Another Engineer warning turned down... and people dies.

[Zucca]

I can't stand this:

1986-01-28 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster

The Rogers Commission found NASA's organizational culture and decision-making processes had been key contributing factors to the accident, with the agency violating its own safety rules. NASA managers had known since 1977 that contractor Morton-Thiokol's design of the SRBs contained a potentially catastrophic flaw in the O-rings, but they had failed to address this problem properly. NASA managers also disregarded warnings from engineers about the dangers of launching posed by the low temperatures of that morning, and failed to adequately report these technical concerns to their superiors.

2003-02-01 Space Shuttle Columbia

... but some engineers suspected that the damage to Columbia was more serious.
NASA managers limited the investigation, reasoning that the crew could not have fixed the problem if it had been confirmed.

2018-08-14 Morandi Bridge collapse in Italy

Eng. Antonio Brencich warned in 2016 that the bridge project was faulty and had some design problems.


Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I am so sad. RIP to them.

[onesixright]

Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I am so sad. RIP to them.

Extremely sad. As always their priority are probably money, money and more money. A life has no value.

Unfortunately it will not be the last (hate to say it).

[Zero999]

Yes, this all comes down to money, very sad.

Correction: the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster was 2003-02-01.

[RandallMcRee]

Interesting that this is Italy. There seems to be some tension between the engineers and politicians?

These scientists were prosecuted and found guilty for being wrong about earthquake warnings:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/italian-scientists-get/

Later exonerated:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/11/italy-s-supreme-court-clears-l-aquila-earthquake-scientists-good

[james_s]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

[Mr. Scram]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

It's very rare to not be able to do anything at all. You possibly could alter the trajectory or try other things to lessen the stress in the damaged area.

[Gyro]

I thought there were possibilities discussed at the inquiry that they could have adjusted their re-entry 'angle' to reduce temperatures on the affected wing, at the expense of other surfaces - not saying that it would have worked...

[ciccio]

Too many bridges have collapsed in Italy in recent years, including one the was opened only 10 days before it collapsed.
The Genoa's bridge that collapsed to-day, with a more than 30 death toll, was opened in 1967: 50 years ago.
In it's life it had been subject of many maintenance works, maybe it was not well designed, but the problem is a money problem:
The bridge is part of a  privately managed highway (on State concession). You pay a toll for using this "autostrada", and every year the private owned Company ask for a toll increase, but the state approves it only if they have spent money in safety and maintence.
The trick is simple: they own the Companies that make the maintenance work, so they spend a lot of money from one pocket, and put it in the other pocket.. The State allows for the toll's increase, and people pays...
Was the work "state of the art"? It really does not matter.
I, like Zucca, I'm very sad.

[langwadt]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

It's very rare to not be able to do anything at all. You possibly could alter the trajectory or try other things to lessen the stress in the damaged area.

use the space station as a life raft and abandon the shuttle?

I seem to remember something about them adding remote control to the shuttle so that in the event of something similar they could park the astronauts at the space station and attempt to bring it down remotely




 

[Kjelt]

The problem is that there probably are a lot of warnings made where nothing happened or will happen.
The challenge is to sort/shift the real threats and dangers.
Every life lost is one too many though.

[donotdespisethesnake]

Guess what happened? Again?

How long this list should go?

I've thought about this a lot, and come to the conclusion that while people are around and doing stuff - building bridges, rockets etc, there will always be disasters.

It's all about the money.

Of course, money represents resources, and resources are finite. Our desires are infinite. The real problem is opportunity cost. Yes, we could spend $1 billion on every bridge to make it totally safe, but then there will be 10 other bridges we can't afford to build.

Given the underlying systemic factors, disasters are inevitable. Really, the only thing you can do is just get used to it.

It was a disaster that lead to evolution of intelligent apes; in many ways change depends on catastrophic events.

[BrianHG]

Not as bad, but I know a few people got their arms and hands crushed because of a TV lift I was contract to design which I quoted on, I warned of the problem and they even knew about the issue and came specifically to me for my expertise to design a safety solution.  They didn't want to pay me, they didn't want to add the 1$ of safety electronics on a 450$-750$ device, I even told them what to do if they didn't contract me because I wanted to look out for the small company, and guess what, exactly what they came to me to prevent happened in the field within a month or 2 of sales.  Now, they are out of the business and they faced a few law suits.

[glarsson]

I've thought about this a lot, and come to the conclusion that while people are around and doing stuff - building bridges, rockets etc, there will always be disasters.

There will be disasters even if we don't build things or fly rockets. The cave we live in might collapse, an earthquake, a  mud slide...

[james_s]

Hindsight always makes it easier to decide what we should have focused our efforts on too. It's easy to say after the fact that we should have done X, Y or Z, but given resources are limited it's impossible to fix everything that really ought to be fixed. Instead we have to make an educated guess prior to something happening.

[rdl]

I wonder if there were other close calls.

[CatalinaWOW]

After every disaster you will find many people pointing out that they had predicted the problem and were ignored.  In many cases they are correct.  In almost as many cases the predictions were made in ignorance, just habitual nay saying.  Those in decision making positions have the difficult task of deciding which Cassandras are fact based and worth listening to.  They need to do this because there are always a few who will predict disaster for any activity.  Listening to everyone would result in nothing happening.

My interpretation of the Challenger analysis is not that managers should listen and respond to every warning, but that they had shifted their balance too far towards ignoring all warnings.  They do need to listen to all warnings, evaluate credibility and respond appropriately.   

The Columbia case is more troubling.  They could have done an inspection flyby and ISS crew would have been able to report the extent of the damage.  Nothing has been reported about analysis of the possibility of returning to the ISS and sheltering after a negative report.  Perhaps someone did an analysis and determined that there wasn't enough life support to keep them going until another shuttle could be launched (which would have had the same risk of damage to the tiles).  Keeping them there until the problem was fixed was clearly impossible (it took many, many months as I remember).  Similar analysis might have shown that Soviet launch and return capability wasn't enough to get them down (could only get two at a time down without depending on the not so reliable automatic docking system so it is many trips).   

[langwadt]

Hindsight always makes it easier to decide what we should have focused our efforts on too. It's easy to say after the fact that we should have done X, Y or Z, but given resources are limited it's impossible to fix everything that really ought to be fixed. Instead we have to make an educated guess prior to something happening.

as they say in aviation, “regulations are written in blood.”

[chickenHeadKnob]

What a strange bridge design, Morandi used pre-stressed  concrete beams instead of cable stays. No wonder it required extra continuing maintenance.

