The flight test program's role in the development lifecycle, flight test instrumentation, the incremental build-up methodology behind envelope expansion, and flight test safety and risk management.
Every calculation, wind-tunnel result, and simulation covered earlier in this program is a prediction. Flight testing is where that prediction either becomes a verified fact the aircraft can be certified against, or gets overturned by what the real vehicle actually does — which is why this module works through flight test instrumentation, the disciplined build-up approach behind envelope expansion, and the hazard analysis and abort-criteria discipline that keeps deliberately exploring the edges of the known flight envelope as controlled and bounded as possible.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why flutter test points are approached in small increments with real-time damping-trend analysis rather than tested directly at maximum design speed, and why development flight testing is deliberately sequenced to resolve every open question before certification flight testing begins — the same incremental-verification mindset this program's maintenance module (Module 16) applies to a fleet's entire operational life instead of a single test program.