing that if they made a mistake, it will be very public and very final.

Spaceflight Engineering Example: "She was a spaceflight engineer who spent three years designing a valve for a rocket's fuel system. The valve worked perfectly during tests. On launch day, she watched from mission control, holding her breath for the two minutes the valve was active. It worked. She exhaled. Then she started worrying about the next valve, because that's what spaceflight engineers do—worry sequentially."

by Abzugal February 14, 2026

Space Engineering

The practice of designing and building systems that operate in the most hostile environment imaginable, where temperatures fluctuate hundreds of degrees, radiation fries electronics, and a single micron of debris can end a mission. Space engineers must create machines that work perfectly after months of travel, with no chance of repair, using components that were tested on Earth but will never be touched again. It's engineering on hard mode, where failure is public, expensive, and permanent, and success means your creation dies alone in the void, doing its job until the end.

Space Engineering *Example: "She was a space engineer who worked on a Mars rover for five years. She designed a motor that would operate at -100°C, in dust storms, for a mission designed to last 90 days. The rover lasted 14 years. Her motor was still working when they finally lost contact. She cried. Somewhere on Mars, a piece of her is still waiting for commands that will never come."*

by Abzugal February 14, 2026

Spacetime Engineering

The practice of designing structures or systems that account for or exploit the curvature of spacetime, which is either extremely advanced physics or a really fancy way of saying "building things that work in gravity." In practice, spacetime engineering means accounting for relativistic effects in GPS satellites (they'd be useless otherwise), designing experiments to test general relativity (dropping things from tall towers, basically), and theoretically, one day, maybe building a wormhole (good luck with that). It's engineering at the edge of known physics, where the safety margins are unknown and the building codes haven't been written yet.

Spacetime Engineering Example: "She was a spacetime engineer who worked on satellite synchronization. She had to account for both special and general relativity to keep GPS accurate to the nanosecond. When she explained this at parties, people nodded and then asked if she could make their phones charge faster. She said that was a different kind of engineering, but no, she couldn't."

by Abzugal February 14, 2026

Spacetime-Probability Engineering

The ambitious practice of designing systems, structures, or interventions that function across probability branches, ensuring that your bridge stands not just in this timeline, but in all timelines where physics is roughly the same. Spacetime-probability engineers must account for the fact that their designs exist in a superposition of states until observed, making traditional quality assurance a nightmare. The field is particularly concerned with "probability fatigue"—the tendency of materials to wear out faster in branches where they're used more heavily—and "branch resonance," where failures in one timeline can propagate to others if you're not careful.

Spacetime-Probability Engineering *Example: "She was a spacetime-probability engineer who designed a bridge that was mathematically proven to stand in 99.9% of all possible probability branches. Unfortunately, the 0.1% included the branch where a rogue wave hit at exactly the wrong angle, and also the branch where someone forgot to tighten a critical bolt. The bridge stood, but she still worried about the bolts in other dimensions, where she was presumably explaining herself to an investigation committee."*

by Abzugal February 14, 2026