LAST EDITED ON Apr-14-08 AT 06:51 PM (EDT)
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html?ex=1365912000&en=56cd673d51f43234&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

This may get moved, but since the Great Ship features so heavily in NXE, I thought people'd enjoy reading the article.

It looks like Harland and Wolff seriously skimped on the rivets used in the construction of Titanic and her sisters - going with 3 bar iron (instead of 4 bar or steel) in the bow and stern, and only using the higher quality rivets at the heavier stress points because of shortages.

The NY Times article goes into more depth, but I thought it was pretty fascinating, especially the explanation that they found the seams where the hull was breached -stopped dead- right where the riveters switched from 3-bar iron to steel. It does seem likely that better rivets would have either kept her afloat, or at least made her sink much, much slower...

Pff. Typical New York Times coverup hack job. Everybody knows it was a comet.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

>Pff. Typical New York Times coverup hack job. Everybody knows
>it was a comet.

Brilliantly retold in the film A Night of the Comet to Remember.

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

I really need to stop having beverages around when I read this board...

The book version of A Night of the Comet to Remember was superior to the movie - indeed, it's superior to pretty much all other adaptations - though of course Walter Lord didn't have access to the very latest comet research when he wrote it.

Alas, the same problem also plagues his other seminal work, A Comet of Infamy, which is about the infamous Japanese comet attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

This doesn't happen to tie into that bizarre theory that Hitler's SS were researching ways to bombard the United States with Meteors, and only the end of the war kept them from doing so?

I'm reminded of a thought that Alan Shepard had back during the Mercury days:

“I was up there looking around, and suddenly I realized I was sitting on top of a rocket built by the lowest bidder.”