egregious
extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant: an egregious mistake; an egregious liar.
Archaic. distinguished or eminent.
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It was almost time. The first test flight of the new spaceship prototype was about to begin. The engineering team watched with bated breath as the unmanned vessel prepared to launch. The countdown began. The seconds ticked by. The activation sequence was given. The engineers held their breath as the engines started to activate.
And nothing happened. The engines started, but stopped almost immediately. The engineers scrambled to find out what was wrong. Had the deactivation command been given? No, nobody in the room would do that. Maybe one of the people at the launch site had noticed something wrong? The call was sent out, and the answer came back that everything should have gone well on their end.
The engineers scrambled to find out why the ship had simply failed to activate. After a few minutes of searching, a cry came that silenced all other discussion.
“What the hell?”
Everyone turned to look at the one who made the declaration. It was one of the junior engineers, just out of grad school. The head of the operation came over to check what the young man had seen. The older man looked over the younger’s shoulder and his face turned red. He straightened and spoke in a voice just shy of a shout.
“Who was in charge of fuel ratio calculations?”
Silence filled the room. Nobody wanted to take the blame for whatever was about to happen. But, soon one did. A shaky hand rose into the air, and the person who it belonged to pulled their neck as deep into his shoulders as possible. The head engineer stormed over to the nervous man, pushed him out of the way and furiously typed at the nearby computer.
“Was it you who made these calculations?” The head asked. The other man glanced over the screen and nodded. “What the hell were you thinking? How could you get everything so wrong?”
“W-wrong? I, I thought everything was fine.”
“Fine? You call these numbers fine?”
The head engineer once more hit a few keys on the keyboard. The main screen of the engineering room was filled with several pages of numbers and letters. The other engineers read over the work that had been done. Some scoffed. Others muttered angrily. Most could see the faulty math hidden in what was otherwise sound work.
“Let me guess, you gave it a once over and called it good, huh?” The head engineer asked.
“Uh, well, yeah? I mean, fuel calculations haven’t really changed in years, right?”
“Is that what you think? That this, our newest engineering marvel, a ship designed to reach the entirety of the solar system would use the same fuel ratios as something that barely reached the moon?”
The offending engineer shrunk into his seat. The man’s face was turning red, and it looked like he very much wished to become invisible.
“Do you have any idea what your little assumption cost us? Do you have any idea how far you’ve set us back, all because you didn’t get someone smarter to check your work? Hell, you could’ve just ran them through the damn sim programs and found out how wrong you were. But no, you thought you knew better.”
“Well, I, I…”
“Get out of my sight! You don’t work here anymore!” The head engineer roared.
The former engineer’s eyes widened and he let out a string of incoherent sounds before he rushed out of the room. The head engineer flopped into the now vacant seat and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
“Find out if anyone else made the same assumptions that idiot did.” He said after a moment. “In fact, check every single damn number we used to make that ship. I want to make sure the next test actually works.”
The room became a buzz of activity as the other engineers rushed to check everything. The head simply did his best to calm down. This would work. The next prototype test would function, even if he had to go through every document and file himself.
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I imagine issues like this would be found out long before a working prototype was built, but what do I know? I'm not an engineer, rocket or otherwise. But that's not as entertaining, so you get this.
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