Many if not most engineering, myself among them, enjoy breaking things. We frequently defend this as a professional necessity - after all, if we don't test to destruction, how do we know that the things we design won't fail in a dangerous fashion, or if they are over engineered?
Today I got to look over - and climb on - the 60 foot tall, several million pound, test rig that will be used to break the 787. Or, rather, to ensure that the airplane won't break under conditions it is supposed to survive.
There are a number of engineers who've been working towards this series of tests - still months away - for years. Breaking a commercial airplane is probably the ultimate in test engineer coolness, and I must admit that I'd be quite happy to work for half a decade in order to sit in their control room (a lexan-protected trailer several stories off the ground inside the main factory; a building on a building inside another building) for that test sequence.
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