Daniel Dyck (2019) uses his Mechanical Engineering degree at Blue Origin in Washington State, mainly designing and building valves. He got hooked on rocketry at Embry-Riddle and fondly remembers his capstone team building a brand-new test facility for their project, on top of all their other design and rocket-building work. In his current work, documentation is the most important kind of writing he's involved in; keeping track of what's been done and why is invaluable. Daniel shares that big technical reports are also important, but less common. Much more often, he needs to communicate about technical incidents or progress in clear, specific language that non-experts can understand.
Daniel's advice for current eagles: you'll have a lot of freedom after graduation, so be prepared to chart your own course.
Episode Transcript
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Abby:
All right, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of What's the Word? I'm your host, Abby, and today we have a very special guest for you. Today we're joined with Daniel Dyck and Daniel, why don't you give us a little bit of background about yourself?
Daniel:
So yep, I attended all four years at Embry Riddle, Prescott originally started out in aerospace engineering because I had a little bit of an aviation background, but at the college, got hooked on rocketry. I got went to my first rocket launch, and then sort of realized that, at least at the time the way riddle was structured, it made more sense to go into mechanical engineering propulsion track. So switched to that. Did a lot of rocket stuff in college, and now I am here working for Blue Origin. Worked both in the West Texas location and currently here in Kent, Washington, Texas, I was doing engine testing of our four rocket engine, which is a half million pound throughs engine. And now I'm doing valve design for it up here in Kent, which is near to where I grew up. So full circle. And, yeah, been here for five years now, so I think graduated from college in like 2019,
Abby:
Awesome. That sounds very exciting. And now circling back to your time at riddle, do you have a favorite memory you'd like to share?
Daniel:
Lots of fond memories, mostly rocket related. One the people, the people there were great, especially non rocket stuff, rock climbing and other things like that. But I think the out of the rocket projects. The favorite memory is from senior year capstone project. We realized that we needed a permanent test facility to do liquid rocket engine testing. So, my capstone built the test facility that's now down near the RC airfield. And so, we got the whole conics box, did all the fundraising. And then same time, we also designed 1000 pound thrust rocket engine. So, I say the favorite memory was, not only did we get the comics box, but from the day that arrived to the day we hot fired, it was, yeah, 90 days between the day we the conics box arrived in the day we hot fired, which was pretty cool, especially since that was the first liquid rocket engine successfully hot fired at riddle. So yeah, that's my favorite, favorite memory.
Abby:
Wow. That is such a great memory. Very cool that you get to be the first one to do that, and also that you were able to tie in what you're doing now with your time at Riddle and get the engine working. And now switching back to your current job. What does a typical day look like?
Daniel:
It can vary day to day, roll to roll. I previously, I guess, yeah, at a high level for valves, just in general, there's the show not being on the computer, the email and the PowerPoints. There's the CAD work. So actually doing design work and in our CAD software and doing math and spreadsheets and Python and stuff, or, I think, something specific to valve design, at least at Blue Origin, is that there's also a lot of component level testing, rather than, you know, designing some giant nozzle or a turbo pump where you don't really get it tested until you put it on the engine with valves. You can test it at a component level, which is nice because it means instead of just like, you know, sitting at your desk all day looking at a screen, I can, you know, turn wrenches and go cycle the valve I designed and do testing on it. So, there's a bit of that too, but I'm now sort of transitioning a bit away from the test side of things and getting into some new and exciting design projects. So, yeah, that's a high level awesome.
Abby:
Very cool. And now I'm assuming that math plays a huge role in your work?
Daniel:
There is some math, probably less than our math professors would like us to think, but there is math, yeah.
Abby:
Okay, and is there a healthy balance of writing in there as well?
