PAMNO (N2EY) wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:


The fundamental problem was that they were going too fast for the conditions.
That's an operational mistake, not an engineering mistake.

No, it was first and foremost an engineering screwup, if the rudder
had been properly sized the ship would have turned harder/quicker at
any speed and would have missed the iceberg. Particularly since the
collision was only a sideswipe.

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

Other ships of that era with properly designed rudders would have
turned away from the berg and missed it with room to spare.

Perhaps if the rudder had been larger, the Titanic might have turned away
quicker and missed the berg. But that's really irrelevant.
The ship was clearly
going too fast for conditions.

There's no "might have beens" about it. Unless you can explain why a
larger rudder wouldn't have turned the Titanic quicker so that it
missed the berg.

Simple. In a ship like Titanic, putting the rudder over isn't like steering the
front wheels of a car. In landlubber terms . . .

Save it for the landlubbers.

massive snip

By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .

Now answer my question and thankew.

73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:


The fundamental problem was that they were going too fast for the
conditions.
That's an operational mistake, not an engineering mistake.

No, it was first and foremost an engineering screwup, if the rudder
had been properly sized the ship would have turned harder/quicker at
any speed and would have missed the iceberg. Particularly since the
collision was only a sideswipe.

*Maybe* Murdock had to reverse rudder so the stern wouldn't hit the berg too.

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Other ships of that era with properly designed rudders would have
turned away from the berg and missed it with room to spare.

Perhaps if the rudder had been larger, the Titanic might have turned
away
quicker and missed the berg. But that's really irrelevant.
The ship was clearly
going too fast for conditions.

There's no "might have beens" about it. Unless you can explain why a
larger rudder wouldn't have turned the Titanic quicker so that it
missed the berg.

Simple. In a ship like Titanic, putting the rudder over isn't like steering
the front wheels of a car. In landlubber terms . . .

Save it for the landlubbers.

massive snip

You've snipped the part where I prove my points, of course.

By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .

Big deal. Were you driving the things? Did they do the tests with a hull,
rudder and propulsion system identical to Titanic's? Didn't think so.

Titanic and sisters were primarily designed to be liners, not military ships.
Sister Olympic not only evaded a torpedo attack in WW1, but chased down, rammed
and sank the attacking submarine. Kinda says something about rudder size and
manueverability...

Now answer my question and thankew.

Simple:

Suppose you're driving a car in conditions where your range of vision is 200
feet. And suppose it takes that car 10 feet to stop for every 10 mph of speed.


How fast do you drive the car under those conditions? If you go 50 mph and hit
something, is that an engineering screwup? Or is it a simple case of going too
fast for conditions?

I say it's simply going too fast. Better brakes, better headlights, etc., might
permit higher safe speeds, but if they're not in use, it's fundamentally the
driver's responsibility to operate at a speed safe for the conditions
encountered.

73 de Jim, N2EY

Subject: Designed And Built By PROFESSIONALS....
From: PAMNO (N2EY)
Date: 10/22/2004 5:54 AM Central Standard Time
Message-id:

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...
In article ,

(Brian Kelly) writes:

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Nor did the engineers ever conceptualize someone WANTING to fly into them
in such a way as to cause thier demise.

It's happened and it's fact, but I still can't imagine sitting in that
cockpit and intentionally doing that...

73

Steve, K4YZ

N2EY wrote:
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:


(N2EY) wrote in message
...

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:


The fundamental problem was that they were going too fast for the
conditions.
That's an operational mistake, not an engineering mistake.

No, it was first and foremost an engineering screwup, if the rudder
had been properly sized the ship would have turned harder/quicker at
any speed and would have missed the iceberg. Particularly since the
collision was only a sideswipe.


*Maybe* Murdock had to reverse rudder so the stern wouldn't hit the berg too.

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.


So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Other ships of that era with properly designed rudders would have
turned away from the berg and missed it with room to spare.

Perhaps if the rudder had been larger, the Titanic might have turned
away
quicker and missed the berg. But that's really irrelevant.
The ship was clearly
going too fast for conditions.

