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Spain's New S-80 Class Submarines Sink, But Won't Float
New submitter home-electro.com writes "In the era of total CAD and CAM, is it even possible to come up with a fundamentally flawed design ? Turns out, yes. This a fascinating engineering SNAFU. Spain's newly built submarine is 100 tons too heavy, which means it is unable to float. 'Unfortunately for the Spainards, Quartz reports that they have already sunk the equivalent of $680 million into the Isaac Peral, and a total of $3 billion into the entire quartet of S-80 class submarines. If Spain hopes to salvage its submarines, it must either find some weight that can be trimmed from the current design or lengthen the ship to accommodate the excess weight, The Local notes. Though the latter option is more feasible, it is expected to cost Spain an extra $9.7 million per meter.'"
Some screen doors will help lighten up the load. A lot thinner than regular doors.
here in Canada we aren't in extreme debt too, not sure what Spain is doing even building these. Spain is having a rather significant financial crisis the last few years.
...still sinking after all these years.
I think this is a great example of government "efficiency", underlining the fact for all those people who love to carry on about how vital "government spending" is. I simply can't believe that contracts are awarded without any sort of penalty clause that covers errors like this, delays in completion dates, etc. Years ago this would be considered high treason and someone would swing. Now, thanks to corrupt and decadent government, nothing will happen. In fact, the contractor will probably get more contracts.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Weight and balance control is pretty much a requirement for any shipbuilding (both for controlling draft and controlling stability), but on submarines it's absolutely critical. The margins on a submarine are razor thin - much thinner than you might think. On my boat a mere eight ton error (heavier than calculated) once caused us to lose control on diving.
That being said - a 100 ton error in design and construction is a screwup beyond any analogy or hyperbole.
they should just consider it a sunk cost.
These are very biased news and in fact they are wrong. For starters, only the first submarine has a floatability problem. The other submarines in the series are larger, therefore they have no problem. Now, why has the fist submarine (the original design) a floatability problem? Because the Navy asked for more equipment (electronic equipment, weapons, etc) and more comfortable cabins for the sailors than originally planned. It is not a design problem but a modifications problem and this is very very very frequent in large projects, especially if military. The changes have been taken into account in the design for the second and subsequent submarines (S81, S82, etc). The first submarine (S80) will be fixed by making it a bit longer and adding some floating aids. Source: I work in this project. Next time you want to say stupid things about very serious projects, please warn us you are drunk.
J D Exposito
Bogus
That's because when Canada does design a ship it costs 100 times that of any other nation.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/05/02/pol-milewski-shipbuilding-design-mystery.html
The design of a ship is costing canada $250 million, when similar vessels designed in Norway were designed for $20 million and built for $80 million
So go ahead and buy the UK and USA scraps it is cheaper.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Global Warming!
As the oceans get warmer, the heat gets transferred to the submarine, making it larger. Larger things are heavier and then poof too heavy. It sinks.
Really easy when you understand the physics.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Well, politics has gotten complicated over the past 100 years or so. Most people have 1 thing they are good at... maybe 2. In order to fully comprehend what's going on in politics you need to commit a significant portion of your day to reading, weighing and digesting information on the subject because it's literally changing by the second. At least a programming language stays relatively the same over longer time periods. Lucky for us, computer geeks usually have jobs that allow them to surf the internet for large parts of the day and stay on top of things.
It used to be that news papers and TV would figure out what information was relevent, set it up in such a way that readers could come to a few rather clear conclusions and then decided for themselves. Abortion is either about the Rights of the mother, or murdering babies... you pick. Well, the media in mid century suddenly became a lot more biased. The activism of the 50s and 60s lead a lot of kids into the field with the single minded goal of shifting public opinion. They did well, you can find dozens of studies that show most media, in most countries around the world are left leaning. In the past decade however we've seen the Right catch up, and we have Fox, al jazeera. etc... and while the majority of leftist reporters were "left leaning" in their work, these new entities are outright blaintent about their goals? The result? We now have very left wing reporting as well. I don't watch either, I think it's shameful what's going on in the news media today.
