User:Wiarthurhu/List

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Famous failures in science and engineering include projects that, despite considerable and well publicised effort, were never completed as a result of engineering problems or a faulty scientific basis. The list also includes projects which failed, often spectacularly and with considerable publicity, either when first completed and used, or subsequently due to inadequate engineering design or margins, or were answers to problems that didn't need to be solved.

Contents

[edit] Failures in aerospace

  • The Europa rocket failed five times, without a single successful launch
  • The Messerschmitt Me 163 was so dangerous that it killed more Luftwaffe pilots than Allied airmen.
  • The world's first commercial jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet 1, introduced into service in 1952, suffered three crashes in the next two years due to the previously unknown condition of metal fatigue and did not return to service until 1958.
  • Most reusable space vehicles: Shuttle Buran, HOTOL, Hermes, CRV, the X-33/VentureStar, various NASA space planes, and arguably the Space Shuttle.
  • The American Space Station Freedom was cancelled in 1993, nearly 10 years after the start of the program. It had cost billions of dollars and had not launched a single component.
  • The Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat, aka the "Spruce Goose", Howard Hughes's often-ridiculed massive aircraft. Hughes himself did not consider it a failure, and kept it in flying condition until the end of his life. Though the project was consistently portrayed as a failure by the media, even prior to its debut, the H-4 Hercules in some senses presaged the massive transport aircraft of the late 20th century, such as the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and the Antonov An-124 and An-225, demonstrating that the physical and aerodynamic principles which make flight possible are not limited by the size of the aircraft.
  • The Soviet N1 rocket, equivalent to the US moon rocket Saturn V, exploded at or soon after takeoff on 4 occasions before cancellation, thereby earning it a 100% failure rate.
  • Project Vanguard (1958), the first attempt by the United States to put a satellite into orbit. The project managers insisted on using a new, civilian-designed, purpose-built rocket. There were repeated embarrassing crashes. After Sputnik, it was quickly decided to use proven military missile designs as the base for future space attempts.
  • Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne an advanced compound helicopter, was cancelled in 1972 after delivery of 10 pre-production prototypes, due to cost overruns, delays, and limited capabilities. It was meant to replace the stopgap AH-1 Cobra version of the UH-1 Huey which continues in front line service with the USMC.
  • The Boeing 7J7, intended as a replacement for the Boeing 727, was cancelled in 1987 because airlines were concerned about the economics and noise of its unproven unducted fan engines. The cancellation of the 7J7 led Boeing to concentrate on 727 replacements in the 737 and 757 families.
  • TFX F-111 was Robert McNamara's attempt to create a single new fighter at substantial savings over several different specialized fighters. It pioneered perhaps too many new technologies, among them terrain following radar, high flotation landing gear, Swing-wings, (with swiveling pylons), and history's only operational crew escape capsule. However the final design lacked maneuverablity and the US Navy found that the high tech F-111B "would not be able to cope" in dogfights with old MiG-17s then being encountered over Vietnam, and quickly cancelled its F-111B over weight issues. After a disasterous first tour in Vietnam, the F-111 would eventually prove capable as a medium bomber, but little else. After an expensive lesson on how not to design a fighter, the US would design several different specialized fighters optimized for air superiority, strike and carrier roles. As an ironic footnote, the Australians will proudly fly their affectionately named F-111 "Pigs" long after the US Navy has retired the F-14, their TFX replacement.
  • The Mach 2.7 titanium Boeing SST was to surpass the Concorde. The swing-wing design was selected over Lockheed's fixed wing. It proved unworkable and was switched to Boeing's version of a fixed wing. Before the redesign could fly, questions about economics and the environment killed federal funding after one of the most expensive federal aerospace programs after the Project Apollo. None of the completed SST designs was commercially viable.
  • The Boeing Sonic Cruiser, intended as a replacement for the Boeing 767 and meant to fly at near the speed of sound (transonic). Airlines rejected the idea of an aircraft designed to fly faster in a time when cost cutting was the highest priority. The cancellation of the Sonic Cruiser led Boeing to concentrate on 767 replacements in the Boeing 787, which used much Sonic Cruiser technology.
  • the desire for V/STOL capability led to an entire category of experimental aircraft from the 1960s, of which only one design, the Hawker Siddeley Harrier "jump jet" was a fully operational success. Designs used various combinations of rotating nozzles, ducted and unducted propellers, tilting wing and rotors, lift jets, and lift fans, and tail sitting from helicopter to supersonic speeds in sizes up to medium transports, nearly all suffered single or multiple crashes.

