15 Crazy Engineering Mistakes 

The number 3 one (Deepwater Horizon) affected my town here in Florida panhandle. I remember it. Oil-soaked birds, turtles, fish, etc. ALL along the beach. Oil balls still being recovered occasionally. The dispersant they used only got Oil off the surface (made it sink) so the full extent of Oil damage isn't truly known.

Cool video but disappointed that the Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapse didn't make it onto this video. The Millennium Bridge swaying 3 inches side to side has nothing on "Galloping Gertie" which collapsed in 1940 after only being open for four months. Plenty of videos showing just how drastically the bridge was swaying not just side to side but also up and down at the same time. It was one of the longest suspension bridges at the time and the entire center section looked like waves in the ocean before completely collapsing into Puget Sound below.

I remember when the Hyatt skywalks collapsed. I was living in KC then.

I worked at the Mall of America a few years after it opened and they had similar problems with their Aquarium. It leaked into our warehouse at least once.

What - no Challenger "O" ring?

I was surprised the Willow Island disaster couldn't be included on here.

The Lotus building *was* built on solid ground, but an underground parking garage was dug out later from beneath it, and with the pile-up of that dirt next to the building the entire support base was compromised.

The B2 has been a very productive airframe.

2020 was all about survival with many achievements not met but you have to be ready for the future and it begins right now by making a move to achieve your goals…If you have been saving and it’s not really getting you to were you want to be, then invest that money today for a better life tomorrow. If you can’t fly, run, if you can’t run walk, if you can’t walk crawl but just try and move to achieving your goals..

People think Mars is going to be like Dune, but it won't be. We live on the most astonishing, beautiful, varied and incredible place in the universe, I can't imagine ever going anywhere else! I want to explore here!!!

I had one of those pintos. Mine was a 77, and by then, they had fixed it. All they did, was put a piece of nylon or white plastic, between the rear end housing, and the gas tank. That's all it needed, and it worked. Car kind of got a bad rap for something stupid.it really wasn't that bad of a car.

Thank you for the update, Top Fives..!! 12:35 I have never seen that footage before. @.@

The issue with The Big Dig was overwhelming ubiquitous corruption.

What about Apollo 1 were all three Astronauts burned to death during a test in the Apollo capsule?

No Space Shuttle Challenger??

The Challenger is a horrible event caused by a mistake. I knew .Sharon Christa McAuliffe. She was my friends aunt. My whole school knew her. It was such a horrible day, and unnecessary deaths. I will never forget that day. My whole school closed for 3 days after that.

You missed the most 'interesting' bit about the Pinto, the executives at Ford knew of the problem but calculated that it would be cheaper to pay compensation to the survivors rather than fix it. Pinto has become the byword for corporate greed.

Hyatt Regency. Matthys Levi's excellent "Why Buildings Fall Down" describes this tragedy very well. The design called for pairs of long threaded rods hung from the ceiling; a short cross-beam with a hole at either end was slid on to both rods and lifted to the fourth-floor level, and threaded collars spun onto each rod and up under the beam to secure it. Repeat with another beam and pair of collars at the second-floor level. Repeat this structure several times across the atrium; lay the walkways across the beams. The rods and ceiling connections were designed to carry the load of the entire structure with a reasonable margin of safety, including dead load (the simple weight of the structure itself) as well as static & dynamic loads of people using the walkways. The cross-beams were likewise designed to carry the various loads of a single walkway, again with a reasonable margin of safety. The long rods were expensive, heavy, and generally difficult to handle, and threading the collars from the end all the way to the fourth-floor level took a long time (and time is money). As actually built, they hung shorter rods from the ceiling down to the fourth-floor level; a short cross-beam with TWO sets of holes at each end was slid onto the rods, with the threaded collar attached underneath to secure the fourth-floor beam. Then a second pair of threaded rods was slid through the second set of holes on that beam, with a nut on top, to hang a second set of shorter rods from the fourth-floor beam down to the second-floor level; the second-floor beam was attached to these rods as per the original design. Again, repeat across the atrium, and lay the walkways on the beams. The second-floor walkway was thus suspended from the fourth-floor beams, instead of from a continuous rod all the way to the ceiling, which meant that the fourth-floor beams were carrying both walkways - twice the load they were originally designed to carry - and, those fourth-floor beams were weaker than the original design, due to the addition of a second set of holes. Some of these beams failed, which led to the cascading collapse of both walkways.