[Kjelt]

My interpretation of the Challenger analysis is not that managers should listen and respond to every warning, but that they had shifted their balance too far towards ignoring all warnings.  They do need to listen to all warnings, evaluate credibility and respond appropriately.     

Been a long time ago but what I remember was that NASA could not afford any bad news or there would be bigger budget cuts.
The problem is always do we stop a mission in order to higher the safety and add to the running costs or do we let it go.
Spaceflight is a high risk venture, two shuttles lost on all those missions is how awfull it sounds not that bad. If you look how many normal unmanned rockets with satelites get scrapped halfway flight because something goes wrong...........

[TerraHertz]

I'm not sure I disagree with the decision regarding the Columbia disaster. If they couldn't have fixed the damage anyway, what good would it do investigating? If I'd been a member of the crew I think I'd rather not know ahead of time that my demise was highly likely, it would just make it even harder to focus on performing the tasks required to attempt a trip home.

The reason they could not have done anything about the wing damage, was that the penny-pinchers had decided that mission didn't need any space suits on board. Not even one. Whereas if they'd had a suit and even a small patch kit for damage to the thermal tiles, they'd have been able to fix it. The damage was quite small.


Here's someone else's rant about 'minimal safety factor engineering'. With photos at source http://82.221.129.208/.yg9.html but that isn't a permalink.

Freeway collapse in Italy
Time for a rant
I do not like minimally built structures. And that is exactly what the freeway that collapsed in Italy was. Though such designs will work if nothing goes wrong, all it takes to destroy them is for one contractor to cheat, or one error to be made. Why build like that? For perspective, each span is over 1,000 feet long.

Back in the good old days, before "highly educated" engineers worked all projects to look like "art" while building the thinnest "graceful" looking crap that could possibly do the job, roads were built that looked like this:

There's something to be said about the old school method, where things were made many times stronger than they needed to be, just to make sure it would last. And you can bet that when there's nothing but sand blowing in the wind, after this planet is abandoned thousands of years from now, THAT particular highway is still going to be there along with the pyramids. Why not? If it can be done, why not do it? It sure beats what just happened in Italy. And contrary to logic, the materials are so cheap that it is actually cheaper to over build rather than do the fancy crap, and you'll have tons of room for contractors to cheat and you'll still be OK.

One great example of a bridge that got cheated while being built to minimum specs for the sake of "art" is the Zakim / Viaduct bridge in Boston. It was noticed that the spans were really long between supports, and people wondered. But assurances kept coming, "don't worry, it is the latest design, it really is strong enough, the most advanced materials were used, blah blah, and then it was discovered that the contractor cheated the concrete. Then the word was "don't worry, it is fine anyway, and to prove it they marched a herd of elephants across it for the grand opening. That's right. A herd of elephants. Which, with a combined total, weighed less than one multiple axle dump truck loaded with granite. Though it won't happen often (for sure), that bridge is just waiting for the right traffic jam, where it is loaded with bumper to bumper dump trucks loaded with granite. Then what? Probably what happened in Italy. Look how long this span is. It goes all the way across the Charles river (and more) in one whack.

How about another look at this. Look how much those thin supports are holding, and despite the depth of field of this photo being compressed, those thin supports are on opposite sides of the very wide Charles River.

What's going to happen if a speeding semi truck loaded with 80,000 pounds of coiled steel hits one of those supports dead on? Stuff should be designed to handle that, because sh*t happens.

When I see thin and graceful construction, I don't say "wow, that's cool", I say, well, there are cars on it, and it did not fall for them so yeah, I'll go across it and hope. One such bridge I went across that failed later was the one in San Francisco that collapsed in the 1989 earthquake. I went across that on the bottom span and kept saying, "damn, those support columns are super thin, what were they thinking?" and they guy I was with said "that's the latest construction, they are thin but super strong and are made that way so they won't fall in an earthquake. WHAT HAPPENED? Remember that! the people claiming that was a high tech design were full of crap. I said there's no way that's going to make it through an earthquake and I was right. I was just glad to be off the thing. Only a few months later the earthquake happened and down it went.

Yes, it is amazing that a lot of that stuff works without a problem. But why do it when you don't have to?

[Jeroen3]

There is an entire wiki page with bridge failures.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

Not too long ago, a bridge (in progress) collapsed in Florida.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_International_University_pedestrian_bridge_collapse

[Nusa]

use the space station as a life raft and abandon the shuttle?

I seem to remember something about them adding remote control to the shuttle so that in the event of something similar they could park the astronauts at the space station and attempt to bring it down remotely

The Columbia case is more troubling.  They could have done an inspection flyby and ISS crew would have been able to report the extent of the damage.  Nothing has been reported about analysis of the possibility of returning to the ISS and sheltering after a negative report.  Perhaps someone did an analysis and determined that there wasn't enough life support to keep them going until another shuttle could be launched (which would have had the same risk of damage to the tiles).  Keeping them there until the problem was fixed was clearly impossible (it took many, many months as I remember).  Similar analysis might have shown that Soviet launch and return capability wasn't enough to get them down (could only get two at a time down without depending on the not so reliable automatic docking system so it is many trips).   

STS-107 was not an ISS mission, so it couldn't have returned there. It was a science mission in a lower orbit at a different inclination than the ISS. Going to the ISS was probably not an option fuel-wise, even if they wanted to.

Even if they could, the 2003 ISS was set up for the existing crew of 3. Trying to make that life-support sustain an additional 7 people once the Columbias reserves were gone was probably not going to work for long.

[metrologist]

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/the-age-of-precarious-infrastructure/567493/

[CatalinaWOW]

To Engineer Is Human: The role of failure in successful design by Petroski is a good read on this general subject.

[Paul Moir]

Going to the ISS was probably not an option fuel-wise, even if they wanted to.

Even more, Columbia was too heavy to get to the ISS which it why it never went there nor was fitted with the necessary docking hardware.  (Never mind that the ISS did have to dip down for the higher performance shuttles which took some planning.)

The commission did identify a rescue mission with Atlanta as just about being possible though.

[floobydust]

Again they're saying the Genoa Morandi bridge failed due to engineering. Blame the engineers- not the politicians, not the neglect, not the maintenance company etc.

"And two years ago, Antonio Brencich, a professor of engineering at the University of Genoa, said in an interview with the broadcaster Primocanale, “the Morandi Bridge is a failure of engineering.”

"It was affected by extremely serious corrosion problems linked to the technology that was used (in construction). [designer] Morandi wanted to use a technology that he had patented that was no longer used afterwards and that showed itself to be a failure," said Brencich to Radio Capitale.

The bridge may have been impossible to maintain. There's not much you can do for rebar, besides cathodic protection, to slow corrosion.

