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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
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Using commercial off the shelf technology without proper testing and certification is absolutely cutting corners. See: Kaprun disaster.
What kind of fire rating did those COTS parts throughout the interior of the vessel have? What kind of redundancy existed? Would you use a Logitech controller for a spacecraft? The requirements of deep sea submersibles and spacecraft are quite similar. Would any of the submersible certification agencies approved this? I think not.
I see the Logitech controller, the carbon fiber hull, and so many other decisions he made as symptoms of the same corner cutting, “move fast and break things” mentality he had.
I just read the wikipedia article; thanks for mentioning it.
I'm not sure it's a good example of your point, though. Notably:
The fan heater is the only off-the-shelf technology listed here, and there's no suggestion that it was part of the train's design. It seems likely that a train conductor brought it on board to keep the compartment warm through the workday. Still a bad idea in a train, especially on a 30° slope, but not an example of the designers cutting corners.
Edit:
Thanks to others for linking photos and a report (in German) that show how the heater was installed. It was clearly not a case of a conductor just setting the heater on the floor, but the installation still looks very much out of place. Perhaps corner-cutting was involved, but this doesn't look like something done by the train designers. Even an expensive industrial heater seems like it would be an extraordinarily bad idea in that location, right up against high-pressure hydraulic oil lines. Does someone have the details behind it? It looks more likely a (very foolish) modification made by someone else, like maybe the train operators.
For anyone else following this, those hydraulic oil lines that the heater was nearly touching were apparently pressurized at 190 bar, which I think is about 2700 pounds per square inch.
It’s an example of uncertified consumer grade equipment used in a commercial environment to disastrous results, outside of its original designed purpose. It’s one of the most well known examples of why you don’t use consumer grade hardware in a commercial/industrial setting.
It was not brought on board by the conductor or someone else, it was permanently installed in the train in place of commercial grade heaters they couldn’t source. It was installed in the wall during assembly.
I’d argue it is an example of cutting corners, they didn’t want to find / pay more for commercial grade heaters. It was not compliant with the original design nor fire safety standards.
Wow. That's creepy in a fascinating way. Cutting corners costs lives, and this is a perfect example.
It was not a train conductor that brought it with him, it was build into the train by the train manufacturer. See this page: https://155.at/der-heizluefter/
What makes you think the train manufacturer did it? Is that on record someplace? Because the installation and materials don't look at all like the surrounding work. Looks more like a handyman hack job. Now that I've seen the photos, I'm curious about what actually happened there.
It was not the train manufacturer, but a body shop (Swoboda Karosserie- und Stahlbau GesmbH, now Carvatech), which was recruited by the Gletscherbahn Kaprun (GBK) for renovations. It might have not had so large repercussions if anyone of the actors during those renovations had done his job correctly tho:
On top of all that, because the cable cars were made of aluminium, they were deemed inflammable. This did not take into account that any installed equipment or passengers and their luggage might NOT be fireproof.
This lead to: no fire exits, no emergency signage, no training for employees how to react in case of fire. (which might have saved a lot of people: the 12 survivors were the people who went downwards, passing the fire, because they listened to a fireman onboard the cable car.)
it was a single malfunctioning heater, but the Kaprun disaster had many fathers.
I found a nice paper regarding the different actors written by a student of the University of Virginia here, well sourced.
Very informative. Thank you!
I need to cite the German Wikipedia article, which I’ve read. It’s a good read and very long.
Exactly this. When you procure custom hardware, you’re paying (a lot) for the vendor to ensure that each unit meets the specifications you provide. If you validate off the shelf hardware like this, there is no guarantee that another batch of the same sku will also meet your requirements. Imagine training on these controllers then a certain batch of them has wildly different sensitivity.