Narrator sounds like Charlie Sheen on Adderrall.

To see more about Chrnobyl put this in the search chernobyl documentary, there are some amazing videos here....

One of the issues with the Chernobyl RBMK reactors, was that the RBMK designs, while generally very safe, have a positive void coefficient in their design. Basically, the more "voids", IE bubbles in the coolant, in this case water, the faster the reaction, the more heat, etc. This, combined with a cutoff of the water coolant, caused a massive feedback loop and overheating. US reactors, by and large, have a negative void coefficient, whereby the more voids, the less reactive the plant. There are other safeties in place for both, of course, and several RBMK reactors have been operating successfully for decades. I have, again, way oversimplified. i just wanted to share a little something I knew.

#Number15 should be on top of the list!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Millennium Bridge: so I was in London & visiting the Tate Modern the day the bridge opened. It was way too crowded, but we resolved to cross the next day. We were in line. People were crossing. Then, with no explanation, they closed it. We were hugely disappointed. There had been so much hype. Only once back in California did we learn the reason behind all this. But, today, if you visit St. Paul's, as you must, then cross this bridge and go to the Tate Modern.

You could have included Bhopal Gas Plant strategy. Thousands of people were affected due to that

very nice video.

Who made this trash building? Engineer: *sweats* Architect: 👁👄👁

How can I become a part of the top fives production team? That seems like an extremely cool job!

Just prior to those panels collapsing, my family took a vacation to Boston. We drove through that very tunnel. When we saw that on the news we felt very lucky. Also power isn't volts, power is watts

The F.S.U. Bridge failure was a direct result from several different engineering and oversight mistakes that cost lives, all of which could have been prevented if ego wouldn't have gotten in the way.

The Hyatt walkway changes were approved *by telephone* with no on-site review or study of plans. Several licenses were lost in the aftermath.

To consider the B2 bomber a mistake because of one problem X expensive is that my baby a bad sensor overall the b2 was brilliant

How many people hear Charlie Sheen?

The one thing I'm curious about is what happens to the previous rovers that were sent to Mars.... ie. what do they do with them after their "useful life" as an exploration rover has ended?

On its fiftieth year, the Golden Gate Bridge closed for vehicular traffic and only had pedestrian traffic. The bridge bent more than had been expected, with lots of sway.

Talks about Apollo 13. Shows video of the shuttle, but doesn't talk about the two catastrophic preventable failures. Hmmm. Also in general, for a video about engineering mistakes, I'd have expected a little more depth about the actual mistakes. For example, what was the reason for that bridge disaster? Or for that matter, the other bridge problem? As for Deepwater Horizon, if I recall correctly, this was ultimately a case of regulatory failure, where regulators relied more than warranted on self-regulation in the industry, which, in the end, was more interested in cutting cost than enhancing safety, with entirely predictable results. Just like, oh, the 737max disaster? (And while we're at Boeing, when - if ever - will we see Starliner actually work as intended?)

An excellent video. 💙 T.E.N.

The wonders of the freemarket

🐼 Big Bear Hugs from a 67 yr old grandma in Kirby, Texas, USA 🐼.....

The biggest engineering / design mistakes in South Africa are the Foreshore freeways: parts of the highway just hang in mid air.

It's been 35 years since the incident at Chernobyl power plant.

Unfortunate events all, but as long as giant, faceless companies continue chintzing as much as possible just to put a few extra bucks in their own pockets, stuff like this will always happen.

What happened to Japan's Nuclear plant disaster???

I was expecting the Hubble Telescope to make this list...

Why did they show the Space Shuttle during the Apollo 13 segment?

Never forget how Forrest Gump heroically brought Apollo 13 back from certain doom....

When talking about the Apollo program why show footage of the Space Shuttle? Also, granted the Ford Pinto had a serious issue, you shouldn't show a scene from the from the 1984 comedy Top Secret as an example of that design flaw.

The space shuttle takes off and parts fall off and go thru the wing heat shields. What could possibly go wrong?

The platform issue happened in Ireland also. Trains ordered for a suburban service from Dublin to Drogheda (30 miles north of the city) were too wide for stations on the route, which had platforms extending under road overbridges at stations. The shorter sections on the "wrong" side of the bridge were abandoned and new sections at the other end of the station added to maintain platform length.

And the sad part about the pinto was Ford had developed a tank with a bladder but decided it wasn't cost effective.