There's no "might have beens" about it. Unless you can explain why a
larger rudder wouldn't have turned the Titanic quicker so that it
missed the berg.

Simple. In a ship like Titanic, putting the rudder over isn't like steering
the front wheels of a car. In landlubber terms . . .

Save it for the landlubbers.

massive snip


You've snipped the part where I prove my points, of course.

Hey kids! Trying to blame the loss of the Titanic on the rudder, while
certainly an interesting point, is only one point. The rudder was what
the rudder was. It functioned as well as it could, which was no well
enough. That is a different matter.

If I roll down the street in a loaded 18 wheeler at 100 plus miles per
hour, and try to stop within 300 feet - it will not happen. The brakes
are simply not up to the task. Does this mean that the brakes are poorly
designed or defective? Not even. I was operating my 18 wheeler way
outside it's design parameters.

Did the pilot and Captain not know the handling characteristics of the
ship? They should have.

Frankly that BBC story smacked of the "Everything you think you know is
wrong" sort of tale. The guy that was the hero is actually the coward,
and the guy they called the coward was actually the hero, blah, blah,
blah....

If the Titanic had not been simply scaled up from smaller designs, it
probably would have been a better ship. If the metal was better, it
would have probably not suffered the extent of damage, If the ships
compartments not been *open at the top*, it wouldn't have had a
cascading effect of water going over the top of one compartment, then
starting to flood the next compartment, tilting the ship more, and
exacerbating the problem until the water filled all the compartments and
it sunk. Watertight doors at the bottom meant nothing when the water
just went over the top.

Odd that in all the arguments, that one is overlooked. I would
postulate that the number one reason that the Titanic sunk at all is
that the compartments had the open top design. Were they sealed, the
Ship would probably just taken on a major list, and ridden low in the
water. But almost all the people would have survived.



By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .


Big deal. Were you driving the things? Did they do the tests with a hull,
rudder and propulsion system identical to Titanic's? Didn't think so.

Sounds like fun as long as it is a drill! ;^)


Titanic and sisters were primarily designed to be liners, not military ships.
Sister Olympic not only evaded a torpedo attack in WW1, but chased down, rammed
and sank the attacking submarine. Kinda says something about rudder size and
manueverability...

Now answer my question and thankew.


Simple:

Suppose you're driving a car in conditions where your range of vision is 200
feet. And suppose it takes that car 10 feet to stop for every 10 mph of speed.


How fast do you drive the car under those conditions? If you go 50 mph and hit
something, is that an engineering screwup? Or is it a simple case of going too
fast for conditions?

I say it's simply going too fast. Better brakes, better headlights, etc., might
permit higher safe speeds, but if they're not in use, it's fundamentally the
driver's responsibility to operate at a speed safe for the conditions
encountered.


HAR! I didn't read the whole letter before replying, and see that you
used a similar example!

The rudder was sufficient to maneuver the ship at a certain rate at a
certain speed. Was the Titanic not very maneuverable? Possibly. Is an 18
wheeler as maneuverable as a 'Vette? Not hardly. But if the 18 wheeler
tries to head down a winding mountain road at the same speeds the "Vette
can, and it crashes, it isn't the designer's fault.

- mike KB3EIA -

Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote:
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

(N2EY) wrote in message
...

In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:

The fundamental problem was that they were going too fast for the
conditions.
That's an operational mistake, not an engineering mistake.

No, it was first and foremost an engineering screwup, if the rudder
had been properly sized the ship would have turned harder/quicker at
any speed and would have missed the iceberg. Particularly since the
collision was only a sideswipe.

*Maybe* Murdock had to reverse rudder so the stern wouldn't hit the berg
too.

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Other ships of that era with properly designed rudders would have
turned away from the berg and missed it with room to spare.

Perhaps if the rudder had been larger, the Titanic might have turned
away
quicker and missed the berg. But that's really irrelevant.
The ship was clearly
going too fast for conditions.

