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The most expensive number in engineering

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Re: The most expensive number in engineering

#171

Post by jdmichal »

nearbuy wrote: post #149
snowwrestler wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Star Wars was released, it was understood to be science fiction. See this interview with Alec Guinness in 1977: https://youtu.be/0qxcEBI1iKI They both call it science fiction. Lucas was wary of that label because science fiction had a (well-earned) reputation at that time as a ghetto of heavy-handed allegory with hammy acting and terrible special effects. Lucas was striving for more than that. He was trying to c…

Any fantasy movie in a futuristic setting (even one that's technically in the past, like Star Wars) would be widely considered science fiction. Granted, that is a common definition of science fiction. But science fiction can also be something like The Twilight Zone: a genre that explores "what-if" scenarios. A genre that takes some fictional premise and attempts to explore the consequences logically. An example premi…

I don't know if Arrival has a book, and if it does I didn't read it. But the movie seems pretty solidly in what you're describing as "sci-fi" here. Takes a single premise and then builds the world around that "what-if". Same with Contact and Jurassic Park, with touches of drama and action / horror, respectively.

Re: The most expensive number in engineering

#173

Post by nearbuy »

jdmichal wrote: post #171
nearbuy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any fantasy movie in a futuristic setting (even one that's technically in the past, like Star Wars) would be widely considered science fiction. Granted, that is a common definition of science fiction. But science fiction can also be something like The Twilight Zone: a genre that explores "what-if" scenarios. A genre that takes some fictional premise and attempts to explore the consequences logically. An example premi…

I don't know if Arrival has a book, and if it does I didn't read it. But the movie seems pretty solidly in what you're describing as "sci-fi" here. Takes a single premise and then builds the world around that "what-if". Same with Contact and Jurassic Park, with touches of drama and action / horror, respectively.

Yeah, Arrival fits well and I enjoyed it. There are a number of lower budget films you could add to that list like Primer, Moon (2009), or Gattaca. Ex Machina is sci-fi + drama. I'm sure there's plenty more. There's just a tendency for sci-fi films to lean heavily into action (or occasionally horror) like The Martian film did when compared with the book.

Jurassic Park feels more action/horror focused to me, but it has a sci-fi premise.

Re: The most expensive number in engineering

#174

Post by klez »

jdmichal wrote: post #171
nearbuy wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any fantasy movie in a futuristic setting (even one that's technically in the past, like Star Wars) would be widely considered science fiction. Granted, that is a common definition of science fiction. But science fiction can also be something like The Twilight Zone: a genre that explores "what-if" scenarios. A genre that takes some fictional premise and attempts to explore the consequences logically. An example premi…

I don't know if Arrival has a book, and if it does I didn't read it. But the movie seems pretty solidly in what you're describing as "sci-fi" here. Takes a single premise and then builds the world around that "what-if". Same with Contact and Jurassic Park, with touches of drama and action / horror, respectively.

> I don't know if Arrival has a book

Yep. Arrival is an adaptation of a Ted Chiang short story, Story of Your Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_of_Your_Life)

Re: The most expensive number in engineering

#175

Post by warrenm »

codeflo wrote: post #35

The article suggests using a probabilistic failure model instead of a large a safety factor, and explains how a safety factor established in the 1930s affected the cost of the Space Shuttle. But spacecraft might be a special case, where any additional weight is so expensive, and you also expect the models to be especially accurate and manufacturing to be extremely precise. For more everyday civil engineering, I think…

Did you get to the end of the article? He addresses this:

>A bigger issue, and the one I think has prevented more widespread adoption, is that probabilistic design doesn’t account for fluke events -- the unknowables. If you don’t know what could happen, you obviously can’t assign that event a probability.

>The ideal approach might be a hybrid. Probabilistic design could be responsible for covering simplifications and a reduced safety factor could cover the unknowables. Of course, there’s no simple way to determine how much of the current factor covers simplifications, so reducing the factor would still be a risky endeavor.

Re: The most expensive number in engineering

#176

Post by warrenm »

saalweachter wrote: post #153
lamontcg wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or more simply: planes that get hit with massive unexpected turbulence shouldn't just drop out of the sky and kill everyone on board. And to paraphrase the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, it is all about the unknown-unknowns.

Any plane that can land missing half a wing on one engine is over-engineered, from a certain point of view.

So... you'd rather it crash and kill everyone onboard?
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