Daniel:
Yes, I think one of those important ones is actually documenting what you do. And this isn't necessarily really like a style of writing, but more of just like when you're doing a project and you're designing something and testing something, like, actually write down, you know, why did you design this thing the way you did? And like, oh, the test results. What did the test setup look like? Take photos beforehand and then capture the results and write it somewhere. Just because it's honestly, I think, the most frustrating thing in industry, and it happens over and it happens over and over again, is trying to pick up where someone left off, and just like, wondering why they did what they did. And just like, yeah, having poor documentation, I think that that generally plagues, I think, the entire engineering industry, from a writing sense. So, I'd say the next most important type of writing is, yeah, there's communicating technical information. And then there's two subsets. There's the like, technical report writing, which is, I would say, what riddle kind of maybe teaches well, where you know you're writing this big, long rapport with lots of technical detail. And this is more just to capture a thorough assessment of something kind of like a capstone tech reporting, like the final report, but that doesn't actually happen super frequently, maybe at the end of a big test campaign or something. You write a report like once every couple of years. So it's not, I would say that it's not the main thing in terms of what happens a lot more frequently and maybe is taught less at riddle, and is kind of an acquired skill is communicating technical information, usually when there's some sort of issue, to higher ups, whether they are just management or even a chief engineer who has a technical background, but maybe not the day to day, and so knowing what information to present and what not to present, and how to phrase it and not to and like how to make a good PowerPoint. So, information, instead of just a bunch of bullets and having pictures and highlights and boom boxes and stuff like that. I remember when I was in capstone in PDR, I there was, we had a professor, Dr Fabian, who no longer works at riddle, but one of the best. And one of the things that I really appreciate, and I still or I appreciate it even more every day here at work, is the fact that saying more is usually saying less is usually more. Like it's easy to ramble in a presentation, start just giving more and more detail. And I think the quote he uses like, the more rope you give, the more rope to hang yourself with. Like, the more things you say, the easier it is for somebody to just latch on and start grilling you on something, whether you misspoke incorrectly, or if it's just a rabbit hole or it makes them think about something. So, yeah, I'd say those, it's thoroughly documented everything that's more of just like a habit slash skill. There's technical report writing, which I think real teaches well, but not as common. And then there's the kind of the middle ground of, how do you actually communicate technical information in a short period of time to like, upper management.
Abby:
Right, right? Awesome. And so, with that being short, sweet to the point, kind of thing, have you noticed that your word choice becomes more of something?
Daniel:
You think about word choice, especially when describing failures in communicating uphill. You want to be to higher ups, to or to a broad audience, or to customers you like. Need to be very specific about your word choice. You don't want to miscommunicate something or make something seem worse than it actually is. And then I'd say with engineering specifically, you also want to it's almost not less word choice, word choice, but number choice of you don't want to say there was a large improvement or a reduction in something. You want to say, Okay, well, What? What? How much did it? Something actually change. Well, it's leaking 30% more or 300% more, or actually being specific with what you're trying to say, not just using the generic word to describe it.
Abby:
Right, right? So not beat around the bush and get straight to the point let the reader know. And so that leads me right into my final question for you today. Do you have any advice that you'd like to give to our current eagles?
Daniel:
I think one thing to mentally prepare for after graduating is that in college, life is very straightforward, per se. And you're on like a railroad track where you can only go two directions, kind of forward and back. And if you just work harder, shovel more coal and make progress, you'll it's clear the goal like, get good grades, graduate internships, that sort of thing. But after graduating, all of those railroads go away, and you're more of on a sailboat or a boat where you're like, you can drift, and you have to pick your direction, stuff like that. So, it can be those first couple years after graduating are kind of can be kind of scary in that sense of, like, what, what am I doing? But I would just encourage people to find their own direction, make their own path, because we all feel that way, and I'll have to do that. Maybe it'll be easier if you see it coming, that sort of thing.
Abby:
Right, right, that way you can kind of mentally prepare for it. Yep, perfect. And that is great advice. Thank you so much, Daniel, and thank you for being on with us this week. We really appreciate it.
Daniel:
My pleasure.
Abby:
And that wraps up this week's episode of What's the Qord. We want to give another big thank you to Daniel for being on with us this week. We really appreciate it, and we want to give a big thank you to our viewers. We really hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're new to our channel, you can find us on Spotify, YouTube or Apple Podcasts and stay tuned for more.
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Amelia:
This podcast is supported by the Department of Humanities and Communication at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona. Our hosts are Abigail Bradberry and Owen Smith. Matthew Haslam is the Department Chair, and I'm Amelia Chesley, Assistant Professor of Professional Writing. Many thanks to the Prescott campus Writing and Design Lab for hosting our transcripts. The intro and outro music is Wanderer by Alyex. You can find us where most podcasts are found, and please do reach out if you are a Prescott campus alumnus, we'd love to feature you in a future episode.
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