But a 50 year lifetime for a concrete bridge?

[metrologist]

Isn't that indeed an engineering failure?

[helius]

[mcinque]

Zucca, please: we shouldn't make speculations now that some bodies are still buried.

Other than we do not have civil engineering experience, you should take in big consideration that a single engineer opinion, a university professor, is much different from multiple and active Nasa engineers opinions.

The man you mentioned didn't specify the single point of failure in his post (the opposite to what the Nasa's engineers had always done) but has simply wanted to put the entire bridge and his engineer in a bad light, telling only that the entire site "should be rebuilt", and that "his calculations weren't correct", arguing about some difficulties during the construction.

But the most disgusting thing is that he just ran today to be phisically on the spot, right 15 hours later next to the accident site, to be interviewed by the news and tell that he knew that will happened: I cannot avoid to see in this behavior the willingness to show off deliberately and I cannot accept this while bodies are still under the concrete.

He doesn't deserve the attention the media are giving to him and the victims does not deserve this kind of disrespect.

[langwadt]

Isn't that indeed an engineering failure?

the short lifetime of the bridge is engineering failure, not fixing it when it is know that it is an engineering failure is a political failure

[Kjelt]

a dutch bridge "expert"  yesterday said that these so called "cable-stayed bridges" (if I translated it correct from dutch that is) before half 80's were always designed with a single cable/concrete because they could not calculate the strength of multiple cables before that. They were manually calculated.
With the arrival of the PC in the 80s this changed and all bridges from that time forward had multiple cables.

The reason is that a single cable stayed bridge is very volatile due to the single point of failure.
If the cable weakens and breaks the pilon gets unbalanced and unstable as well.
The unbalanced force from the other "cable" sides will let it break down (as we have seen here).
With a multiple cable bridge, if one cable breaks the other cables are calculated to take the strength till the other cable is repaired again.
This is according to him well known and all single cable bridges in the Netherlands are under extreme quality control for failures due to this.
They actually should be replaced in the coming decades.
Italy has many of these bridges so he said they have a huge challenge for the coming years.

[rsjsouza]

Again they're saying the Genoa Morandi bridge failed due to engineering. Blame the engineers- not the politicians, not the neglect, not the maintenance company etc.

"And two years ago, Antonio Brencich, a professor of engineering at the University of Genoa, said in an interview with the broadcaster Primocanale, “the Morandi Bridge is a failure of engineering.”

"It was affected by extremely serious corrosion problems linked to the technology that was used (in construction). [designer] Morandi wanted to use a technology that he had patented that was no longer used afterwards and that showed itself to be a failure," said Brencich to Radio Capitale.

The bridge may have been impossible to maintain. There's not much you can do for rebar, besides cathodic protection, to slow corrosion.

But a 50 year lifetime for a concrete bridge?

Well, it is an engineering problem if it was miscalculated. The media could also conflate and call it "engineering" if the bridge had in fact building problems (materials, procedures, etc.) - they would still be on the shoulders of the responsible engineer, although the building company would have its large share of guilt as well.
IMO you could blame politicians only if they did not take the action (or were not convinced by other technical committees) to allocate the resources for repair, lined their pockets with the allocated money or simply awarded the maintenance contract to an incompetent company (the one who gave the most kickback).
If the NYT is to be believed (I didn't read other sources), it seems the bridge was crumbling partially in bits and pieces - something that happens in several older bridges in cities in the US as well and could be blamed on everyone, really (either a shoddy design or building or lack of proper resource allocation).

[Kjelt]

Well, it is an engineering problem if it was miscalculated. 

It was calculated correctly or it would have failed earlier.

The corrossion was not taken into account which are new insights that are gathered over time.
When the corrossion was detected and no action was taken that is where the problem is.
If there was no possibility to repair the bridge to its standards then they should have replaced it.

[rsjsouza]

Fair enough; I posted before looking into the history of the whole thing. 50 years is quite a long time.

[besauk]

 
The Columbia case is more troubling.  They could have done an inspection flyby and ISS crew would have been able to report the extent of the damage.  Nothing has been reported about analysis of the possibility of returning to the ISS and sheltering after a negative report.  Perhaps someone did an analysis and determined that there wasn't enough life support to keep them going until another shuttle could be launched (which would have had the same risk of damage to the tiles).  Keeping them there until the problem was fixed was clearly impossible (it took many, many months as I remember).  Similar analysis might have shown that Soviet launch and return capability wasn't enough to get them down (could only get two at a time down without depending on the not so reliable automatic docking system so it is many trips).

Perhaps even more troubling is that the root cause was apparently known for many missions prior to the final one - the reformulated (Freon-free) foam on the external fuel tank had caused a marked increase in damage to the insulating tiles, as far back as missions in late 1997 - some 5 years earlier.  Sad to say to some engineers must have succumbed to this politically correct foam nonsense and not stood up as they should have.  Disturbing that what had once been a premiere engineering jewel got turned into a place where the overall culture no longer espoused engineering excellence above all.

[metrologist]

Isn't that indeed an engineering failure?

the short lifetime of the bridge is engineering failure, not fixing it when it is know that it is an engineering failure is a political failure

The politicians were engineered into a corner and they did not want to pay to get out of it. Now they pay a big price for their failure to act.

We know of many such situations and there will still be no action.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

I get sick looking at that. This is the species that should spread to the stars?

[ignator]

I do not understand comparing the failure of this bridge to any complex space craft failure. The level of safety analysis is totally different. The fault tree for a space shuttle is a mega document, for this bridge, insignificant.
There have been other bridge collapse in recent years either from incorrect maintenance, or build errors.The one I remember was the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis Minnesota USA. This failure happened in 2007;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge
There are many documented in a wiki article. Filter those caused by external cause vs. structural failure:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures
I would be concerned if the Mafia was involved in short changing the quality of the concrete during its construction. I don't hear that as a possible reason, only that the current maintenance company is being held liable. Even without a mafia, contractors and sub-contractors can mess with concrete quality, as well the failure of the government engineers to inspect, and be on the job every moment, taking samples independent of the contractor. And then actually testing them for compression failure strength at the 30 day cure time.In my ignorant view only seeing photos on TV and internet, the concrete appears to have failed in compression. (it falling down is a big hint to this failure  But seeing how it separated into pieces as if the steel rebar was not made to be contiguous, indicates a construction flaw, I would have to see the ends of the rebar to determine if they failed under tension, or if they are intact). If there is no salt or other corrosive material used on the bridge, concrete that is properly made gets stronger with age. My memory is of an asymptotic curve where it reaches final strength at 40 years or more.

