| ▲ | sgarland an hour ago | |
> submarines implode Fantastic analogy, and I assume you already know where I'm going with this. The Titan submersible [0] implosion was by all accounts due to studiously ignoring best practices and test results. They shipped fast. In contrast, James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger [1] was a slow and methodical build, and has heavily redundant backup systems for everything. For example, the ballast release system operates by demagnetizing coils that hold the ballast; that way if they have a system failure or power loss, it fails open, and they ascent. If that somehow fails, the supports for the ballast will corrode from sea water before the oxygen runs out, so in the worst case, it's sitting in the dark for a few hours before heading back up. Or, let's look at the U.S. Navy submarine program. I was a propulsion plant operator (reactor operator + throttleman) on a Virginia-class sub. Though I can't go into specifics, "redundant" doesn't begin to describe it. FFS, the San Francisco (688-class sub) ran into an underwater mountain at flank [2] and survived. The SUBSAFE program [3] was a direct result of the loss of the Thresher [4], and to date, no SUBSAFE-certified submarine has been lost. > Then look at software. When is the last time you encountered a bug? Have you ever heard of bug free software? You're conflating "free of defects" with "capable of gracefully handling defects." NASA writes as close to bug-free as I think you'll find, but even theirs isn't perfect [5]. The difference is the ability for the software to work through or around those problems. Submarine / submersible design and construction is the same. Are the engineers, welders, machinists, electricians, etc. attempting to do perfect work? Of course. They also are aware that perfection is impossible, and so the design accounts for that. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(submersible) 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_San_Francisco_(SSN-711)#Gr... 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUBSAFE 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)#Disaste... | ||