Yeah - the "parts" for the test rig were still the the parking lot behind the lab. Another fun test - how do you test the valves designed to shut parts of the "primary loop" in a Nuke plant in case of a LOC accident. In that case, you would have something like a 12" pipe with water flowing through it a HUGE velocities, and the valve has to close in I forgot how many milliseconds

similar setup - big horizontal pipe with valve in the middle, a pair of "burst disks" (flat plates designed to break when under a certain pressue) downstream of the valve, a big water tank (with VERY thick walls) and the truck full of HP nitrogen again - fill pipe and tank with water, and apply high pressure nitrogen on top of the water. When the burst disk breaks (with thousands of PSI of pressure on top of the water), the water tends to flow 'rather quickly', and cuts off abruptly, as the valve slams shut. Quite a water hammer on the system, and the slug of water tends to do a LOT of damage "down range". That test was done in the Long Island Pine barrens - ripped up a LOT of scrub pine. (back when few people lived out past Coram). Now you could not do that test out there - area is all built up. You also have to worry about little things like "what happens if something breaks...."

Environmental test was probably the most interesting field I ever worked in. They give you an object to test, and a "test spec", and you had to design the mechanical, electrical, and software system to not only do the test, but prove you did, and see if the object passed or failed.

The one kind of testing I always wanted to do was "Naval Hevay weight shock", but the company I worked for didn't build anything that needed more than ""Middle weight shock", which was impressive enough. In heavy weight shock (only done by like 2 test labs in the world) your item is strapped to a barge (of a certain design) and they start setting off what are basically depth charges closer and closer to the barge. Your item does NOT have to keep working - the test is to make sure that parts of your item don't break off and go flying around. Seems that during WWII, they found out that more sailors were killed by parts flying off of gear, often 100s of ft from where an explosion was, than actually the explosion