[Miyuki]

We have also one bridge collapse some time ago (thankfully no deaths)
And few week after they started to close one bridge by one and repairing everywhere even take some down a building new ones, now is every second road closed and you cant get anywhere but hope it will be safe for some time

Is is common as you see bridge as something for ages, huge and stable monument what will be here for generations even with no maintenance
After disaster everyone wake up and catch up all maintenance neglected for decades

[filssavi]

I say that it is extremely comfortable to just blame the contractors/mafia/politicians in this case, since the original designers and engineers are in my opinion to blame here...

It is quite easy to see that the bridge design had several major flaws:
1) The bridge has very few stays, four for each pylon (one for each of the side of the road for each side of the pylon), while in a perfect world this is enough, in the real world,  it is very dangerous since there is no redundancy at all. In fact in the 90' on the other side of the bridge one of the stays was reinforced with steel reinforcements since it could not be replaced
2) the stays are made of reinforced concrete, even with steel reinforcement this material is not ideal for almost pure tension loads

most of the cable stayed bridged in fact have a very different structures that adress these two weaknesses
1) they have a lot of stays for each tower, this provides greater redundancy, since in case of failure of one or two stays the other can still support the bridge safely, this allows also the entire replacement of a damaged stay (there is no need for bolt on reinforcing)
2) the stays are universally made of steel, since this material is much less shitty in tension compared to concrete

So while I'm almost sure that with better monitoring/maintenance this tragedy could be avoided we have to be onest and recognise also the failure of the engineers who ultimately green lit the project without recognising/adressing there faults

[Paul Moir]

the reformulated (Freon-free) foam on the external fuel tank had caused a marked increase in damage to the insulating tiles, as far back as missions in late 1997 - some 5 years earlier.

Except the piece that broke off and damaged the RCC panel wasn't made with the reformulated foam.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

The level of safety analysis is totally different.

We noticed.



My point is that some people think building a SPACE ELEVATOR is just a question of buying the right epoxy at Home Depot. 

[nctnico]

Well, it is an engineering problem if it was miscalculated. 

It was calculated correctly or it would have failed earlier.

The corrossion was not taken into account which are new insights that are gathered over time.
When the corrossion was detected and no action was taken that is where the problem is.
If there was no possibility to repair the bridge to its standards then they should have replaced it.

Agreed. In the Netherlands bridges get inspected regulary and during the past few years quite a few bridges have been closed for heavy traffic in order to repair the bridges. New insights probably led to a different method of inspecting which brought up lurking problems.

[floobydust]

You need zero qualifications to be a manager or politician. Any background will do.

At some point engineers need to stop being the fall guy for these large failures- where the engineers were starved of time, money, resources to do a good job, and the bridge comes crashing down.

[Echo88]

The level of safety analysis is totally different.

We noticed.



My point is that some people think building a SPACE ELEVATOR is just a question of buying the right epoxy at Home Depot. 

You dont have a point. Nobody said anything about a space elevator. Please go back to your thread and troll the ever-living-shit out of people there or maybe do something better with your time on this mortal plane as you suggested yourself.

[Jeroen3]

A parking garage collapsed last year. It was not finished yet, but it shed some light on poor practices, resulting in the reclassification of some buildings.

Forcing the price down causes safety inflation.

And you know what it said: "if you don't plan maintenance, the equipment plans it for you".
Now they have to build a new bridge, several years downtime and negative economic effect, what would be more expensive? Maintenance or New bridge?

[Eka]

what would be more expensive? Maintenance or New bridge?

Maintenance, meh. New bridges are big sexy projects that employ lots of people. 

[razberik]

Now they have to build a new bridge, several years downtime and negative economic effect, what would be more expensive? Maintenance or New bridge?

There is never enough time to build something properly. But there is always enough time to start building it again.

[JPortici]

Interesting that this is Italy. There seems to be some tension between the engineers and politicians?

We are currently governed by two parties, the greens that feed on fear of lazy napoletans albanians romanians roms migrants from africa (seriously, not many years ago their ads showed a redskin with the caption "they accepted immigration, now they live in reservations") and the yellows feed on ignorance. Dismiss experts because they are payed by the big companies, their experts are the right ones. alternative medicine. alternative science (luckily the greens are more rational types and are saying no to most of their bullshit but still...)

Our prime minister (supposedly an attorney, he also declared himself attorney of the italian people after he was chosen) said in an interview that we can't wait for the justice system to make an investigation, as it would take too much time. wow.

actions must be taken now, before there is even an hint of an investigation say the two vice-prime ministers (the actual prime ministers). that made me even more sick that when they usually talk. the yellow bufoon is the minister for work, he never had a real job in his life before becoming a politician.

Finger crossing that they will collapse on themselves before they do too much damage. That's enough politics for the day for me.

[Kjelt]

Politics has changed dramatically since 40 years. Before the politicians were making multiple years strategies for the country, trying to set the roadmap where to go. Nowadays they need to respond on day to day media-fires within 24hrs show their face when needed and have an answer ready.
So I don't blame them for saying they are taking actions because if they did :
- good investigation into this accident and wait for the results
- shut down all similar constructed bridges and investigate their condition
etc. etc. your economy and store-supplies would have a severe impact, not too mention panic and other side effects.

It is a very lousy problem to have on your plate IMO, there is no good quick fix or solution to deal with it.

[station240]

You need zero qualifications to be a manager or politician. Any background will do.

At some point engineers need to stop being the fall guy for these large failures- where the engineers were starved of time, money, resources to do a good job, and the bridge comes crashing down.

Exactly the problem in this case, the politicians in charge have zero qualifications for what they are in charge for. Not an issue if they actually listen to actual experts (as opposed to fake ones employed as consultant 'yes men')
A bricklayer could do a better job.

Now if the laws were written justly, the politican who refuse to pay for a new bridge would be in Jail right now, and rightly so.
If an engineer declares a bridge to be at the end of it's life and unstafe, the money for a replacement should be automatically robbed from the budget. To hell with waiting months/years for politicians to decide.

[Kjelt]

You need zero qualifications to be a manager or politician. Any background will do.

At some point engineers need to stop being the fall guy for these large failures- where the engineers were starved of time, money, resources to do a good job, and the bridge comes crashing down.

Exactly the problem in this case, the politicians in charge have zero qualifications for what they are in charge for. Not an issue if they actually listen to actual experts (as opposed to fake ones employed as consultant 'yes men')
A bricklayer could do a better job.

Now if the laws were written justly, the politican who refuse to pay for a new bridge would be in Jail right now, and rightly so.
If an engineer declares a bridge to be at the end of it's life and unstafe, the money for a replacement should be automatically robbed from the budget. To hell with waiting months/years for politicians to decide.

