Best products from r/CatastrophicFailure

Apollo 13 was supposed to land several astronauts on the moon in 1970. About 2/3 of the way to the moon, a construction error resulted in an explosion in one of the oxygen tanks.
Despite having a severely damaged spacecraft, an incredible effort on the part of NASA engineers and the Apollo 13 astronauts themselves resulted in a safe return to Earth. It was a 'successful failure' in that the mission was a failure, but incredibly successful that everyone made it home.

It is really an interesting against-all-odds kind of story. If you're interested, you can read about it on Wikipedia, check out the book Lost Moon, or watch the 1995 movie Apollo 13 staring Tom Hanks. The movie takes a few dramatic liberties, but is a pretty accurate portrayal of the events.

It's quite a lot to bite off, but everything you want is contained in these four books:

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Atomic-Bomb-25th-Anniversary/dp/1451677618/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Sun-Making-Hydrogen-Bomb-ebook/dp/B008TRUB6O/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Richard-Rhodes-ebook/dp/B000W93DEO/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

https://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Bombs-Challenges-Dangers-Prospects-ebook/dp/B003F3PKXQ/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

Rhodes is the guy for nuclear history. I've read all four, but the last two are, admittedly, somewhat forgettable. They deal with the continuing command issues surrounding nuclear arsenals and the eventual political movement to eradicate (or, as it happened, simply limit) strategic stockpiles.

That being said, the first two, Making of the Bomb and Dark Sun, are utterly indispensible. The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1986 history of the scientific effort to elucidate the physical principles which led to bombs and of the miliitary-scientific-industrial effort to realize the possibility of a weapon. It discusses many interesting characters within this history, such as Ernest Lawrence, Leo Szilard, and of course, Oppenheimer.

I have to be honest with you - I've saved Dark Sun for last for a reason. This is one of the most phenomenally engaging books I've ever read. It has everything: the creation of doomsday weapons of, and I don't use this term loosely, unimaginable destructive potential and the obsessive quasi-fetishization of their refinement and testing on behalf of the United States' and Soviet militaries. Rhodes discusses the post-war split within the scientific community over whether to develop a hydrogen "Super" bomb, whether to share information relating to it with the Soviet Union, and the factional leveraging of security privileges and political favor to exclude those from research who did not take a sufficiently hard stand against cooperation with the USSR.

Dark Sun details bomb physics and the minutia of the testing program in just enough detail to remain compelling and accessible. Rhodes also does his best to humanize Soviet scientific personnel such as Igor Kurchatov, the father of the Soviet bomb, and the strained relationship they shared with their political patrons, such as the Darth Vader-esque Lavrenti Beria.

I hope this answers your question, and I hope that you enjoy these books as much as I did!

I read a book some years back that I want to say was called "Black Hole Sun", but as I type this I'm pretty sure the title was similar, but not this. It was about the nuclear weapons program from its inception to the later days of live testing. That being said the Book was beyond good, and pretty much changed my reading habits from almost all fiction to almost all non-fiction. If anyone knows what the title of the book was I'd love to know.


EDIT: never mind... Found it "Dark Sun" by Richard Rhodes You can get it here

What's your range? I purchased this dashcam 2 years ago, and it's been continuing to work great for me. It has excellent video quality, is low profile (reduces risk of theft and people spotting it) and is easy to install. Honestly it gives me such peace of mind that I know that if I'm in an accident, I can prove everything I say.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

So I was a bit of a goober and missed the anniversary last week, but better late than never eh? This one was especially challenging because of the level of uncertainty that still accompanies the sinking, sorry if things got a bit text-wall-y.

Aside from the usual accident reports, a major source on this was the book "Mighty Fitz" by Michael Schumacher. I recommend it, it's not too long and very informative.

As always, comment with any feedback or suggestions. I was absolutely floored by the feedback I got on my first post and I appreciate all of it.

NTSB Report

Coast Guard Report

Comprehensive Edmund Fitzgerald Documentary

Last Week's Episode

Rapid Response, by Dr. Steve Olvey, is a pretty interesting book if you can get your hands on it. He responded to this crash and basically kept Alex alive.

I'm with /u/Str8OuttaFlavortown on this not really fitting this subreddit's rules, but it really is a compelling story. If interested, check out Curse of the Narrows by Laura MacDonald.

You all might be interested in reading 'Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea' by Gary Kinder. It gets into how the SS Central America shipwreck was found.

I found it a spellbinding read.

I know the Zero was designed to make it very quick to change engines. Herman the German:

"Japanese design philosophy was far advanced, intelligent and interesting. Like today's automobiles imported from the Land of the Rising Sun, the Zero included many creative innovations. Its oil cooler, oil tank, American-type propeller and engine were assembled into one single unit held with only four big nuts to the plane's firewall (the front of a fuselage). All fuel, oil, pressure, temperature and other service lines were connected into a single, simple, "quick-disconnect" junction box. To install or remove a complete Japanese power plant together with its propeller and oil cooler system took twenty-five to thirty minutes, while a similar job on its American counterpart, the Curtiss P-40 or newer North American P-51, needed five to eight hours! Such dramatic time advantage meant very much in a combat area, where an extra plane in the air could mean a victory while one left on the ground could become
a loss due to strafing or bombing by the enemy. The Zero's right and left wings were one integral assembly with the cockpit, to save the weight of flanges and bolts. Its landing gear was light, weighing one-third of a P-40's. Other components of the Zero such as the gunsight or oxygen system were similar to or copies of German and
Russian designs."

Pretty sure truckers have truck-specific sat navs that have height and weight limits programmed into them.

This unit for example lets you input the dimensions and weight of your vehicle and it will route you accordingly.

It's expensive but IMO it'd be worth the money to have a stress-free drive.

LPT: These are life-changing amounts of awesome:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B071XHQJG8/

Life In The Fast Lane

If you're a F1 fan from the before the current ESPN years, you know Matchett as the tech guy form SPEED/NBCSN's coverage of F1 for... since at least 2004, and probably before that.

Oh, and yes, Motorsport not Autosport. I'm an old man who can't remember where he read things an hour ago.

I did a report on our history of understanding of metal fatigue in commercial aviation during undergrad. This book by George Bibel was one that I relied on heavily for the section I wrote on United 232 for anyone who's interested in digging in even further.

A book was written about the third guy called A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness. He was left alive for research purposes and until this we really didn't know that much about severe radiation sickness.

It's a thoroughly good book and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in the subject.

> Back to Skyrim on smart watches it goes!

Pffft. Skyrim on Alexa is for the Nords!

"[Wake word], open Skyrim"

Ha! I hadn't thought of this in YEARS. I learned it from the book Currahee! (about parachuting into Normandy in WWII) which I picked up from a library sale sometime back in grade school many years ago. Looks like it's been reprinted a few times since then and still available. It's a quick read, and an interesting first-person account of war.

https://www.amazon.com/Currahee-Screaming-Eagle-at-Normandy/dp/0440236304

It's also found in his book "The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime," which is a collection of his long-form Atlantic (but I repeat myself) articles on nautical topics, such as modern piracy, shipbreakers in Alang, and the like.