Amidst huge entitlement programs, paying farmers not to grow food, pork and boondoggles, the nation's transportation infrastructure has been badly neglected, and is quite brittle. It also makes one wonder how many other ticking time bombs there are out there.

This applies to space transportation as well. A category three hurricane could wipe out NASA's manned space program. On some days, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing. It would force them to do something different, and break us out of the rut we've been in since Apollo.

Of course, there's a big difference. The highway infrastructure was a huge improvement over the past, offering affordable mobility to hundreds of millions of Americans, with a great deal of redundancy and resiliency. The space transportation infrastructure has never been affordable to anyone but the government, or able to support more than a few dozen people in orbit per year, and it's always been quite fragile, with no backups. Until we address this issue, we'll never be a spacefaring nation, or accomplish the things there that many of use want. But all that NASA offers is more of the same.

Glad to see you're waiting for all the facts to come in before making a judgement. Why wait for all the bodies to be recovered before rendering judgement?

Classy.

Huh?

Ignore him/her, Rand. You did nothing wrong. Good analogy, there. I'd love to see space travel grow to where we become that 'spacefaring nation' you mentioned.

But with this society of government dependence, quotas and lack of vision and dreams, we may never see it.

Sad, isn't it, when we think of the men with vision and determination that got us to the moon a few decades ago...

The Minnesota bridge failure is not an isolated incident -- the facts about the large number of superannuated civil engineering infrastructure projects have been there for anyone to see for a long time. The bridge failure will have had a beneficial side effect if it forces people to realize this and do something about it.

While Congress has been appropriating funds for bridges to nowhere, the bridges to somewhere have been getting older and older. And if the system is so deadlocked that gas tax money can't be spent where it was supposed to haev been spent, then we should support the replacements and repairs by tolls.

The facts are in, whatever the cause of this particular event. Over 150,000 bridges nationwide are in a state of serious disrepair. At least one cause of this is that the loading on the bridges is significantly higher than that designed for. Blame our government subsidized trucking industry and SUV obsession for that. Sure would be nice if the trucking industry had to pay more than a pittance for its use of highways. And blame those who would rather have a bridge fail than allow a gubmint tax hike, whatever the reason, whether fixing bridges or otherwise.

Well, heck, Offside, while we are at it...

Why not blame Davis-Bacon for making these projects more expensive?

Why not blame the twits who babble about "public" = "free for everyone to use"?

SUV's aren't the problem -- their axle loading is small compared to cargo trucks. Don't like truck / trailer transport? You would have loved the days when rail barons, and later, rail unions, could screw over the masses with their insatiable lust for power and money. Why do you think trucking of goods got such public and Congressional support?

That's the nice thing about ignorance of history. Anything looks good, if seen for the first time.

And blame those who would rather have a bridge fail than allow a gubmint tax hike, whatever the reason, whether fixing bridges or otherwise.

Because, god knows, government revenues are far too small to even consider repairing bridges.

[/sarcasm]

The facts are in, whatever the cause of this particular event.

Don't be a pompous ass, and don't confuse hindsight for wisdom.

No politician routinely votes against legislation for fixing up bridges that he knows are falling down, or levees due to break in the next serious storm. Indeed, enormous amounts of money are spent on public transportation in the US, in particular the Federal highway system. Roughly 20 cents of the price of each gallon of gas, for example, and that adds up a bucket of billions. Have you ever driven 100 miles of Interstate anywhere and not come across even one construction zone?

The problem, Sherlock, is that the bridges that need fixing are often only identifiable by the wreckage when they fall down. Sure, it's easy to see that a bridge is old, got cracks in its concrete, got rust on its pillars, and so forth, and that's the basis under which half the nation's bridges are classified as "needing attention." But we also know that almost all of those bridges work just fine, and will continue to work fine, for decades. Of those that might not, some need minor work, some major work, and some need outright replacement. But which ones need what and how soon?

You imagine materials science and structural engineering are a lot more advanced than it is. That a team of five experts can make a quick, half-day, $100,000 inspection of a bridge which probably sports over ten thousand critical joints and components, and know for a fact that this 40-year-old span is about to fall down, but that one will stand another 10 years. Not the case, not by a long shot, probably not within our lifetimes. We just do not know enough about materials and their decay over the course of decades, and we are not that good at failure analysis for complex systems. That's why rockets still explode, planes still crash, and your home computer needs updates to its software every ten minutes (roughly). Maybe bridges seem like uncomplicated things, mere sticks of wood across a stream, but they're not.

And if you want to know the cost of just being super careful and replacing anything that even hints of being dodgy -- why, just take a look at the cost of sending the Space Shuttle into orbit. I know Rand is fond of talking about the economies of scale and all that, and NASA's incompetence, but I think it likely part of the reason for the massive cost is the commitment to take zero chances with any component that looks iffy. That's how you get $500 hammers.

The last highway bridge to fall down was the Mianus River I-95 bridge in 1983, and that was followed by the same outcry and determination to plumb to the depth the evil corruption on high that led to this tragic neglect. It was just as stupid and futile then as it will be now.

News flash: engineers generally do their best to build good bridges, and give good advice about their limitations. No sane politician risks having bridges fall down and moppet-filled minivans plunging 60 feet to a tangle of twisted steel, and they do their best to avoid it. Generally speaking, both classes of professionals probably do about as good a job as you do in your career.

Maybe at this point, before any remarkable facts have come to light, it's most reasonable to not break out the beakers of paranoia juice and search for conspiracies and corruptions on high, but just realize that even in modern life we still suffer from that ancient scourge: bad luck.

Sorry about the rant, folks. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled program of finger-pointin' and second-guessin'...

Good point Carl.

What about all the bridges that haven't collapsed?

What is the real risk dying on a collapsing bridge?

What about all the bridges that haven't collapsed?

Yes, what about them?

You imagine materials science and structural engineering are a lot more advanced than it is.

No, the methods of probing structures non-destructively for flaws, fissures, cracks, material changes, are much more advanced than you suggest.

In addition, your analogy to a plane crash is silly. Maybe when the bridge is fully automated with zillions of sensors and actuators and AI. Not right now though when all it needs to do is sit tight and be stressed.

Carl,

You forgot the I-40 Bridge in Oklahoma, May 27, 2002. It was I believe the last major Interstate bridge to fail.

No, the methods of probing structures non-destructively for flaws, fissures, cracks, material changes, are much more advanced than you suggest.

Yeah? So why did the 2001 report from the University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies, using fancy strain gauges and all, specifically conclude that the bridge should not have any problems with fatigue cracks in the foreseeable future, and did not need to be replaced or get major repair?

Maybe the UM's engineering department isn't up to speed on the latest techniques? Better e-mail them, they could use your expertise.

Not right now though when all it needs to do is sit tight and be stressed.

Yeedge. Go take some mechanical engineering classes and learn how complex a system a bridge is, even though it "just" sits there and gets stressed. Complexity is not merely a monotonic function of the number of moving parts, or of the velocity of the system's center of mass.

You forgot the I-40 Bridge in Oklahoma, May 27, 2002

Yup, thanks.