This paper has many excellent diagrams and artist's sketches of the construction and sinking of these vessels. The summary findings are that initial leakage into the hull of the Titanic after the impact with the iceberg was estimated to be through an equivalent orifice size of about 12 square feet, about the frontal area of a large man. Most of the leakage was thought to be through rivet holes where the rivets had sheared, and the gaps between sprung plates along the starboard side of the hull. The addition of any pressure from velocity of travel through the water would have been so slight as to be of no consequence, compared with the static head of the water.

The stopping of the engines was a standard procedure to ensure control of boiler fires and also to facilitate lowering of the lifeboats.

It seems pointless to speculate on alternative procedures that may have been considered, since the true nature of the leakage paths could not have been known at the time, but it does seem a pity that the old tried and true technique from sailing ship days was not at least attempted, which might have delayed the sinking a few hours. From the earliest days of sailing vessels a standard procedure called "fothering" was developed to delay or prevent the foundering of a holed vessel.

This consisted of dropping weighted spare sails into the water alongside the damaged section of the hull, and letting the water pressure force the sailcloth into the rents, slowing the flow of water, hopefully to a rate that could be equaled by the ship's pumps. This would frequently enable internal repairs to be effected by shoring up the remaining leaks from the inside with additional timbers and caulking.

One wonders, if this procedure had been adopted on the Titanic immediately after hitting the berg and stopping, using mattresses, tarpaulins, and any other available materials, could the leakage rate have been slowed sufficiently to have kept the vessel afloat until the Carpathia arrived.

As with all great human disasters, some good came from the sinking, including the first use of a U.S. Congressional investigation procedure, and changes to the legal requirements for lifeboat provision as well as to the design of watertight bulkheads.

Concern for the environment is obviously a defensible thing, and reducing our dependence on energy would also be wise from the standpoint of public policy. But a larger concern is that new regulations that will probably be expensive and restrictive to Americans may be imposed based on dishonest science when, ironically, it is science that is being invoked as justification.

If we decide to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels, it should be achieved through some positive means such as tax incentives, rather than through regulatory fiat disguised as environmental action. Environmental laws that do not address real environmental problems are of no value. In fact, the entire credibility of the environmental movement is at risk.

Scientific data that has been published based on balloon and satellite measurements taken over the last 18 years indicates at least a steady global average temperature, and in fact a slight cooling trend has been observed. It has been widely published that the significant warming has occurred during this century. However, all of that change took place prior to 1940, while the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has occurred for the most part since that date. This contradicts the computer models, which predict that a warming trend should have been observed during these last 50 years.

If data does not match the prediction, usually one questions the theory. In the case of global warming, however, the data has been questioned or discarded altogether, but the theory has been left unchanged, with apocalypse predicted. This has led to a great deal of public misinformation on this subject, and Mechanical Engineering would serve its readers and society better by providing more balance in its reporting.

Let's take care not to leave a world of groundless political restriction to our children. Rules that are justified through the invocation of science but are not based on honest objectivity contain the seeds of political control by an unaccountable elite, something which I am certain would be opposed by the majority of your readers.

While I would agree this would be useful, neither ASME nor any other organization can give a truly "nonpolitically biased assessment." Assessments are inevitably influenced, and sometimes driven, by nonscientific considerations. Every organization is composed of individuals who have likes, dislikes, political leanings, opinions, different levels of knowledge and understanding, etc.

On some questions (e.g., 2+2=4), there is no argument as to the correct answer. However, whenever judgment, choices, or assumptions are required to obtain a solution to a possibly ill- defined problem, well-educated, reasonable individuals can arrive at very different conclusions. The more complex the issue, the greater the possibility of disagreement.

The difficulty lies in how we interpret the information. We can fall back on the old cliche about how two people view a two-cup glass, with one cup of water in it: One person will see it as half-empty, while the other person will see it as half-full. If we have a much more complex problem that involves engineering, economics, sociology, politics, etc., it is not at all surprising there are widely differing opinions.

All we can hope is there are reasonable people striving to incorporate the best science into the decision-making process. Ultimately, though, many nonscientific, nontechnological factors also will be used to arrive at a decision.

