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Hey there! It’s Brad coming to you with some exciting news!

There are big changes coming to the newsletter in the coming weeks, we’ll feature the same stories that you love but pepper in industry news, hot topics of conversation and even some jobs from companies focusing on developing innovative, physical products for the world.

That’s not all, I’ve teamed up with Pipeline Design and Engineering’s leadership to bring you a new and improved ecosystem of media surrounding product development, manufacturing, and cool engineering. Lots of details to come and you, our esteemed readers, are going to be the first to know when something cool is about to drop. So stay tuned!

Now let’s jump into today’s articles.

Every engineering project has one critical moment where human judgment makes all the difference. Sometimes that judgment saves lives. Sometimes the lack of it destroys them.

Katherine Johnson saved John Glenn's space mission by double-checking NASA's computer calculations with her slide rule. Engineers at the Hyatt Regency approved a walkway design change without proper review, and 114 people died when the structure collapsed. Today's robotics companies are learning from both stories as they decide how much human oversight to build into AI systems.

These three stories, separated by decades, prove the same point: the best engineering happens when humans and technology work together. We'll explore a brilliant mathematician whose calculations were trusted over computers, a tragic disaster that happened when human oversight failed, and how modern robotics startups are putting humans back at the center of automation.

The lesson is clear. Technology advances, but human insight remains irreplaceable.

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How are you integrating AI or robotics into your work? How have you found it most helpful?

While Hidden Figures made Katherine famous, the movie barely scratched the surface of what made her truly exceptional. She wasn't just brilliant at math. She was an engineer who completely rewrote the rules about what someone like her could accomplish in 1960s America.

Katherine didn't just solve the problems she was given. She questioned why they existed in the first place. She showed up to meetings where women had never been welcome. She insisted on working from first principles when everyone else relied on approximations. She calculated trajectories for missions to the moon while working in a segregated building.

Her progressive mindset wasn't just ahead of its time. It was the kind of thinking that transforms entire fields of engineering. And until 2016 when the movie “Hidden Figures” finally brought Katherine’s story to public attention, it could only scratch the surface of her technical achievements.

To read the full story of Katherine’s rise to greatness, visit the link below.

July 17, 1981. A packed tea dance at Kansas City's Hyatt Regency Hotel. At 7:05 PM, two suspended walkways crashed into the lobby below, killing 114 people in seconds.

The cause? A "simple" design change that doubled the load on critical connections. Continuous steel rods became split rods. Nobody ran the calculations. Everyone assumed someone else had checked it.

The original design barely met building codes. The modified design was doomed from day one.

Lead investigator Edward Pfrang found a culture where "everyone wanted to walk away from responsibility." The structural engineers, fabricator, and contractor all pointed fingers while a deadly flaw went unnoticed.

This wasn't an act of nature or unforeseeable failure. It was preventable engineering negligence that exposed how design changes can slip through cracks when responsibility gets diffused.

Read the full story and get all the details below!

In 1986, a General Motors robot seriously injured a worker because it couldn't tell the difference between a human arm and a piece of metal. That accident changed everything about how engineers think about automation.

Fast forward to today: Collaborative Robotics just raised $100 million, but not to build robots that replace workers. They're creating machines that watch, learn, and adapt to human behavior in real time. When you reach for a tool, their robot anticipates your next move. When you enter its workspace, it automatically slows down.

This represents a complete reversal from decades of automation philosophy. Over 4.2 million robots now work globally, yet companies like Field AI and Collaborative Robotics are designing systems that amplify human capabilities rather than eliminate jobs. They've learned from engineering disasters spanning from the Challenger explosion to the 2008 financial crisis that automation without human oversight leads to catastrophe.

Learn more about human-robot partnerships at The Wave.

Engineering is about solving, innovating, and connecting ideas to make a difference. Progress is a collective effort and your curiosity is what drives it forward. Thank you for exploring the dynamic world of engineering with all of us at Pipeline Design & Engineering and The Wave.

If you found value in this newsletter, share it with a friend or colleague who might enjoy it too. Don’t forget to subscribe so you never miss a new perspective, idea, or breakthrough.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” - Steve Jobs

In collaboration and creativity,
Brad Hirayama
Blueprinting tomorrow, today