[TML] jump weapons

[shadow at shadowgard.com]

On 5 Aug 2008 at 21:33, Knapp wrote:

> > Barrington
> > Nope.  Any engineer will tell you, you don't aim for absolute minimum.
> > *Always* build in a safety margin.
> 
> But is that not in part true because the Engineers never trust the
> stats of the materials and the needs of the structure that were
> calculated? If they KNEW everything they might build at the absolute
> minimum but they don't.

Nope. Because to build to the "absolute minimum" you *also* have to 
know everything about the conditions whatever you build will 
encounter. 

Engineering "disasters" are as often a case of 
structures/vessels/whatever being subjected to conditions the 
engineers never expected as they are failure to design for expected 
stresses.

And sometimes they are a case of folks making changes to the 
structure from what the designer specified without checking with the 
designer (that case of the hotel's internal walkways/"sky bridges" 
collapsing under the weight of a crowd was more due to the 
construction company chamnging the long support rods (which were 
supposed to be one continuous rod extending thru two or three stories 
into a couple of rods tied together at a plate. The *join* failed.

Or in the case of a store collapsing (in Korea?) the somewhat 
adequately built store was set up for failure when it was decided to 
add another floor without making any changes to the existing 
floors...

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com