In that light, we need to renew the nuclear power industry. It is the only proven alternative to fossil fuels and is remarkably safe and benign. The only serious accident in the United States has been at Three Mile Island, and even with that, the plant contained virtually everything and did what it was supposed to do. (Okay, Brown's Ferry was serious, but they were able to shut down without a release.)

To be rational, ask yourselves what coal-fired plants are doing for the environment and how many people are hurt, killed and made ill in the coal mining industry.

Our only sensible recourse is to reverse the decision of Jimmy Carter, and start reprocessing fuel and set course to build 150 or so new plants in the next 30 years so some of the old plants can be shut down without using even more fossil fuel.

By the way, lest we forget, that would ensure full employment of thousands of engineers.

Lower-cost hardware tends to be heavier, which either reduces payload or requires a greater number of stages to reach orbit. There is no indication that the latest developments have been able to circumvent this rule. For example, the Fastrac engine is described as weighing nearly 3 percent of its thrust level. The record for oxygen/kerosene rocket engine weight is below 1 percent of thrust. An important question for programs like Fastrac is whether an engine's manufacturing cost reduction can offset other cost increases due to higher engine weight.

At the other extreme, single stage to orbit requires exceedingly lightweight hardware. SSTO vehicles would be so expensive that reducing net cost requires amortizing over many flights between overhauls. This is challenging because sufficiently lightweight engines and structures are likely to be fragile. As explained in the article, an SSTO vehicle must be 90 percent oxygen and hydrogen at launch. Realistically, the engine weight is limited to a small part of the remaining 10 percent.

Oxygen/hydrogen engines such as the Space Shuttle main engine weigh about 2 percent of their sea level thrust. The XRS-2200 linear aerospike engine for the X-33 is described as producing 206,400 lbs. of thrust and weighing 7,500 lbs., or 3.6 percent. The percentage of launch weight is even greater since thrust must exceed weight (typically by 4/3). Thus, at nearly 5 percent, such an engine would use almost half of the empty weight budget for an SSTO vehicle. From this, it is easy to appreciate that the X-33 is a technology testbed that will not reach orbit. The real value in the program will be in obtaining repeated flight experience with a fully reusable rocket vehicle.

I can run a weld bead and hack a piece of steel in two with a torch, but that doesn't make me a journeyman or AWS-certified welder. I can collect pipe fittings and install test gauges on the inlet and discharge of a pump, but that doesn't make me a journeyman pipefitter or journeyman I&C technician. I can pi tape and caliper a turbine blade ring, but that doesn't make me a journeyman millwright.

There is more to engineering than presenting bad data in a pretty colored graph, picking equipment out of a stack of vendor catalogs, and spending all afternoon on AutoCAD.

You wannabes want the pay, prestige, pay, influence, pay, perks, pay, title, and pay of an engineer, but you are apparently unwilling or unable to do the work.

The engineering profession should expect no less from engineers than from the journeyman of any craft—study the material, complete the quals, and practice the work. In other words, earn it, just like we did.

I am of Italian descent and live in southern Louisiana, in the heart of sugar cane country. Sugar is the principal crop, petrochemicals the industry.

Here, most of the cane farmers are of French-German descent. However, some of the award-winning farmers in my area, the town of Donaldsonville in Ascension Parish, bear names such as Sotile and Latino.

Your descriptions of the way the crops are harvested and hauled to the plant, that it runs 24 hours a day, and the hiring of seasonal workers sound very much like what we call "grinding." The mills are operated to grind and process the freshly harvested cane crop.

Thank you for such an interesting article.

Gardner and I agree the article was interesting. Unlike Gardner, however, I was not surprised that Valenti "did not refer to the fact that tilting is necessary to keep the train on the track" because tilting is not necessary to keep the train on the tracks. Tilting only maintains a satisfactory level of passenger comfort during operations at higher-than- conventional speeds through curves.

A tilting car body is designed so that there is only a small lateral shift in the center gravity as it tilts in a curve. Consequently, the forces are the same, whether the car body tilts or not. Extensive testing by Amtrak has proven this fact. David C. Warner, P.E. Wilmington, Del.

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