There's no "might have beens" about it. Unless you can explain why a
larger rudder wouldn't have turned the Titanic quicker so that it
missed the berg.

Simple. In a ship like Titanic, putting the rudder over isn't like steering
the front wheels of a car. In landlubber terms . . .

Save it for the landlubbers.

massive snip

You've snipped the part where I prove my points, of course.

Hey kids! Trying to blame the loss of the Titanic on the rudder, while
certainly an interesting point, is only one point. The rudder was what
the rudder was. It functioned as well as it could, which was no well
enough. That is a different matter.

Yep.

If I roll down the street in a loaded 18 wheeler at 100 plus miles per
hour, and try to stop within 300 feet - it will not happen. The brakes
are simply not up to the task. Does this mean that the brakes are poorly
designed or defective? Not even. I was operating my 18 wheeler way
outside it's design parameters.

Which does not mean there's anything wrong with your 18 wheeler,
either, except for the loose nut holding the steering wheel....;-).

Did the pilot and Captain not know the handling characteristics of the
ship? They should have.

There was no pilot.

Most of the officers were transferred as a unit from Olympic, which
was Titanic's older and slightly shorter sister. Captain Smith was
Olympic's captain before Titanic, and was certainly familiar with her
characteristics. He was routinely assigned to the newest White Star
ships to essentially "write the book" on them.

In fact, Smith was the senior captain of the whole White Star line,
and was supposed to retire before April 1912. He was persuaded by
Ismay to do just one more round trip, closing out his career with the
first voyage of Titanic.

Frankly that BBC story smacked of the "Everything you think you know is
wrong" sort of tale. The guy that was the hero is actually the coward,
and the guy they called the coward was actually the hero, blah, blah,
blah....

Some new data has come to light since the wreck was found. For
example, it was not known with certainty before that the ship broke in
two. The brittleness of the steel, particularly the rivets, was
documented from actual samples.

If the Titanic had not been simply scaled up from smaller designs, it
probably would have been a better ship.

OTOH, tried-and-proven methods are not abandoned lightly.

If the metal was better, it
would have probably not suffered the extent of damage, If the ships
compartments not been *open at the top*, it wouldn't have had a
cascading effect of water going over the top of one compartment, then
starting to flood the next compartment, tilting the ship more, and
exacerbating the problem until the water filled all the compartments and
it sunk. Watertight doors at the bottom meant nothing when the water
just went over the top.

Yep.

Odd that in all the arguments, that one is overlooked.

No, it isn't. See below.

I would
postulate that the number one reason that the Titanic sunk at all is
that the compartments had the open top design. Were they sealed, the
Ship would probably just taken on a major list, and ridden low in the
water. But almost all the people would have survived.

A "sealed top" design would be impractical - and completely
unnecessary. It was known soon after the disaster that if the
watertight bulkheads (transverse walls between compartments) were just
*one deck* higher, the overflow would not have occurred. But the
bulkheads did not go one deck higher.

By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .

Big deal. Were you driving the things? Did they do the tests with a hull,
rudder and propulsion system identical to Titanic's? Didn't think so.

Sounds like fun as long as it is a drill! ;^)

Sure!

Titanic and sisters were primarily designed to be liners, not military ships.
Sister Olympic not only evaded a torpedo attack in WW1, but chased down, rammed
and sank the attacking submarine. Kinda says something about rudder size and
manueverability...

Now answer my question and thankew.

Simple:

Suppose you're driving a car in conditions where your range of vision is 200
feet. And suppose it takes that car 10 feet to stop for every 10 mph of speed.


How fast do you drive the car under those conditions? If you go 50 mph and hit
something, is that an engineering screwup? Or is it a simple case of going too
fast for conditions?

I say it's simply going too fast. Better brakes, better headlights, etc., might
permit higher safe speeds, but if they're not in use, it's fundamentally the
driver's responsibility to operate at a speed safe for the conditions
encountered.


HAR! I didn't read the whole letter before replying, and see that you
used a similar example!

