Failure of management: In 1628 the Vasa, a brand new warship, the biggest in the world, set sail for the first time from Stockholm. A mile out, easily in views of the crowd watching it go, it tipped over and sank. The king, who was off fighting wars, had been heavily involved in the project in the form of sending letters demanding more and heavier guns on the top deck, and demanding that the ship be finished NOW. The original designer had died a year into the construction, and the assistant shipwrights had take over. A stability test, in the form of thirty sailors running in a bunch first to one side and then the other, had the be called off in the middle for fear it would capsize the ship. They added as much ballast as would fit, but nobody wanted to tell the off-site king that the boat wasn't going to work.
I once heard my late friend Doug say that there are no technical failures, only failures of management.
In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed into the planet it was supposed to orbit. One of the software modules was reporting data in pound-seconds instead of newton-seconds. Doug told me the team working on that software knew there was going to be a problem, but nobody wanted to tell the team lead because he was such an overbearing boor.
So there you go. But it's a really good museum.
I find it interesting that a couple of times now I've heard Swedish tour guides refer wistfully to the days when sweden had a huge European empire. Funny, in Poland and Lithuania the period is called the "Swedish Deluge" when the Commonwealth lost a third of its population. What a difference the change of a couple of miles makes.
Put frank to bed last night ( I thought) and went for a walk at around 11:00. Omg, on a saturday night the city of Stockholm is one gigantic party. It makes San Francisco look like a des Moines. The best part was this SMS I got from frank as I was heading back:
You're taking a worryingly long walk. Everything all right?
Classic!
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