Testing suite has too many dependencies on containerized services

[maffettone]

Expected Behavior

Only a few tests should focus on the communications. Other tests should only be testing functionality in isolation where possible.

Current Behavior

Many tests are marked as skipped if communication times out, and recently have been producing sporadic segmentation faults.
The tests were originally designed in lieu of tutorials/examples; they should be less holistic with only a few depending on the Bluesky-pod.

Possible Solution

A kafka mockup for testing.

Steps to Reproduce (for bugs)

Context

Your Environment