It's exactly the same principle is why. They were outdriving their
vision, which is suicide in any mode of transport that depends on
seeing what's ahead.

The rudder was sufficient to maneuver the ship at a certain rate at a
certain speed. Was the Titanic not very maneuverable? Possibly. Is an 18
wheeler as maneuverable as a 'Vette? Not hardly. But if the 18 wheeler
tries to head down a winding mountain road at the same speeds the "Vette
can, and it crashes, it isn't the designer's fault.

Exactly!

The designer was aboard Titanic, and went down with her.

If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend the book and film "A Night
To Remember".

73 de Jim, N2EY

(N2EY) wrote in message om...
Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote:

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.

So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?

Comes up as a major screwup to me. We'll see how the pros call it.
Some of them claim that the architects screwed up when they failed to
factor in the prospect of fuel explosions in addition to the aircraft
impact loads. Apparently analyses are showing that if one or another
of the tower's steel stucture had been properly insulated it might
have not come down. There's a congressionally-mandated technical
report in the works which gets into the topic in depth which should be
released soon and is reported to pass out some spankings.


By the way, ya want the list of ships I've been on during sinuous
coursing anti-submarine drills at 30+ kts? Ever stand on the deck of a
ship which is bigger the Titanic doing multiple banked s-turns turns
at combat power speeds? There's some "rudder ops" which will get ya
yer sea legs real quick . . .

Big deal. Were you driving the things? Did they do the tests with a hull,
rudder and propulsion system identical to Titanic's? Didn't think so.

Well . . at least I'm more on topic than your biker and Amish buggy
thingey?


Sounds like fun as long as it is a drill! ;^)

Sure!

A few days into my first cruise on a carrier I was below in my
compartment when Mother Nature beckoned. A few steps down the
companionway and around the corner I'm in the head. Frigging water
dripping everywhere, the Navy's version of "cleaning the bathroom" is
to hose the entire space with a mix of hot water and steam, three
minutes and done. Thus it was when I parked myself on the throne.

I was deep into the usual set of contemplations one gets into in those
situations when a bunch of buzzers went off and a deep voice boomed
outta the PA system, "All hands prepare for . . ! ". Sinuous
something, didn't make any sense, I couldn't follow it.

Next thing I knew the whole space got tilted to some scary angle and I
slid right off the damned wet throne and landed bare-butt on the
damned wet deck. Was NOT fun, dammit . . . !


The rudder was sufficient to maneuver the ship at a certain rate at a
certain speed. Was the Titanic not very maneuverable? Possibly. Is an 18
wheeler as maneuverable as a 'Vette? Not hardly. But if the 18 wheeler
tries to head down a winding mountain road at the same speeds the "Vette
can, and it crashes, it isn't the designer's fault.

A few last comments: Note that at no point in this wifty sub-thread
have I disputed the fact that the Titanic was steaming too fast for
the conditions. Yes, it was running too fast which had nothing to do
with engineering good, bad or indifferent. The original topic (sort
of) was Titanic engineering screwups.

In the engineering sense I'll stick with my contention that it's
rudder was undersized vs. the design factors used to determine the
size of the rudders installed on other similar ships of the Titanic's
day. It's simply an indisputable matter of published numerical data.
It's blatantly obvious given the fact that the Titanic almost did
clear the berg that it would have missed it if the rudder had been
designed to the same standards as other state-of-the art ships. If
this wasn't the case the subject wouldn't even have come up 92 years
ago.

I might also add one more tidbit on my way outta this nonsense. As any
experienced power vessel helmsman knows rudder effectiveness drops
precipitously as the forward speed decreases ("Were you driving the
things?" Power vessels? Me? You bet! Have you?). This in *not* the
case with Corvettes and semi-rigs and such which are irrelevant no
counters in this discussion, they ain't floating objects.