Dear person that's reading this, we don't know reach others but I wish you all the best in life 💞 don't ever blame yourself, your smile is precious and a key for happy life...😊

Why hotel walkway flaw wasn't explained?

Is this the same voice dude as simple history?

Footage of the Ford Pinto explosion was later deemed engineered and is not indicative of actual fuel tank failure during accidents, not to say they didn't occur. The footage you use should have a disclaimer or remove ve it.

11:47 Berths, not ports. Subs and ships have berths where they tie up in ports.

The photo at 16:20 is from the comedy movie Top Secret. It is not a real Ford Pinto gas tank exploding.

2 years to FIX A bridge

simple history

I like how a whole model of car made the list...

Hi

I dont know. Putting a bad seal in aquarium and trains that are s bit too wide in the samd list as a misculated mars orbiter or a lake sucked into a mine seems pretty random.

All I could think of when the Millennium Bridge was discussed was the attack by the Death Eaters...

Sad thing is it always takes people to die before anything is done even though they knew about the problems before hand, there needs to be murder attached to those charges, not manslaughter or death by accident but full on murder and punished accordingly.

Apparently, the Chernobyl catastrophe was planned by a person who was responsible for a failed over-the-horizon radar station. There's a film on this topic, The Russian Woodpecker, by Chad Gracia. Though the film is admittedly odd, it's plausible.

You missed the Florida Bimbo Bridge!!!

Tow the Subs to Boston.. Both underwater...

i get the feeling that B2 crash was due to covered PICO tubes..

What about Fukushima?

"this way its cheaper" will lead to lot of failures

Did you know ?? The human eye is so sensitive that if the earth were flat and it was dark night a candle's flame could be seen from 30 miles away

LMAO @ using HBO's account of Chernobyl.

19:00 So, did the safety test pass?

The walkways in the Hyatt Regency were never meant to be danced on, merely walking was a danger

I had a classmate die in a pinto in the summer of 1975. Rip Dave.

Ford Motor Company determined that it was cheaper to pay liability claims than redesign the problem and manufacturing methods.

The mine lake incident would have been avoided if government regulators have properly Mapped everything

Nothing about the tacoma bridge??

Lockhead Martin express 0.03 inches as 2.5*10^-3 ft whereas as Nasa expressed 0.03 inches as 1.181 mm or 1.181^10-3m

1:16 does this remind anyone else of the N64 star wars game?

Sup

He's the same narrator from Simple History

The designers of the pinto wanted to put the fuel tank between the sides of the rear seat, in the truck. The sales department said no, because they were thinking of offering a fold down access to the trunk. Had the fuel tank been there, it would have shielded the tank from contact.

Who cares about the costs when lives are lost. I'd hate to lose my life like any of these poor ppl. If it does happen to me, let's hope it's quick & not slow & painful. RIP everyone that lost their lives, that weren't their fault

sometimes these mistakes are just murder 😕

Hyatt failure was not due to cost cutting

The very fact that there are two measurement systems in use around the world today has caused immeasurable problems over the years! I see videos on US RU-vid channels in the metric system! I have never used the metric system as the US is using the Imperial system of measurement! When a narrator states some kind of measurement in the metric system I and most Americans have no idea what the measurement really is! This is something that should be policed by RU-vid!

Spain’s only submarine, a world force to be reckoned with!!

That was my reaction too

Chernobyl was just an honorable mention lol

The SNCF (french railways) example was not an engineering mistake. Due to new EU regulations about train sizes they knew from the beginning the trains would be too wide for the existent gap between the tracks and the platforms. The scandal was the company aggressively tried to force the regions to pay for the platforms rebuilding. The regions leaders angrily refused to share the costs and complained to the journalists saying the company designed overwide trains. The journalists did not really investigate and spread this version of the story leading the transport minister to ask for the SNCF CEO to be fired (which did not happen)

Yyeyserr!!!!!!!!!

The chineese building went down, because they digged out a parking basmenet after they built it.

#Top Five Forgot another fact about the Millineal bridge. It can't be used in wet weather as the floor gets MORE slippery then ICE and so fare all the "fixes" Have failed to correctly fix it to the point it aren't a hazard to cross for people with mobility issues.

Tim Ryan

My bro had to work on a project after a Tesco's built over a bridge caused it to collapse.

That's why everyone uses metric system

Nothing goes to Mars but your imagination. Grow up

😯

And I thought I was having a bad day...

Fukushima

Deepwater Horizon's oil spill occured on my 8th birthday