Asklemmy

43942 readers

947 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

306

What are some notable blunders in history that resulted in huge loss? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by bady@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

209 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Loss in terms of money or efforts. Could be recent or ancient.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Lemmylefty@lemmy.world 61 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Since December 1982, the O-rings had been designated a “Criticality 1″ item by NASA, denoting a component without a backup, whose failure would result in the loss of the shuttle and its crew.

Richard Feynman[:] “… [the shuttle] flies [with O-ring erosion] and nothing happens. Then it is suggested, therefore, that the risk is no longer so high for the next flights. We can lower our standards a little bit because we got away with it last time. You got away with it, but it shouldn’t be done over and over again like that.”

Taken from an excellent writeup of the fatal 1986 Challenger flight.

[–] Alto@kbin.social 37 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Never forget that Reagan heavily pressured them to not delay for political reasons

[–] Alterecho@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Ahh, the Gipper strikes again. Famously an expert Economist, Rocket Scientist, and "totally not a racist"