Perhaps you should get the facts straight.
What I read today is that They have outsourced the maintenance of roads and bridges incl this one to a private organisation over ten years ago that gets funding from public tollways raising billions of euros each year.
That company is now under investigation if they invested that money in the roads/bridges or used it to grow (mergers and takeovers). The company is owned by the Benneton family. The company claims to have done all inspections and found no shortcomings. So this is going to be an interesting case for the investigators and I hope they turn everything up and down to find the thruth.

[Zucca]

To me it's clear that an engineer did not his job properly.
I posted here just because I think as engineers sometime we forgot how important our role in the society is and how devastating could be our mistakes.

That bridge reminds me I have to do my job well.

I didn't want to speculate or to lack in respect, nor to compare NASA with a bridge.

[In Vacuo Veritas]

To me it's clear that an engineer did not his job properly.
I posted here just because I think as engineers sometime we forgot how important our role in the society is and how devastating could be our mistakes.

That bridge reminds me I have to do my job well.

I didn't want to speculate or to lack in respect, nor to compare NASA with a bridge.

Engineers are almost powerless in the real world. Don't you think the engineers made the right design for the bridge? How can the engineer control how the materials will be replaced with inferior ones when the system is corrupt?

[langwadt]

To me it's clear that an engineer did not his job properly.
I posted here just because I think as engineers sometime we forgot how important our role in the society is and how devastating could be our mistakes.

That bridge reminds me I have to do my job well.

I didn't want to speculate or to lack in respect, nor to compare NASA with a bridge.

IEEE code of ethics

https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

[ignator]

Quote from: langwadt on Today at 10:32:27 am>
IEEE code of ethics

https://www.ieee.org/about/corporate/governance/p7-8.html

But these are not EEs, but CEs that design structures. They may have a code of ethics, but in the end they are boxed in by their employer, and in this case it is a government.
A bigger issue is this is all government run, and as other posters have stated politicians are not qualified to do anything.
There are photos showing the state of disrepair.


It will be easy to blame the subcontractor that was maintaining this bridge, but they were not paid to rebuild the bridge from the ground up, and it's looking that was the problem with 60 years of aging. I know this failure is not the only one from infrastructure rot, and it will not be the last one. And it's not limited to any country.

[floobydust]

They are looking at blaming the Morandi bridge failure on bad engineering, that one tendon failure would cause a collapse. There was no redundancy and it used rods instead of cables.

It would be best - the politicians, maintenance company, all absolved /s

Autostrade per l'Italia toll revenue is € 796m last quarter, leaving  € 539m gross profit. Sound like a cash cow to me at € 8.4m/day tolls.

[raptor1956]

If you drive over and around the bridge using Google Maps you can see that most of the north side of the bridge was being worked on or looked like it.  Also interesting is the fact that the cable stays were boxed with a rectangular covering but on one section of the bridge the box is removed and the cables visible.  Also noteworthy is that I did not see a single worker working on it.


Brian

[floobydust]

There's a good chance the maintenance crew made a mistake.

I'm curious if the rain storm aggravated the failure. Politician: "it was struck by lightning!" 

Remember the Tacoma Narrows bridge 1940 collapse. All engineer's iron rings are apparently made of that steel, so we are cloaked in failure lol.

It was a resonance in the structure excited by vortex shedding. Q was high with equal-spaced pylons, the structure oscillated and collapsed. This Morani bridge might have been wobbling.

[Nusa]

There are a lot of bridges in the world, and failures of various types happen regularly. This one is just the news of the moment, and will fade from the world news fairly quickly, just like all the others. It'll be local news much longer, since the cleanup/replacement/infrastructure issues are in plain sight.

Here's a list that already includes this latest incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_bridge_failures

[Paul Moir]

Remember the Tacoma Narrows bridge 1940 collapse. All engineer's iron rings are apparently made of that steel, so we are cloaked in failure lol.

No, that was the Quebec Bridge:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_Bridge   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring

[ignator]

Quote from: floobydust on Today at 05:05:24 pm

Remember the Tacoma Narrows bridge 1940 collapse. All engineer's iron rings are apparently made of that steel, so we are cloaked in failure lol.

It was a resonance in the structure excited by vortex shedding. Q was high with equal-spaced pylons, the structure oscillated and collapsed. This Morani bridge might have been wobbling.


A documentary on this bridge indicated that at the time, architects were in a design 'competition' to make bridge support and decking to be as thin as possible. This prevented rigidity to wind load. As well made an airfoil, all this enabled it to go into oscillation.
If you look at any failure analysis, after the catastrophic event occurred, you find a fault scenario that was not thought of. Or the fault was assumed to be remote in possibility.
In this case, the obvious failure of concrete, that does not last forever.

[KL27x]

Exactly the problem in this case, the politicians in charge have zero qualifications for what they are in charge for. Not an issue if they actually listen to actual experts (as opposed to fake ones employed as consultant 'yes men')

To overgeneralize, good engineers are not necessarily good salespeople. The guy that is more persuasive is often the guy who the decision maker is going to listen to. A competent engineer can explain things to a very successful businessman/politician, and in some cases they might as well be talking to a wall. No matter how many times you tell them they can't do it this way, no matter how much details you go into the why, it doesn't matter. If there's a credible and persuasive guy that says "Yeah, no problem; done in a week," they will believe it. There's nothing the engineer can do beyond that.

i see this over and over. Be afraid of the company that says "yes, no problem" to everything you ask. Empty promises are easy to make, and money changed hands is difficult to get back.

 

[floobydust]

Corporations value profit above all else, not safety. Though you will get written up for not wearing a hard hat 

I've walked out of a few jobs where I was pushed to fake/ignore safety on products in order to get them to market ASAP.

I've had engineering managers that are PhD's, MSc's, P.Eng's, tech's, and nobodies other than being with a company for say 15 years  ground up, from ditch digger to CEO.
Their values are mostly about getting that bonus, pleasing the exec, not spending money, pushing the schedule etc.

Anyone can be an "engineering manager" and when I butt heads against "doing it right" verses "maximum profit as quickly as possible", I haven't found a way to not cause a shitstorm. If anyone has an option, love to hear it.

[Kjelt]

Corporations value profit above all else, not safety. Though you will get written up for not wearing a hard hat 

If a safety issue was ignored by a company they should not only financially penalize them, they should personally hold those people accountable and put them in jail.
That is the only way you can hold organisations responsible by hurting the people themselves.