[edit] Failed weapons

  • The Chauchat light machine gun of World War I was notorious for its unreliability, frequent jamming and lack of precision manufacturing, although it could be built quickly, leading to its adoption.
  • The Ross rifle was used by Canadian troops in World War I; it was a great gun until it was brought into the trenches, where it constantly jammed and backfired. Canadian soldiers were forced to salvage rifles from dead British soldiers.
  • The German Maus tank was so heavy (188 tons) that it was unusable.
  • The cancelled Blue Streak missile nuclear MRBM developed by Britain with US technical support. The missle's silos needed to be in stable rock formations but basing them in the South East England would have been politicially unsupportable. Also the system was liquid fuelled demanding the building of a large surface infrastructure that would be easy to spot and target. Blue Streak was cancelled and British hopes for an independent deterent switched to Skybolt. Blue streak was a successful part of the European ELDO launch vehicle but that project also ended.
  • The USAF Skybolt missile was a B-52 launched ballistic missle. The first five test firings in 1962 failed, and the project was cancelled when its need was obviated by SLBM and underground silo protected ICBMs.
  • The MGM-51 Shillelagh gun launched missle armed not one, but two failed and one nearly failed tanks, the M551 Sheridan, M60A2, and the never deployed MBT-70 tank. By 1971, 88,000 missles were produced. The Sheridan would frequently disable the missle's experimental electronics when the main gun was fired in Vietnam, though the light tank would last to Desert Storm. The minimum range of the missle to acquire guidance was beyond the range of the gun's HEAT rounds, leaving a 120 m defense gap.
  • The original M16 rifle was so widely known as a failure that initially, North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops refused to take them from slain soldiers during the Vietnam War. But it became highly successful after redesign of its shell casing ejector system.
  • The British SA80 rifle, whilst an excellent weapon on the firing range, was notoriously unreliable in field conditions until modified and is still the subject of criticism.

[edit] Failed scientific projects

  • Cold fusion - after much hype, claims of success proved false. (Research into cold fusion continues.)

[edit] Failed civil engineering projects

  • Between 1920 and 1925, at a cost of US $6,000,000 (2004 equivalent about $61,000,000), a 7 mile (11 km) tunnel was built in Ohio for the Cincinnati Subway. Only after the initial investment was spent was it learned that there was no interest in funding completion of the project, which remains unfinished and unused today.
  • The St. Francis Dam failed and ruptured in 1928, sending a flood of water down the San Francisquito Canyon, wiping away several small towns and killing an estimated 400-500 people. The event occurred scarcely 12 hours after supervising engineer William Mulholland dismissed the growing cracks and leaks.
  • The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed in 1940 due to aeroelastic flutter in a gale force wind.
  • Levee failures in Greater New Orleans, 2005 An extensive levee and flood wall system was built up to protect the low lying areas of New Orleans from flooding from the Mississippi River and from Lake Ponchartrain. Due to a design or construction error several flood walls were breached by the storm surge in Lake Ponchartrain caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Most of the city was flooded resulting in a large fraction of the 1000+ deaths reported in the city following the hurricane.

