As an example, I love the Martian, and I think a lot of older books from authors like Asimov are heavily into engineering / competence porn. Other favs in this category include the standalone novel Rendezvous with Rama to leave you wishing for more, most of the Culture series for happy utopian vibes, Schlock Mercenary for humor, Dahak series for fun mindless popcorn.
Edit: I’m so happy to have found a replacement for r/books and the rest of them.
Oh yes, I love the Expanse. For some reason it doesn’t quite strike me as engineering / competence porn though, maybe because there’s a big focus on the human side.
Yeah it’s most definitely a space opera. There’s so much good science in there though.