Now if an engineer reports such a safety violation to his supervisor make it official. Sent an email and keep the copy. If the supervisor does not respond sent it again. Don't take a non official response as an answer (like he walks in and tells you to ignore it). Ask for an email or written response.
That way you have done what you could unless it is so serious it is a public hazzard, in that case you might want to leak it to the press and start finding a new job. This is more easily said than done, in many companies there is still a "stay in line or get out" mentality even on these issues and till now most whistleblowers get an unfair treatment ending their careers because other companies also don't want to hire them. This should change asap IMO. If you work for a company you ARE the company and each employee is responsible just as much as it was a one man organization.

[Kjelt]

I just saw this in the newspaper 
It seems it is not an isolated incident but more a structural collapse of badly maintained infrastructure throughout the country.

[Paul Moir]

If a safety issue was ignored by a company they should not only financially penalize them, they should personally hold those people accountable and put them in jail.
That is the only way you can hold organisations responsible by hurting the people themselves.

In Canada it works that way due to a mining disaster:  https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/legisl/billc45.html   I remember that a few months ago this was used to convict those responsible in a case where an unguarded conveyor belt led to a horrific death.

[mcinque]

I just saw this in the newspaper 
It seems it is not an isolated incident but more a structural collapse of badly maintained infrastructure throughout the country.

It is just speculation. We're not civil engineers here. And noone should correlate just 2 data and reach a conclusion.

Even without a degree in civil engineering it's clear that picture did not take in consideration many tecnical aspects:
- the size of the bridges
- the type of the bridges (girder, cantilever, suspended, arch, cable-stayed etc.)
- the construction material of the bridges (steel, concrete etc.)
- how many earthquakes have occurred over the years where the bridges are placed and how much energy the bridges received
- the year of construction of the involved bridges (to relate the badly manteinance to aging)
- how many bridges we have in the country that are still in place (to understand if there is huge issue or just single events)
- who is responsible for maintenance of the bridges (to understand if there is a common cause, not all bridges are inspected by government representatives)
- how much bridges collapse in the rest of the world (to compare accidents)
- and probably many other things that, without at least a degree in civil engineering, we are not considering.

So journalists and newspapers should just tell what happened and not provide any data to force people to reach a conclusion, which should be left only to the experts in the field.

[floobydust]

Call in the engineers! After the collapse, now the politicians and media are willing to listen.
Failing after 51 years, it would be very hard to blame the engineering.  Mr. Rust is probably at fault.

"A jumble of public, private, local, regional and national agencies operate and maintain the country’s highways, bridges, viaducts and tunnels with little oversight — a system so fragmented that it is sometimes unclear who is responsible for a tract of road or a bridge. "

"This is a general problem in Italy,” said Andrea Del Grosso, a professor emeritus in engineering at the University of Genoa. “It’s always hard to make decisions, so projects drag on for decades, costs inflate, and when they decide to do them, it’s usually too late.” NYT article


Italy has massive government debt #4 in the world below Greece, Japan, Lebanon.
Don't really have money to replace the old bridges.

[Mr. Scram]

Call in the engineers! After the collapse, now the politicians and media are willing to listen.
Failing after 51 years, it would be very hard to blame the engineering.  Mr. Rust is probably at fault.

"A jumble of public, private, local, regional and national agencies operate and maintain the country’s highways, bridges, viaducts and tunnels with little oversight — a system so fragmented that it is sometimes unclear who is responsible for a tract of road or a bridge. "

"This is a general problem in Italy,” said Andrea Del Grosso, a professor emeritus in engineering at the University of Genoa. “It’s always hard to make decisions, so projects drag on for decades, costs inflate, and when they decide to do them, it’s usually too late.” NYT article

Italy has massive government debt #4 in the world below Greece, Japan, Lebanon.
Don't really have money to replace the old bridges.

Autostrada is the company owning and maintaining the toll highway network. A quick check shows that Autostrada profit hovers around a billion euro a year. This isn't a matter of not having the money. It seems to be matter of maximizing profits too much. I understand that a billion euro evaporates quickly when large civil engineering projects are involved, but there certainly is cash at hand.

[KL27x]

Italy has massive government debt #4 in the world below Greece, Japan, Lebanon.

USA: Hold my beer.

[floobydust]

Autostrada is the company owning and maintaining the toll highway network. A quick check shows that Autostrada profit hovers around a billion euro a year. This isn't a matter of not having the money. It seems to be matter of maximizing profits too much. I understand that a billion euro evaporates quickly when large civil engineering projects are involved, but there certainly is cash at hand.

Autostrade 2017 financials 2017 Group’s net debt at 31 December 2017 totals €9,351m

Wow, almost €10 billion in debt? That's some kind of money shell game. Caviar for the Benettons is expensive.

[Eka]

Now if an engineer reports such a safety violation to his supervisor make it official. Sent an email and keep the copy. If the supervisor does not respond sent it again. Don't take a non official response as an answer (like he walks in and tells you to ignore it). Ask for an email or written response.

You write it in ink into your own personal bound engineering journal where you keep all your notes of what you did, etc. I have my own journals of what I was doing, results, etc going back to the '70s, and I'm not even an engineer. I just have some as mentors back then. They got me in the habit. They also provided excellent notes for how I took various photographs. Make sure you sign and date the pages. The journals should be a bound notebook with the pages sewn in. Being bound, written in ink, dated and signed makes it legally admissible evidence in US courts, and likely many other countries. Entering notes of all you do, calls you make, topics of conversations with whom, notes about correspondence, topics of that correspondence, shopping lists for the SO, etc makes is very hard to call into question the veracity engineering notebooks.

[Kjelt]

Wow that is very thorough documentation. I wonder what field of work you were in.

[TassiloH]

If you drive over and around the bridge using Google Maps you can see that most of the north side of the bridge was being worked on or looked like it.  Also interesting is the fact that the cable stays were boxed with a rectangular covering but on one section of the bridge the box is removed and the cables visible.  Also noteworthy is that I did not see a single worker working on it.

