Editing 2950: Situation

{{comic
| number    = 2950
| date      = June 24, 2024
| title     = Situation
| image     = situation_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x306px
| noexpand  = true
| titletext = We're right under the flight path for the scheduled orbital launch, but don't worry--it's too cold out for the rockets to operate safely, so I'm sure they'll postpone.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic depicts a situation involving multiple pieces of infrastructure: a ship, sailing towards icebergs, which is tethered to an airship flying next to a power plant towards a bridge. Each of these are labelled with details that clearly reference famous disasters, all of which were caused (at least in part) by design failures. All of these incidents are common case studies for engineers studying how things can go very wrong. The implication is that, by putting them all together, most engineers would be highly concerned with the potential for catastrophe.  

;"Unsinkable Ocean Liner" refers to the RMS ''{{w|Titanic}}''.
:The ''Titanic'' was a British ocean liner which famously {{w|Sinking of the Titanic|sank}} on its maiden voyage in 1912. It was the largest ship in operation at the time, and was called "unsinkable" due to its size and much-lauded design features. The ship struck an iceberg on the fourth day of its first voyage, breaching the hull and ultimately causing it to sink, resulting in 1,496 deaths. Multiple design inadequacies (although none without precedent in contemporaneous vessels) were afterwards identified as contributing to the rapid speed of the ship sinking and to the high loss of life. These included too few lifeboats (despite being designed to accommodate enough for her full passenger capacity), the use of steel that became very brittle at low temperatures (although not known at the time) and compartments lacking watertight ceilings (therefore allowing water levels within to top over into previously unaffected sections). However, a significant part of blame should also be attributed to a series of reckless practices commonplace at the time, such as lax signaling discipline and a general disregard for the hazards of collisions (Titanic's captain having previously gone on record stating he believed an iceberg to be incapable of sinking a vessel up to modern day construction standards and consequently ran near full speed through known ice fields). Furthermore, a number of operational mistakes were made, such as slowing the ship in response to the imminent collision and therefore reducing its maneuverability, incorrectly reporting her position as being on the other side of the ice field, and not informing passengers that the ship was sinking when calling them out of their cabins, nor sounding a general alarm.

;"Hydrogen-filled Scout Airship for Iceberg Spotting" refers to the {{w|Hindenburg Disaster}}.
:The {{w|LZ 129 Hindenburg|''Hindenburg''}} was a German airship which used hydrogen as a lifting gas. In 1937, during a landing in New Jersey, the ship caught fire and the highly combustible hydrogen quickly ignited, causing the ship to crash and resulting in 36 deaths. While the origins of the fire are still debated, the apparent dangers of using large amounts of such gas in airships were made dramatically clear (although the accident also showed that at least some sorts of accidents are actually more survivable with an airship; if a heavier-than-air aircraft had caught fire and crashed to earth from a similar altitude as the ''Hindenburg'', there would've been few if any survivors, compared to around two-thirds of the airship's occupants). 
:Ironically, the airship in the comic appears to have been commissioned for the purpose of mitigating iceberg risks (unless 'iceberg spotting' is for the purpose of steering the 'Unsinkable Ocean Liner' towards icebergs, perhaps as a tourist attraction).

;"Soviet Era Nuclear Reactor Undergoing a Turbine Test" refers to the {{w|Chernobyl Disaster}}.
:The {{w|Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant}} is located in the now largely abandoned city of the same name (or "Chornobyl"/"Чорнобиль"), near the city of Pripyat ("Prypiat"/"Прип'ять"), in Ukraine (part of the Soviet Union at the time of the disaster). On 26 April 1986, a reactor core partially melted during a turbine test. This led to an explosion, causing a massive release of radiation. This incident remains the worst nuclear accident to date. The disaster was determined to have resulted from a combination of human error and uncommon circumstances for which the reactor wasn't designed, but known design risks (which were not communicated to the plant operators) also allowed the explosion to happen.
:The number of fatalities from the disaster are difficult to calculate; two people died from the initial damage, twenty-eight more from acute radiation sickness, and fifteen people who were directly exposed developed terminal thyroid cancer. The radiation, however, spread far beyond the plant itself, and the number of premature deaths ultimately attributable to subsequent exposure can't be calculated directly, though most estimates are in the thousands or tens of thousands. Radiation contamination still affects wildlife in the accident exclusion zone.

;"Bridge Prone to Aeroelastic Flutter in High Winds" refers to the {{w|Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940)|Tacoma Narrows Bridge}}.
:The Tacoma Narrows Bridge, a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington, was initially built in 1940. From the time of its construction, the bridge was observed to sway and {{w|Aeroelasticity#Flutter|flutter}} in high winds, and was nicknamed "Galloping Gertie". About four months after opening, in 40 mile-per-hour (64 km/h) winds, the bridge fluttered so violently that it collapsed into the strait. There were no human fatalities, but one dog died and several other people were injured. This collapse is frequently used to demonstrate the dangers of harmonic vibration in infrastructure, particularly structures exposed to strong winds. The bridge was eventually rebuilt, with a redesign intended to prevent such fluttering.

;The title text refers to the {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster}}.
:The {{w|Space Shuttle Challenger|''Challenger''}} was an American space shuttle which broke up shortly after its launch in 1986, killing all seven crew members aboard before reaching orbit (but successfully avoiding harm to anyone underneath its flight path, as this area had fortunately been cleared of occupants for {{w|range safety}} reasons). The disaster was caused by a failure of O-ring seals on one of the shuttle's rocket boosters and the subsequent leak of hot gases. The likely cause of these failures was the seals being unable to maintain their integrity due to being well below their design temperature range in the immediate lead-up to being exposed to launch conditions, due to much colder than normal weather in the launch area. Engineers for the company that had built the boosters raised this concern and recommended postponing the launch, but were overruled.

As illustrated, it appears that the ship is about to sail under the bridge, while the airship will fly over it, causing the tether between the two to snag the bridge unless the airship descends sufficiently before then. The tether may snag, preventing both the airship and ocean liner from proceeding, or the bridge may snap, trapping the ocean liner and airship. The nuclear reactor would then explode, killing all people who are unable to reach some kind of shelter in time and making rescue operations extremely difficult.
==Transcript==
[all of this is in one panel]
:[An airship flying, labeled:]
:Hydrogen-filled scout airship for iceberg spotting  
:[The airship is chained to a ship, going along a river, labeled:]
:Unsinkable ocean liner
:[In the background on hill, which is on a coast a nuclear power plant, labeled:]
:Soviet-era nuclear reactor undergoing a turbine test  
:[The boat and airship are steering towards a bridge, labeled:]
:Bridge prone to aeroelastic flutter in high winds
:[Two unlabeled icebergs are on the water on either side of the bridge. Their visible above-water peaks are about half as high as the bridge's bottom]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In retrospect, we should have noticed how nervous the situation was making the engineers.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Engineering]]
[[Category:Aviation]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Rockets]]