Browsing: Opinion

aerospace blog

Is it easier to test at high or low altitude? While high-altitude testing brings its own set of human challenges, flight in a low-level environment brings completely different conditions and difficulties

A favored saying of safety engineers is, ‘There are no new accidents, only new victims’. Does this apply to aerospace testing in the modern era?

From the outside, a career in aerospace testing seems as glamorous and exciting as ever. Is this really the case? Are we in a golden age? And are those that disagree guilty of looking back through rose-tinted spectacles?

Peter Kelley, a former senior metrologist at the National Weights & Measures Laboratory and training development manager at the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS), takes a look at the difference between calibration and testing, at metrological traceability and uncertainty in measurement, and considers the significance of possible measurement errors in final test and calibration results