That is not a removed covering, but these are additional cables that were added during a renovation in the 1990s. The original cables are cast into concrete, not removable.
If one is interested on how these bridges were built, there is a nice video (in German though) about the construction of a bridge in Venzuela (Maracaibo) 1959 which has an almost 100% identical design, except that the cables are not cast into concrete. http://www.bauforum24.tv/bilfinger-berger-maracaibo-bruecke-1962-121/

[Kjelt]

It is just speculation. We're not civil engineers here. And noone should correlate just 2 data and reach a conclusion.
Even without a degree in civil engineering it's clear that picture did not take in consideration many tecnical aspects:
- the size of the bridges
- the type of the bridges (girder, cantilever, suspended, arch, cable-stayed etc.)
- the construction material of the bridges (steel, concrete etc.)
- how many earthquakes have occurred over the years where the bridges are placed and how much energy the bridges received
- the year of construction of the involved bridges (to relate the badly manteinance to aging)
- how many bridges we have in the country that are still in place (to understand if there is huge issue or just single events)
- who is responsible for maintenance of the bridges (to understand if there is a common cause, not all bridges are inspected by government representatives)
- how much bridges collapse in the rest of the world (to compare accidents)
- and probably many other things that, without at least a degree in civil engineering, we are not considering.
So journalists and newspapers should just tell what happened and not provide any data to force people to reach a conclusion, which should be left only to the experts in the field.

Well here are your engineering experts at word and I have dozens other articles that come to the same conclusion, but lets wait on the official report.

In Italië moeten honderden, zo niet duizenden bruggen, viaducten en tunnels dringend worden gecontroleerd omdat ze ouder zijn dan veertig jaar en tot nog toe, vaak door geldgebrek, niet naar behoren zijn onderhouden.

Dat is de conclusie van ingenieurs en architecten die in Italiaanse media hun licht laten schijnen op de ramp in Genua, waar dinsdag tientallen doden vielen toen een meer dan vijftig jaar oude brug over een autostrada instortte.

Genua was geen incident. „We zijn het enige moderne land waar in de afgelopen drie, vier jaar een tiental bruggen is ingestort zonder dat er sprake was van catastrofale gebeurtenissen”, zei geoloog Mario Tozzi tegen de Huffington Post. „Dat is geen goed teken.”

In Italy hundreds, if not thousands, of bridges, viaducts and tunnels must be urgently checked because they are older than forty years and until now, often due to a lack of money, have not been properly maintained.

That is the conclusion of engineers and architects in Italian media that shed their light on the Genua disaster, where dozens of people died on Tuesday when a more than fifty-year-old bridge collapsed on an autostrada.

Genoa was not an incident. "We are the only modern country where over the last three, four years a dozen bridges have collapsed without a catastrophic event" said geologist Mario Tozzi to the Huffington Post. "That is not a good sign."

https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/08/15/ingenieurs-italie-moet-honderden-bruggen-en-tunnels-vervangen-a1613174

[mcinque]

Well here are your engineering experts at word and I have dozens other articles that come to the same conclusion

-"I have dozens other articles": newspapers copy news from each other and spread it all over the world. Many times they doesn't even check the veracity of the news because they trust each other. It may seems dozen of different opinions but it's only one news.

-"engineering experts": after every tragedy, you find many "experts" coming out ready to tell what's gone wrong just without an investigation or just by looking at google maps pictures (and this let you understand what kind of "experts" they are). I don't think you can do a diagnose without even an investigation.

- "That is the conclusion of engineers and architects". They are NOT our engineer experts. European newspapers simply listened our local news where two jackals in search of visibility have exposed their opinions and after that they reached a conclusion and posted it; here I have not heard anyone so fool to declare that he reached a conclusion, even before the technical investigation begins. Also because "Autostrade per l'Italia" company would certainly sue him because is deliberately accusing them.

- geologist Mario Tozzi is a gelogist but is mostly a TV host and for me it's only looking for visibility. I can confidently say this because he declared that he prefer cunnilingus to fellatio to a local radio news. These are things that are said only to catch attention. These are not things that a man of science declares publicly.

but lets wait on the official report.

I agree.

To make you understand my point of view, suppose a serious electronic failure on a control panel occurred in the subway and because of this many people lost their lives. What would you say here if some "experts" without any electronic degree or training would confidently state what caused the problem, mostly without even having the advice in hand and the tools to be able to inspect it? Or what would you think of a real expert who just declares what happened without even having inspected the board?

[raptor1956]

If you drive over and around the bridge using Google Maps you can see that most of the north side of the bridge was being worked on or looked like it.  Also interesting is the fact that the cable stays were boxed with a rectangular covering but on one section of the bridge the box is removed and the cables visible.  Also noteworthy is that I did not see a single worker working on it.

That is not a removed covering, but these are additional cables that were added during a renovation in the 1990s. The original cables are cast into concrete, not removable.
If one is interested on how these bridges were built, there is a nice video (in German though) about the construction of a bridge in Venzuela (Maracaibo) 1959 which has an almost 100% identical design, except that the cables are not cast into concrete. http://www.bauforum24.tv/bilfinger-berger-maracaibo-bruecke-1962-121/

Interesting ... so if there were issues related to the integrity of the bridge with respect to the cables before, requiring the addition of new cables, then that would surely make the cables highly suspect as the cause of the failure.


Brian

[floobydust]

Are engineers to be silent?

After the FIU Miami pedestrian bridge collapse: "Ron Sachs, a spokesman for FIGG, provided the following statement:

"It is a breach of widely held professional standards of ethics for any engineer to judge or speculate on any aspect of a construction accident unless they have complete knowledge of all the facts, which include construction, materials, design, and other factors, and are highly experienced in bridge design."  https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article212571434.html

I don't agree, at all.

A community of engineers looks at these disasters and discusses them (on other forums). They speculate and calculate, share wisdom and observations, photos, and narrow down the cause. It also prevents "final reports" from being laced with politics and ass covering.

[floobydust]

The Morani bridge uses concrete-encased steel rods (tendons) instead of cables for the stays.
The concrete ended up trapping water and causing more (rod) corrosion, and making inspection near impossible.

The pylon that failed did not get the 1993 upgrade where a bundle of cables were added around the original rod, and bolt-on steel added.
Morani bridge pics

[Beamin]

They tried to run NASA like a business because the shuttle was sold on the fact it was a lower cost alternative to rockets. In reality it costs 10 times more and probably held us back from 10 years using the new spaceX type rockets we see today.

They were warned about the foam that brought down discovery too.

[Kjelt]

To make you understand my point of view, suppose a serious electronic failure on a control panel occurred in the subway and because of this many people lost their lives. What would you say here if some "experts" without any electronic degree or training would confidently state what caused the problem, mostly without even having the advice in hand and the tools to be able to inspect it? Or what would you think of a real expert who just declares what happened without even having inspected the board?