So what's your average person supposed to do? They're caught up in black and white issues, which likely aren't black and white at all if you study them. And often they aren't even the issues those people would be most interested in. I can't say a lot about the Canadian financial problems, I live in the USA... but if they are similar to ours then:
1. We need a simplified tax code. There should be 3 lines on your tax forms, how much you make, the percentage of that you have to pay in taxes, and your signature. No more subsidies, loopholes, nothing. The government should not be attempting to manipulate private citizens into spending a certain way. Every such program in history has ended in disaster. (The dust-bowl is a good example)
2. We need to FEWER taxes. I don't mean less, I mean fewer. The current system of "Tax everything" is directly and intentionally designed to obfuscate how much you are actually paying in. You pay taxes on what you earn, when you spend, on the roads you drive, the gas you buy, to register your car... that all needs to die. There should be a national sales tax. That's it, nothing else. You should not be charged for earning, saving or investing money.
3. We need to drastically cut spending. The vast majority of what the government spends money on its out right insane. Specifically in the US, our military spending borders on full retard levels. I know in Canada you have a large subsidie to the logging industry you'll likely regret later. We can all identify silly crap the government should not be involved in.
4. We need temporary tax increases until we get out of debt. Then we need to make it illegal for our governments to borrow money except in times of war.
5. The government needs to get out of and stay out of the economy. It would be one thing if there were financial wizards trying to manipulate the economy, but it's not, it's politicians.
How does someone in 2013 miscalculate the displacement of seawater?
Probably to 15 decimal places on a workstation with more transistors than the entire world possessed in 1980, along with an entire PPT deck full of pretty renders, and a basic sanity check skipped early in the process...
There should be 3 lines on your tax forms, how much you make, the percentage of that you have to pay in taxes, and your signature. No more subsidies, loopholes, nothing.
Agreed in principle. In practice what you are proposing is absurd and unworkable. Why? Because defining income is actually rather complicated. (Hint, it's more than just the salary you get from your job) While we could do a lot (and should) to reduce the complexity of taxes by removing a bunch of needless cruft, an income tax will NEVER be anywhere close to as simple as you propose. The problem just isn't that simple.
The government should not be attempting to manipulate private citizens into spending a certain way. Every such program in history has ended in disaster.
The job of the government is to govern. That by definition involves manipulation of private citizens. Tax policy is just a tool. I'd agree it's a clumsy and overused tool but there is nothing fundamentally wrong with judicious use of it. And your hyperbole about every program ending in disaster is demonstrably untrue. You had a fair point up until there.
You pay taxes on what you earn, when you spend, on the roads you drive, the gas you buy, to register your car... that all needs to die. There should be a national sales tax. That's it, nothing else. You should not be charged for earning, saving or investing money.
I think you may not have thought through the consequences of your proposal. Sales taxes are rather volatile forms of taxation by themselves much like income tax. They also are a regressive form of taxation (hurts the poor more than the rich). A diversified set of tax streams is (or at least can be) good policy. As an example, a lot of local municipalities get most of their tax revenue from property taxes and not much else. Works fine until you have a housing bubble burst like in 2008-09. Diversification isn't just for personal stock portfolios. Furthermore is is also good policy to match tax revenues with the expenditures whenever possible. Taxing gasoline to fund road construction makes sense because the two are linked. If we use the roads more taxes will automatically rise to match. Reverse if the roads get used less. Now taxing gas to fund something like schools makes less sense because there is little direct relationship between the two.
We need temporary tax increases until we get out of debt.
Our government has been out of debt precisely once in 230+ years, during the Andrew Jackson's administration if my memory serves. SOME debt is fine and actually is quite useful and not at all harmful to the economy. Essentially all governments have some amount of debt and that is actually a good thing. But just like having a credit card you can have too much debt if you aren't careful.
Then we need to make it illegal for our governments to borrow money except in times of war.
Again, you are proposing something that would actually hurt the economy badly. The ability to control the money supply is critically important. The way we control the money supply is by selling debt or buying it back. Without the ability to borrow we cannot adjust the money supply which makes it very difficult to combat inflation, encourage (or discourage) lending, or deal with volatile tax revenues. SOME borrowing is fine and even beneficial.
Personally I like the idea that Warren Buffet proposed. If we are not in a declared war and the US debt exceeds 10% of GDP then all members of congress and the senate should be ineligible for re-election until such time as the debt is brought back to an appropriate level.
When my dad went to work at the Traverse City Iron Works in 1965 making fire hydrants guys were pouring iron wearing tennis shoes, jersey gloves and sunglasses. There was no safety equipment, there were no air filters, men lost eyes, fingers, and lungs on a regular basis. Dad was instrumental in bringing the union in, which forced the company to make the needed safety improvements. Perhaps that's nothing to you, but my dad was able to keep his hands and eyes intact and that was a big thing to me. So call me cuckoo.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin