Abby Bigaouette

Author: abbyfluoroethane

  • The humble Krytox cap: Musings on work ethic and ownership

    Below is an edited version of a blog post I wrote for work. Only proprietary and/or export controlled information has been omitted.

    In the [Big Blue building], down the way past mountains of crates, inside the CWA,1 and inside a storage cabinet lives a handful of tubes of Krytox 240AC.2 Now, Krytox is one of those materials you didn’t know you always needed until you first use it. We use it liberally here at [Certain Blue Aerospace Company] for everything from o-ring lubrication to preventing fitting galling. You can find more than a few tubes in just about any work center. However, a startling trend has struck the Krytox supply in my local CWA: not a single tube has its cap.

    I can already hear you saying “What the fuck is this rando yapping about?” I get it, this seems like a stupid thing to not only be upset about but also write a blog post about. My issue lies in the fact that this shows a blatant disregard for 5S3 procedures, lack of work ethic, and a dangerous level of complacency.

    First of all, let us go over why tubes of Krytox — or anything else for that matter — have caps. Caps serve two purposes: to keep the stuff in the tube inside and keep stuff out of the tube outside. Believe it or not, we work on hardware inside of CWAs for a hopefully very obvious reason: keeping components clean. Sure, we use Krytox like it’s aerospace-grade mayonnaise on an aluminium sandwich, but PFPE contamination is a genuine concern for many of the components we work on within the confines of the big bubble cube.

    It isn’t uncommon for tubes of consumables to be covered in small amounts of Mystery Goo — often the material they’re holding. But what about the times the Mystery Goo isn’t what you think?

    That smear on the outside of your Cor-Ban? It might be Krytox from a capless tube. It might also be DOW 730, Loctite, Molykote, or one of the many other word-salad chemicals all jumbled in a cabinet with varying levels of sealing and cleanliness. Without a cap — and without caring — you’ve got no way of knowing. You may not even think twice when you grab a particularly slimy container. In an environment where small amounts of residues can result in bond-compromising contamination or broken down seals that “whatever” mentality suddenly becomes a work work stoppage, a nonconformance, or worse: an anomaly report.

    A missing cap is a symptom. It’s what happens when people treat their tools and workspaces like everybody else’s problem. In a high-stakes environment like aerospace, your discipline bleeds into everything: torques, inspections, even how you log your work. If you can’t take five seconds to replace a cap, wipe off a container, or swap your gloves, what else are you letting slide?

    5S isn’t just a buzzword filled “lean thing” managers like to slap on laminated posters. It’s the foundation of creating a consistent, reliable workflow not mired in chaos. “Sort, Set, Shine” starts with small stuff: replace a cap, wipe a container, swap your gloves. “Standardize, Sustain” is about building a culture where that becomes second nature. If that can’t be done, what are we even doing here?

    Just two weeks ago I removed four tubes from the CWA with no caps, cleaned up the pool of Krytox oil4 that was contaminating everything in the cabinet, and replaced them with fresh materiel. Tonight there was no oil puddle, but there were six capless Krytox tubes. I’ve taped a note on the bench top above the storage cabinet that reminds those using the supplies inside to remember 5S principles.

    I’m not here to be a Krytox cop. In fact, I hate getting needlessly pissed off over problems that shouldn’t exist. But I am here to give a damn about the work we do. We should all take pride in the work we do every step of the way. We’re building hardware that’s going to space for [fuck’s] sake! if something as tiny as a cap can tell you if someone cared — or didn’t — then it’s not just a tube of grease anymore. It’s a marker of pride, ownership, and embracing Team Blue.

    1. A controlled work area. In this case, a clean room. ↩︎
    2. Krytox 240AC is a perfluoropolyether (PFPE) lubricant grease commonly used in aerospace due to its stability in extreme environments. ↩︎
    3. 5S is a workplace organization method that stands for Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain, aimed at improving efficiency, safety, and cleanliness. It helps eliminate waste, streamline processes, and maintain a productive, organized work environment. ↩︎
    4. Krytox also available in oil form. ↩︎

  • Tribe’s use of AI imagery sets dangerous precedent

    On April 11, the Cherokee Nation posted a pair of seemingly innocuous pictures to their social media accounts, featuring principal chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. and deputy chief Bryan Warner as action figures. I recoiled when I saw it while scrolling Instagram in bed.

    For the uninitiated, this is a part of a recent internet trend using the image generation featured in the latest version of OpenAI’s ChatGPT software in which you generate an image of an action figure of a person. While innocent on the surface, the use of AI image generation by a government that claims to support artists makes their claims ring hollow, in addition to setting a dangerous precedent about the use of tools by the tribe instrumental in the dissemination of misinformation and disinformation.

