13 thoughts on “Lessons Of The Titanic”

  1. Surprised they didn’t mention Fukushima in the “leaders failing to plan for the worst” section.

  2. I’m reading this while sitting in an aluminum tube, with 140 other people, at 38,000 feet, while outside the -60F wind blows by at 500 mph, and a pair of 20,000 horsepower engines spin at 30,000 rpm just a few feet away from huge tanks of kerosene with explosive vapor/air ullages…

    What could possibly go wrong?

    1. And yet this happens millions of times each year without incident. One possible factor is the old aviation saying (and aviaiton is full of pithy sayings), “The pilot is always the first to arrive at the scene of an accident.”

      As commercial aviation proves, an incredible level of safety is possible. However, some of the factors mentioned in the article can ruin even the best safety record. Complacency is dangerous, but at least as dangerous is the demands of bean counters and managers to increase the operational tempo over the objections of the engineers and operators. As the cruise ship accident this year showed, no amount of automation is likely to overcome the stupidity of a showoff.

      1. You beat me to the punch.

        I was going to cite commercial aviation as well as military planes, ships and wheeled vehicles.

        Given the number of hours, days, weeks, vehicle miles and nautical miles driven, flown and sailed, it would seem that constant training, retraining, following check lists, for everything but wiping your butt, seems to remove the kind of ‘accidents’ listed in the article.

        Accidents do happen. But generally they occur when training has broken down over time, or it gets ignored completely. Or accidents crop up when something new is tried without a proper procedure being implemented.

        And they happen especially when some goofball in charge starts showboating for, VIPs, family, friends or a cute chick in a tight skirt.

        1. I wonder how you say, “Hey ya’ll, watch this!” in Italian. Those 4 words, along with “Here, hold my beer.” are some of the most common last words ever.

        2. “…. following check lists, for everything but wiping your butt…”

          Maybe not a checklist, but there’s bound to be an app…

  3. Let me ask a dumb question.

    My understanding is that the Saturn V F-1 engines of each flight stage were operated on a test stand — what is now known as the Stennis facility at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and that the same kind of thing is done with the SSME’s before each Shuttle launch?

    Now you can’t “run in” and SRB — once it is lit, it is lit and then you have to reload the thing with propellant segments. But don’t they test SRBs out in Utah someplace under the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains? And if they do, did anyone ever do any experiments to weaken the seals to let some combustion gas out and see what happens?

    I always thought the whole aerospace enterprise is based on testing and retesting, and if O-rings were a concern, why didn’t they try out some corner conditions out on the test stand?

    1. The thing about testing is there really is no limit to the tests you can perform. At some point you just have to go with what you’ve got.

      It’s not the testing that keeps you safe. It’s people. Like listening to the engineers that said the O-rings don’t seal at low temps and it may be unsafe.

    2. The Shuttle SRBs were big and very powerful. Unlike the liquid fueled F-1 and SSME engines, the SRBs were tested horizontally. I don’t know how well that reflected the flight environment or how easily they could’ve done things like flexing the joints to see if the seals leaked. Some things are hard to test.

      1. Very true. But they’d already seen blowby in earlier flights. This is why it ultimately comes down to people and why you don’t want an institutional structure where nobody is ultimately responsible.

    1. The premise can be taken to a logical (and fatal) conclusion. In the aftermath of the Titanic sinking, Congress required that all US-registered passenger vessels would be required to carry lifeboats for all aboard. There would be no grandfather-clause exceptions – “Lives are at stake!”

      The owners of the S.S. Eastland (Lake Michigan ferry, built 1903) protested the new regulations in court, and lost. The issue with the Eastland wasn’t one of price (though the number of new lifeboats was, shall we say, “non-negligible”), it was stability. Her owners were afraid that the Great Lakes steamer would capsize due to the additional weight of so many more lifeboats, placed high above the waterline.

      Sadly, the owners were right, and S.S. Eastland capsized in good weather at her Chicago pier in 1915, with a loss of over 800 passengers and crew. The legislators and jurists involved with the new regs were never brought up on charges, but the blood of the victims remains on their “expert” hands every bit as much as those of her original designers.

      Interestingly, Eastland was later raised, renamed, rebuilt, and used as a training vessel by the USN in WW2. I’ve looked, but I can’t see any listing as to whether the rebuilt ship had enough lifeboats for all aboard – but where before the key phrase was “Lives are at stake,” the phrase in her late career was “There’s a war on, you know.” Sometimes its good to be the king.

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