The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades • Hacker News Board

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#141

Post by cloakandswagger » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:51 PM UTC

blub wrote: post #112

cloakandswagger wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seemed like irresponsible speculation on Vanity Fair's part to me. The root cause was a captain who mistakenly reacted off of 12 hour old data and ignored another source of data that contradicted it. Pretty surprising given the lengths the article goes through to impress upon the reader how "safety conscious" he was.

It is speculation, but it is also relevant. Commercial shipping may be uniquely prone to accidents caused by profit-driven decisions, as discussed in Perrow's Normal Accidents book. The article probably emphasises the captain's safety consciousnes to prevent people from "blaming the operator", which is an instinctual and often wrong conclusion to jump to. The NTSB report says: Performance. The chief mate's performanc…

In this case the blame is deserved though. The Coast Guard's report places the blame fully on the captain.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#142

Post by Shivetya » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

leeter wrote: post #136

What amazed me reading the report was just how vulnerable the ship was to sinking if it had a list during a storm. While an 18 degree list is extreme it's not unforeseeable in a serious emergency. The problem was this put ventilation openings at a height where they were directly subject to green water infiltration. To make it worse only the intakes were 'watertight' the exhausts were only 'weathertight' meaning that…

well there is a big gulf between storm and hurricane. if they had encountered a normal squall it is doubtful they would have been in trouble but they ran straight into a CAT3 hurricane which if you have experienced on land you know its not even remotely sane to be out in it.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#143

Post by dreamcompiler » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:07 PM UTC

thisrod wrote: post #118

dreamcompiler wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this a big problem before computers? I doubt it. Back in the analog days two people would engage in a dialogue and ensure the units were agreed upon. Now people just blindly type data into a screen, or two computers blindly exchange packets without proper metadata. It's ironic that we have 1000x better navigational accuracy than a 19th century tallship captain but we're much more careless with the data than he wo…

I don't think it's carelessness, rather that 1000x more accurate navigation gives you a lot more things to care about. That 19th century captain measured the angle between the pole star and the local horizon with a sextant; the cartographers did it the same way, because that was the only thing you could do. Today, we work with atomic clocks, and our instruments fabricate an angle between the z-axis and a 100th order…

Fair point.

> That 19th century captain measured the angle between the pole star and the local horizon with a sextant;

Which immediately provided latitude. To get longitude, he did the same with just about any other star and correlated the angle to an accurate clock and carefully-prepared tables.

That "accurate clock" business was why longitude was such a difficult navigational problem for so long until John Harrison finally cracked it. (I know this is getting OT but I find it fascinating.)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Harrison

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#144

Post by andyjohnson0 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:20 PM UTC

SeanBoocock wrote: post #85

Luc wrote: post #4

I could tell from the title this was going to be written by William Langewiesche. He really knows how to spin a good yarn. All his articles and books seem to be movie-worthy. I'm not entirely convinced reality is that exciting, though.

A great example is his treatment of Air France 447: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-...

A great article. I've read it a couple of times and this part always gets me:

"In the cockpit, the situation was off the scale of test flights. After Dubois arrived, the stall warning temporarily stopped, essentially because the angle of attack was so extreme that the system rejected the data as invalid. This led to a perverse reversal that lasted nearly to the impact: each time Bonin happened to lower the nose, rendering the angle of attack marginally less severe, the stall warning sounded again—a negative reinforcement that may have locked him into his pattern of pitching up, assuming he was hearing the stall warning at all."

They must have been so confused and frightened.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#145

Post by tcopeland » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #37

jonathanberger wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you like this article, I recommend finding his other pieces particularly about airplane crashes. He writes in a gripping manner and normally seems to have done pretty thorough background research, as well as personal experience.

He has a whole book on maritime incidents (culled from long-form narrative pieces he did at The Atlantic) --- The Outlaw Sea.

That looks great, and my local library has a copy, thanks for the pointer!

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#146

Post by jschwartzi » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #101

Declanomous wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should at least place a large warning stating that the data is not safe to use for navigational purposes.

I'm sort of surprised that data from a source like that is used. Have you ever seen the weather data that airline captains use? It looks like this: KORD 050251Z 26006KT 10SM SCT110 M02/M09 A3019 RMK AO2 SLP232 T10171089 53009 That's the current weather conditions for Chicago O'Hare. Looks like gibberish to you and me but airline captains know what it means and they know how old the observation is. Captain has ultimat…

You can't get licensed as a pilot without being able to read METARS. They will not let you fly. Find me a comparable licensure requirement for marine captains.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#147

Post by organman91 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

gregschlom wrote: post #51

I don't see anyone here commenting on this, but there's an interesting software / UI angle in this story: the captain preferred the fancier, animated-map-style weather reports from a 3rd-party company (B.V.S. reports) to the more terse text-only reports from the National Hurricane Center (sat-C reports). Turns out, the B.V.S reports were using raw data that was 10 to 12 hours old - and they didn't explicitly mention…

An aviation accident case study pinpointed a similar issue with in-cockpit weather displays. In this case the delay was less than 10 minutes, but it was enough to be fatal: https://youtu.be/83uvKWJS2os

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#148

Post by jacquesm » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 2:49 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #102

jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a movie that reviews that situation in a navy (nuclear submarine) context, it's called 'Crimson Tide'.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, Jacques. We’ve been in a couple spats here but I’ve always respected your thoughts and opinion. Have (yet another) upvote :).

I suspect my comments in the thread about the Google shooting gained me a fresh batch of enemies.

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#149

Post by saturationPoint » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:04 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #148

leesalminen wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, Jacques. We’ve been in a couple spats here but I’ve always respected your thoughts and opinion. Have (yet another) upvote :).

I suspect my comments in the thread about the Google shooting gained me a fresh batch of enemies.

If you look at the numbers for this site, these days, HN is too popular for it's own good, and it's getting really noisy.

On the front page right now, there are lots of garbage articles, with 500+ upvotes and comments, and any one of them handily enables new downvoters.

Way more people can downvote now, than ever before, and users relish new power. Having a respectful honor system, and some voting ring detection is great, but the truth is, there are a lot more shitty people on this site. What to do about that?

Re: The Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades

#150

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 3:28 PM UTC

saturationPoint wrote: post #149

jacquesm wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect my comments in the thread about the Google shooting gained me a fresh batch of enemies.

If you look at the numbers for this site, these days, HN is too popular for it's own good, and it's getting really noisy. On the front page right now, there are lots of garbage articles, with 500+ upvotes and comments, and any one of them handily enables new downvoters. Way more people can downvote now, than ever before, and users relish new power. Having a respectful honor system, and some voting ring detection is g…

I'm not saying you're wrong, but would you mind posting that from your non-greenbean account? I won't downvote you! It's just fake internet points anyway; why worry? I get downvoted every day I post. (Not every item I post.) Sometimes there is a lesson to be learned, sometimes there isn't.