    The ethical implications of using AI art may not be clear to most. The technology that underlies this trend works because large neural networks are trained on vast amounts of content scraped off the internet without consent of the people that created it. These image generators are good — often eerily good — but they come with baggage. When institutions trusted as being canonical sources of information start leaning on this technology for public-facing content, it opens a whole can of worms regarding authorship, censorship, consent, and where the line gets drawn between a fun internet trend and potentially misleading the public.

    What stings most about this situation is that the Cherokee Nation should know better. We are a nation loaded with talented artists, many of whom are actively working to preserve and evolve Cherokee culture through their art. And yet, instead of commissioning one of them for a cheeky, stylized piece of leadership-as-action-figures content, the tribe opted for a soulless AI rendering.

    It’s like skipping your cousin’s beadwork to buy a knockoff at Hobby Lobby. This isn’t just a missed opportunity; it’s a slap in the face to the very creators the Nation claims to support. We constantly hear about investing in the arts, promoting Cherokee voices, lifting up tradition—but that message starts to feel pretty hollow when the Nation’s own social media prefers mass-generated pixels over something created by an actual Cherokee hand.

    What worries me most, though, is the dangerous precedent this sets. If the Nation is comfortable using AI to generate content for something as visible as its leadership’s Instagram feed, what’s next? Educational materials? Cultural storytelling? Doctoring a gaffe made by the chief? Once you open that door, it gets easier to keep walking through it — especially when it saves time and money and can serve to benefit those in power.

    That kind of normalization sends a message, whether intentional or not: that it’s okay to bypass human creativity and integrity for the sake of convenience. The fast and flashy option overpowers the thoughtful and real. Coming from a government that should be setting the standard for cultural stewardship, it feels like it very well could be a slippery slope.

    AI is inescapable if you participate in modern society. You can find chat bots and image generation tools in Facebook, Instagram, and even a normal Google search. An oft disregarded fact of the technology is that there is no intelligence. These systems don’t think, reflect, or understand — they remix. They’re sophisticated pattern recognizers trained on mountains of human-made content, and they spit out plausible-sounding results based on what’s statistically likely, not what’s true or appropriate.

    We should all be thoughtful of how we use these tools. Truth is in the balance.

    Abby Bigaouette is an aerospace technician at Blue Origin and former graphic designer for the Daily Press. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. You can reach her at abby@bigaouette.com. This op-ed was originally published in the Tahlequah Daily Press.

  • Chroma Build Log 0.1: Setting sights and basing lines, part 1

    Chroma Build Log 0.1: Setting sights and basing lines, part 1

    Welcome to the first project log for the Chroma Flight Test Program, a multi-year effort to build and fly three rockets — Chroma, Spectra, and Gamma — and develop two propulsion systems — the Additive Propellant Hybrid Engine-Experimental (APHEx) and the Amateur Liquid Engine-Experimental (ALEx). The first block of posts — which I’m calling Series 0 — will go over the roadmap for the program, starting with chroma.

    Even though this project will stretch across multiple years, building three rockets (well, two and a half — you’ll see) is no easy task. Add in the fact that I’m using construction techniques that are brand new to me, building a custom flight computer, and developing my own methods to build complex composites and I’m in over my head. That’s exactly why getting a development roadmap down now is so important. You can’t just go on a five year journey without directions! The North Star of this program is getting TRA Level 3 certified. As long as that happens, I will personally consider it a success.

    Chroma currently has three main design requirements: be Level 2 high-power capable, reach >Mach 1.8, and prove out technologies for Spectra and Gamma at the smaller end of the spectrum. It will stand just over five feet tall and use a 54mm fiberglass airframe for a minimum diameter build. Chroma Mk1, the first to be built, will be used to obtain my TRA L2 certification and de-risk the custom Taygete flight computer. Future Mk2 builds will implement necessary upgrades needed to fly higher and faster as the second stage of Gamma.

    A sneek peek at Chroma Mk1.x and the updated fin geometry

    At this point you’re probably thinking “So… when do you expect this thing to fly.” Well, assuming construction starts in May 2025, I’d say Chroma Mk1 will be ready for flight by mid-October. Mind you, Taygete won’t be flying for awhile, but I’m aiming to fly Chroma itself at least twice before the end of the year. Next year is when things will really ramp up with Taygete, Chroma Mk1.x builds, and maybe even a hybrid firing or two. Keep in mind that a lot of plans I have a dependent on finding launch and test sites, which are harder to find than you might initially think at this scale. If you’re on the Space Coast (preferably Titusville area) and have some spare room or a field I can set up shop in get in touch!

    Stay on the lookout for the next post in Series 0, where I’ll discuss Chroma Mk1.x and Taygete in more detail.

