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In the aerospace business there is a guy known as the Mass Properties Engineer who gets to rule the project with an iron fist. He is responsible for knowing the

In the aerospace business there is a guy known as the Mass Properties Engineer who gets to rule the project with an iron fist. He is responsible for knowing the estimated, calculated or measured weight of every part on the spacecraft from concept through to launch. It's not a very fun job, but it's very important. Some people actually made careers out of it. You simply cannot get this stuff wrong and not pay dearly for it later. There are reviews, arguments, dealings, and handwringing over all of this. Now, I have no idea if the Spanish sub business runs anything like that, but it surprises me that it apparently doesn't or didn't in this case. It's not like you just let some engineer in the corner calculate the weight and then go build it. This is a systemic fuckup, not a shifted decimal point.

gmrple 13y ago
My electrical engineering professors were constantly trying to ingrain in us the tendency to estimate the solutions to problems long before solving them. Why? because if you know the ball park solution you'll be able to catch gross errors before they happen. Thus you will be less likely to pull a Homer Simpson at the power plant or end up transmitting too much power from your antenna. I'm thankful to be in an industry where catastrophic failure does not have such harmful results.
- anonymouz 13y ago
  Without more details it's hard to say what exactly went wrong, but it is not at all clear that a ballpark estimate would be of any help here: The submarine weighs 2200 tons, and they think it's 70 tons too heavy.
  - coldarchon 13y ago
    Actually it is 75 tons too heavy, they stretched the sub out to get more buoyancy but now they have NO IDEA how heavy it really is ..
  - damoncali 13y ago
    The bigger point is that 70 tons should not sneak up on you. They should have been managing weights carefully throughout the process.
  - Someone 13y ago
    On the one hand, you are right. Preventing things like this (a 3% budget overrun) in large projects is very, very difficult. On the other hand, if this really is a single off by ten error, this was not a death by a thousand cuts, but someone must have reported that his 80 ton part only weighed 8 tons. That must have been noticeable, even if it got reported for a 'part' where nobody has a natural feel for its weight (for example, what do living quarters, with kitchen, supplies, and water for the showers weigh?)

gmrple 13y ago

My electrical engineering professors were constantly trying to ingrain in us the tendency to estimate the solutions to problems long before solving them. Why? because if you know the ball park solution you'll be able to catch gross errors before they happen. Thus you will be less likely to pull a Homer Simpson at the power plant or end up transmitting too much power from your antenna. I'm thankful to be in an industry where catastrophic failure does not have such harmful results.

anonymouz 13y ago
Without more details it's hard to say what exactly went wrong, but it is not at all clear that a ballpark estimate would be of any help here: The submarine weighs 2200 tons, and they think it's 70 tons too heavy.
- coldarchon 13y ago
  Actually it is 75 tons too heavy, they stretched the sub out to get more buoyancy but now they have NO IDEA how heavy it really is ..
- damoncali 13y ago
  The bigger point is that 70 tons should not sneak up on you. They should have been managing weights carefully throughout the process.
- Someone 13y ago
  On the one hand, you are right. Preventing things like this (a 3% budget overrun) in large projects is very, very difficult. On the other hand, if this really is a single off by ten error, this was not a death by a thousand cuts, but someone must have reported that his 80 ton part only weighed 8 tons. That must have been noticeable, even if it got reported for a 'part' where nobody has a natural feel for its weight (for example, what do living quarters, with kitchen, supplies, and water for the showers weigh?)