I haven't seen the equations for years but I'm 90% sure that rudder
effectiveness drops as the *square* of the speed. Welcome to
Bernoulli's postulations. Brings up an interesting possibilty . . if
the Titanic had been drifting along nice and safely at only a couple
kt. the size of the rudder almost wouldn't have mattered, the thing
might have whacked the berg head on and everybody would have been
saved.

'Bye.


73 de Jim, N2EY

w3rv

"Brian Kelly" wrote

Some of them claim that the architects screwed up when they failed to
factor in the prospect of fuel explosions in addition to the aircraft
impact loads. Apparently analyses are showing that if one or another
of the tower's steel stucture had been properly insulated it might
have not come down. There's a congressionally-mandated technical
report in the works which gets into the topic in depth which should be
released soon and is reported to pass out some spankings.

Typical 'government out of control' bull****.

Instead of blaming the radical towel-heads who creamed the towers, lets
spank the engineers who designed it several decades earlier when the
idea of driving jet airliners into office buildings was unthinkable.
"Congressionally-mandated" is just another term for politicians pushing
the right buttons to get a few more seconds of visibility on the evening
news and having some impressive paperwork to wave at their constituents
on the campaign trail.

73, de Hans, K0HB

Brian Kelly wrote:
(N2EY) wrote in message om...

Mike Coslo wrote in message ...

N2EY wrote:



Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.



So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?


Comes up as a major screwup to me. We'll see how the pros call it.
Some of them claim that the architects screwed up when they failed to
factor in the prospect of fuel explosions in addition to the aircraft
impact loads. Apparently analyses are showing that if one or another
of the tower's steel stucture had been properly insulated it might
have not come down. There's a congressionally-mandated technical
report in the works which gets into the topic in depth which should be
released soon and is reported to pass out some spankings.

I was at a presentation made by the head of the engineering team that
investigated the Twin towers disaster. He said that too many people
aproached it from the wrong angle They ask why did the towers fall so
quickly. A better question would have been how did they stay up so long.

Engineers so often get tarred and feathered when this sort of thing
happens.

What we really need is for engineers to accomodate ALL possible
scenarios, both KNOWN and UNKNOWN. 8^)

- Mike KB3EIA -

Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
Brian Kelly wrote:
(N2EY) wrote in message om...

Mike Coslo wrote in message ...

N2EY wrote:

Titanic was "state of the art" for its time.

So were the World Trade Center towers which were designed to survive
if an airliner plowed into them. But the engineers who designed the
towers didn't factor in the fact that airliners are not just
structural impact loads, the carry fuel too. Oops.



So their collapse was fundamentally an engineering screwup?


Comes up as a major screwup to me. We'll see how the pros call it.
Some of them claim that the architects screwed up when they failed to
factor in the prospect of fuel explosions in addition to the aircraft
impact loads. Apparently analyses are showing that if one or another
of the tower's steel stucture had been properly insulated it might
have not come down. There's a congressionally-mandated technical
report in the works which gets into the topic in depth which should be
released soon and is reported to pass out some spankings.

I was at a presentation made by the head of the engineering team that
investigated the Twin towers disaster.

"The" engineering firm?? Do you have any idea just how *many*
engineering firms have been involved in the WTC disaster??

He said that too many people
aproached it from the wrong angle They ask why did the towers fall so
quickly. A better question would have been how did they stay up so long.

Engineers so often get tarred and feathered when this sort of thing
happens.

Been that way since the first well-known engineers built the pyramids,
comes with the turf.

What we really need is for engineers to accomodate ALL possible
scenarios, both KNOWN and UNKNOWN. 8^)

Not our yob, that's the kind of crap the physicists get paid to mess
with.


- Mike KB3EIA -

w3rv

Mike Coslo wrote in message ...
N2EY wrote:
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:


Odd that in all the arguments, that one is overlooked. I would
postulate that the number one reason that the Titanic sunk at all is
that the compartments had the open top design. Were they sealed, the
Ship would probably just taken on a major list, and ridden low in the
water. But almost all the people would have survived.

Boink! Good show Mike! Another engineering screwup.


- mike KB3EIA -

w3rv