    [TRANSMISSION END]

  • Thoughts on Microsoft’s horrible phone: a review and retrospective.

    Thoughts on Microsoft’s horrible phone: a review and retrospective.

    October 2, 2019 will forever be one of my favorite days in technology history. It was a day that set the stage for a revolution in the way we use our phones and computers — not to mention the next chapter in the development of Windows. Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay took the stage to unveil Surface Duo, Surface Neo, and the Windows 10X. For once, it felt as though we were moving forward in the world of consumer electronics.

    Fast forward a year to October 2020 and you’ll see that we ended up with an operating system on life support, a dead computer, and what can be best described as a half baked, rushed phone. More on Surface Neo and Windows 10X in another post.

    Surface Duo (left) and Surface Neo (right) on display at a Microsoft hardware event on October 2, 2019. (Sarah Tew/CNET)

    I bought a Surface Duo on a steep discount about two years ago, and last week I finally decided to swap my SIM card over use it for a week as my only phone after relegating it to being nothing more than a glorified e-reader. Here’s the good, bad, and meh of using a disused and discontinued folding phone pioneer.

    Possibly the most striking feature of Surface Duo has nothing to do with the advanced multitasking features or other software, it’s the hardware itself. The first thing you notice is the thickness — or lack thereof. At just 9.9mm (0.39in) folded and 4.95mm (0.195in) unfolded, the device is strikingly thin. Surface Duo exudes the feeling of being a flagship device even with a plastic frame. It’s rigid, strikingly thin, and quite light compared to its contemporary competition.

    The screens are also high resolution and vibrant, if a bit dim in direct sunlight. Battery life was also great, and this is after two years of light use. I could easily get through a day and a half on a single charge if I really wanted to, and Duo lacking a 5G modem is probably a big factor in this.

    Say what you will, Duo still sports a strikingly sharp design five years after its announcement, even with the protective bumper installed.

    The dual 5.8 inch OLED screens look great, but actually using them is quite the spoiler. They’re unresponsive and a weird aspect ratio. I can excuse a weird shape, but Duo was actually supposed to be a Windows device. Therefore, the screens only had a driver compatible with Windows 10 and 10X for the vast majority of its development as it was supposed to be a smaller counterpart to Surface Neo. Ever heard of Project Andromeda? Needless to say, they had to hastily develop an Android driver and it fucking sucks. Good luck tap typing, stick to swipe. Oh, it also lacks both wireless charging and NFC. No Google Pay for you!

    That isn’t to mention the abysmal camera. This once again comes back to the fact that Duo was supposed to be a Windows 10X device, so it has the bare minimum for Teams calls and document scanning. Pictures are okay-at-best in bright sunlight, but the minute so much as a cloud rolls in you’re off to Noise and Motion Blur City. Colors also don’t have the sort of “pop” you’d expect from even a five year old flagship.

    A collection of images taken using my Surface Duo in various lighting conditions.

    The multitasking experience is cool, but the phone really lacks the performance to do more than Edge and Google Docs at the same time. Discord and Moshidon gets pretty laggy. With only 6GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 855 processor under the hood, it performs about as well as any other flagship from 2019 — ignoring the fact that it came out in 2020 with year-old specs. All this comes to a point when you’re out and about and only getting 4G service on what was a $1,200 phone just four years ago. In some places you can really tell it isn’t up to snuff with 5G capable phones.

    As I write this article I have had my SIM back in my Pixel 7 for a few hours, and almost immediately I had some thoughts. I love — well, thought I loved my Pixel. Spending the past week using Duo has reminded me once again that phones used to be fun, but they’re really all the same nowadays. Sure, you can buy a Pixel for the camera, an iPhone for the ecosystem, or a Smasnug if you like fake pictures of the Moon, but you’re really getting a similar experience across the board with candy bar phones. Even iOS and Android are more siblings than cousins these days.

    The Nokia Lumia 520 (left) and Microsoft Lumia 640 (right) are two of my favorite phones of all time, and I miss them both dearly.

    Surface Duo feels like the last of its kind. I was an avid Windows Phone user for years, starting out with the venerable Nokia Lumia 520 then riding Windows 10 Mobile into obscurity on a Lumia 640. I liked Windows Phones because they were different, and Microsoft (née Nokia) weren’t afraid to take a chance with a funky design or gimmicky features. Even the software itself felt whimsical in a way that remains unmatched with its fluid animations and live tiles that looked great even on a low end handset. Microsoft knew — hell, they still know — how to make a fun phone. By god I miss it.

    Duo deserved better, but you can’t fix the mistakes of the past. You can only look to how you can change the future. Make phones fun again damnit.

    Editors note:

    This post was edited for clarity and grammar after publication.