About the calculus for the project [LWN.net]

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 10, 2012 17:21 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: About the calculus for the project by landley
Parent article: A tempest in a toybox

You are not putting lifebots on a ship. You are adding couple of lifebots to Titanic.

This makes no sense whatsoever. If you don't expect for it to be sunk then why bother with lifebots at all? If you do expect crash and burn scenario then why do you plan to save just a handful of people, not all of them?

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About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 11, 2012 14:35 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Actually, that's not fair on Titanic ...

She had FAR more lifeboats than were legally required.

And could have saved a lot more people, if they hadn't messed up evacuating the boat. Plus a load of people didn't want to get on the lifeboats because they felt safer staying on board (pretty much the same as happened in the recent cruise-ship sinking in Italy ...)

(I think the law nowadays says you need enough spaces on EACH SIDE of the boat for the entire passenger/crew complement - ie 2 spaces per person. Most boats carry even more. It makes sense, actually, if the boat is listing you can lose half your usable lifeboat capacity in the space of seconds.)

Cheers,
Wol

About the calculus for the project

Posted Feb 11, 2012 15:39 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Actually, that's not fair on Titanic ...

She had FAR more lifeboats than were legally required.

Sure. Law required just 16 lifeboats while Titanic had 20. With total capacity of 1,178 people on a ship with capacity of 3,547. Less then ⅓ space per person. Good idea. Not.

And could have saved a lot more people, if they hadn't messed up evacuating the boat. Plus a load of people didn't want to get on the lifeboats because they felt safer staying on board (pretty much the same as happened in the recent cruise-ship sinking in Italy ...)

That's another issue. Yes, even if you have enough lifeboats you still can lose a lot of lives in a case of crush. But if you don't have enough lifeboats to save all passengers then loss of life is inevitable.

I think the law nowadays says you need enough spaces on EACH SIDE of the boat for the entire passenger/crew complement - ie 2 spaces per person. Most boats carry even more. It makes sense, actually, if the boat is listing you can lose half your usable lifeboat capacity in the space of seconds.

Sure. More then one space per person may be good idea. How much more is subject of the debate. Less then one space per person is pointless - and this is exactly how Titanic was equipped.