[edit] Failed buildings

  • The Gothic Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais in Beauvais, France, begun in the year 1247, was an ambitious attempt at the tallest cathedral in Europe. The vaulting of the choir collapsed in 1284 due to poor engineering, and a central tower failed in 1573, permanently halting work on the project. A part of the cathedral still stands and is known for its fine stained glass.
  • The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. After its completion in 1956, this major urban renewal project almost immediately fell into disrepair, disuse and vandalism. It was entirely demolished on March 16, 1972, and this event is seen as a milestone in architectural history: an end to Modernism, the beginning of postmodernism, the signal of a profound disconnect between designers and users, and a turning point in public housing and urban planning.
  • Portsmouth's Tricorn Centre, a mixed use Brutalist-style building, designed by Owen Luder and opened in 1966; by the 1980s it was voted as one of Britain's ugliest buildings, and was considered a social hazard. The structure originally consisted of apartments, stores, a nightclub, and a parking garage but never prospered with each facility closed down and condemned. The complex was demolished in 2004.
  • The John Hancock Tower in Boston is said to have been "known more for its early engineering flaws than for its architectural achievement." Wind-induced swaying was so large, it induced motion sickness in upper-floor residents, requiring the addition of a pair of 300-ton dampers on the 58th floor. Another unrelated but serious problem was that 65 of its 10,344 floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windowpanes fell out of the building to the ground during construction in 1973 (with, amazingly, no injuries to passersby or workers), and all required replacement. During engineering analysis of these problems, it was also discovered that under certain wind conditions the building could actually collapse, requiring 1500 tons of structural reinforcements in the building's core.
  • The elevated walkways of the Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapsed during a tea dance in 1981, killing more than 100 people. (See Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.)
  • Lafayett Center, an urban mall built in downtown Boston in the 1980s , held up fine structurally but its circular design was claustrophobic, and so few shoppers went that it was torn down by the early 1990s.
  • The Highland Towers collapse (December 11, 1993, in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) caused the deaths of 48 people.
  • The Sampoong Department Store collapse killed over 500 in 1995.
  • The May 24, 2001, collapse of the Versailles wedding hall in Jerusalem, Israel, killed 23 and injured more than 200. The collapse was blamed on poor construction practices. The disaster, which is considered Israel's worst civil disaster, was caught on videotape. The wedding hall was built using the cheaper Pal-Kal method, which uses thinner sections of concrete than usual during construction. The building method was banned in 1996 because of safety concerns. Ten people were arrested by the Israeli authorities, including the wedding hall's owners, the engineer who invented the Pal-Kal method, and contractors and builders involved with recent renovations. In October 2004, two of the owners of the hall were convicted of causing death through negligence; two other employees were acquitted.
  • Summerland; an innovative leisure centre on the Isle of Man that suffered a fire in 1973. The use of plastic for construction and inadequate fire protection led to 51 deaths

[edit] Failed mechanical engineering projects

  • Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Atmospheric railway in South Devon, England in the 1840's failed because of the expense of operating the pumping stations and problems in maintaining a vacuum seal. The main issues were the impossibility of two lines crossing and the more prosaic issue of rats eating the leather used for the airtight seals.

[edit] Failed ships

  • Mary Rose, although intially succesful, reconstruction led to her being top heavy and she capsized the day after the Battle of the Solentin 1545.
  • RMS Titanic: Although billed in the popular press as an unsinkable ship, the Titanic struck an iceberg on its first voyage and did not have enough lifeboats for everyone aboard, so many of the passengers drowned. Her watertight bulkheads designed to allow the vessel to remain afloat in the event of compartments being flooded did not extend to a high enough deck level to have the desired effect. The film Titanic was a fictionalised dramatisation of these events. Her sister ship the HMHS Britannic sank after striking a mine during World War One, the other sistership RMS Olympic survived collisions with a cruiser and a submarine and was not taken out of service until 1935.
  • Vasa (ship): A 17th-century Swedish warship, it sank on its maiden voyage because of design flaws; when fully loaded with crew, supplies and weaponry, the lower-deck gun ports were low enough to allow water to flow in
  • K class submarine: a group of steam-driven fast 19 kt big (2,000 ton) submarines rushed into production by Britain during World War I. The vessels were famous for sinking, exploding and generally going out of control. On 31 January 1917, during an exercise off May Island, Scotland, 105 submariners were killed in an accident that resulted in the complete loss of 2 subs and the damaging of 3 others.

[edit] Failed standards

  • Brunel's broad-gauge railway track for the Great Western Railway, at just over 7 feet, was incompatible with the "standard" gauge of 4ft 8½" used elsewhere. Despite its demonstrable benefits for comfort, speed and safety, the standard gauge was given precedence as it served a larger network.
  • The United States Mint's Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins both failed to gain popular acceptance.
  • The Common management interface protocol (CMIP) largely flopped as a replacement for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The complexity of CMIP is often cited as the reason it was not more widely adopted.
  • The Metric Conversion Act of 1975 was an attempt to institute the use of the Metric system in the United States within ten years. The United States has never converted to the metric system, let alone in ten years.
  • The decline of the ALGOL computing language, once the dominant language in academic computer science, was in part due to disputes and consequent delays in the standardization process.

[edit] See also

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