It is worse in your hypothetical case it would have been 10 control panels failing in 4 years, and even non-experts would say it would be wise to inspect all panels for design flaws or fatique or whatever might cause these panels to fail.
As the picture showed it is not a single event, it is a series of bridge and overpasses collapsing in the last years.
Some might be accidental for instance due to an earthquake yes, but still this many indicates a very serious situation even for non-experts that something is terribly wrong since in other countries the number of failures on these infrastructural constructions is way, way less.
If in our country more than 2 bridges would have collapsed in the last two years we had a major government crisis.
We shut down a bridge because there was a very minor risk something might happen and all traffic had to drive around to another bridge.
Although I agree to wait till the end report to definitly have the answer I would like to see that there is action taken to check the inspections of all the bridges and overpasses asap and in doubt take action to for instance limit the traffic from 2x2 roads to 1x1 to half the traffic. But you would rather do nothing, wait two years for a final report and in the meanwhile other bridges might collapse and innocent people die ?

[mcinque]

But you would rather do nothing, wait two years for a final report and in the meanwhile other bridges might collapse and innocent people die ?

I'm not saying that we should do nothing until the final report and let other people die. Never stated that. Maybe my english is not perfect.
My posts on this thread are only to show my disagreement on how non-experts come to technical conclusions and on tv jackals.

I am disputing the way some people reach a technical conclusion on a field without a degree or experience in that field AND how much is disgusting for me that Mr. Brencich went to the scene of the tragedy, just 15 hours after the collapse, with the people still under the rubble, just to be interviewed by the newscasts and say that he had warned that the bridge was faulty since its first day.

even non-experts would say it would be wise to inspect all panels for design flaws or fatique or whatever might cause these panels to fail.

Indeed. It is certainly wise and prudent to start a global check of the country bridges and to take all the necessary measures in order to minimize future collapse risks while the final report arrives, and that is indeed what they are doing right now. Another Morandi bridge was closed to be checked just yesterday for example.

But after the recurrence of an accident, any ordinary person or someone without a degree or expertise in that field can say that something is wrong and that they "should check".
What that category of people can't tell is what they have to check and what is the cause of the fail.
I can say "for me it's gone in this way", but I'm noone in that field: only a team of engineering graduates with experience and many hours of on site and laboratory investigations will find the true, because this things can be assessed only by them, with science.

Instead I read a lot of opinions from ordinary people, who (for example) do not have the slightest idea of what the dynamic stresses are, saying confidently that "things have definitely gone like this". These things make me angry, it's speculation.

[Kjelt]

Ok than I misunderstood you and I do agree with your points.

[mcinque]

You're welcome.

And, just about jackals: Antonio Brencich made so much noise that was appointed as "expert member" of the government investigation team. Now we will even pay his fee. This is disgusting.

EDIT: A. Brencich wrote in 2016 that the bridge was defective. AND... is one of the people who signed the bridge status report in February 2018. This report stated that the cables were corroded by 20%. But he, along with others, has signed a document declaring "as already noted, the experimental investigations and the monitoring system appear complete and very detailed" . No one in that meeting thought it was necessary to warn of the risks, instead the document concluded "Overall, the executive project examined appears well written and complete in every detail, the same is studied in a methodologically impeccable way" . It seems to me bipolarism to say that the bridge is badly built and then sign a document where it says that, after all, even if there are signs of wear, everything is ok.

[Kjelt]

Yes well there are more things happening in Italy that I as a more northern person don't understand
Beautifull country, hope that things get more "organised" in the near future.

[ignator]

This just popped up in my youtube suggested video's:

[floobydust]

They demolished the rest of the Morandi bridge

[james_s]

The thing I see here is that all of these benefit from hindsight. I wonder how many projects had engineers and other "experts" warning of dire consequences then went on to perform just as designed without any of these dire things ever happening? It's easy to say "this guy warning about this bad thing and then he was ignored and people died" but you don't know how often someone warned about something that was not actually an issue and nobody died.

[bloguetronica]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.

It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it. At least they should cancel the landing and think of another plan. NASA had days to analyze the launch footage, which is a thing that should be analyze always, at every launch, and not in the sequence of a tragedy.

Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

[floobydust]

Now that the bridge has been demolished, Italian Police released new (original) collapse video footage.

The bridge engineer Morani warned 40 years ago the corrosion rate was much higher than anticipated, either from acid rain and the nearby steel plant pollution, or sea mist. He recommended higher maintenance and epoxy coating.

Autostrade per l’Italia had the maintenance contract, they reinforced one set of cable stays but the bridge was in very sad shape and it was another that snapped.
Autostrade makes $10M USD per day on roadway and bridge tolls.

Here, it's greed and politics that failed to maintain the bridge and killed 43 people.

[Nusa]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.

It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it. At least they should cancel the landing and think of another plan. NASA had days to analyze the launch footage, which is a thing that should be analyze always, at every launch, and not in the sequence of a tragedy.

Kind regards, Samuel Lourenço

Astronaut and cosmonaut are the same profession, but in English the word cosmonaut is usually specific to USSR/Russian personnel. The Columbia had six Americans and one Israeli on it.

The subject of whether the Columbia crew could have been rescued prior to their life-support running out has been written about extensively, so I will leave the googling to you. Bottom line is there were no good options, even if they had been able to determine the shuttle was damaged, which they really couldn't determine.

As for the value of human life, the principle is easy to state, but reality is another matter. You don't have to look for space-related accidents to find people dying for lack of basic necessities.

[chickenHeadKnob]

--snip--
The bridge engineer Morani warned 40 years ago the corrosion rate was much higher than anticipated, either from acid rain and the nearby steel plant pollution, or sea mist. He recommended higher maintenance and epoxy coating.
--snip--

You have to be careful in recommending epoxy coated steel encased in concrete. It is not the wonder anti-corrosion coating that people (including myself) thought it was.
I have epoxy coated rebar lying in my yard experiencing  the weather over multiple years with practically no rust so I thought I would use it in my next pour, but then youtube suggested I view this:

[windsmurf]

I wonder if the Columbia disaster could not be averted, not by trying to fix the ship, but by trying to rescue the cosmonauts. But I might be talking about sufficient knowledge.
It would be expensive, for sure, but human life is invaluable, and worth of any effort to save it.
...

Some lives are more valuable than others.

[james_s]

You have to be careful in recommending epoxy coated steel encased in concrete. It is not the wonder anti-corrosion coating that people (including myself) thought it was.
I have epoxy coated rebar lying in my yard experiencing  the weather over multiple years with practically no rust so I thought I would use it in my next pour, but then youtube suggested I view this:

I kind of feel that way about automotive undercoating. On multiple different cars I've noticed a small blister in the undercoat then started pecking at it and realized there's a hole several inches around rotted out of the floor pan. It seems what happens is moisture finds its way between the sheetmetal and the rubbery undercoat where it sits there hidden rusting away. The stuff probably helps in places where they use that horrid salt on the roads and cars only last 10 years anyway but elsewhere I suspect it causes more harm than good.