Doomed Engineers

[selenite0]

patgund linked to the Doomed Engineers webpage. The normal deaths (electrical engineer dies in car accident) aren't very interesting but the various cases of "live by the sword, die by the sword" are fascinating reading. I hadn't run across the case of the guys in the flying car which became non-flying while doing my article on why flying cars will never succeed. Pity, would've made a good illustration of the principle. Yahya Ayyah and Gerald Bull don't get any sympathy from me. But it was painful rereading the description of Nedelin and his men's death, I'd cried over the stupidity and waste the first time I'd read an account of it. At least Thomas Andrews provides a good example to live up to.

Oh, Archimedes is held up as another innocent victim, but he makes me wonder how Werner von Braun would've fared if some British survivors of the V-2 attacks had gotten to him before the Americans did.

Comments

[patgund.livejournal.com]

There's some more pictures of the Mitzar at

http://www.fordpinto.com/mitzar1.htm
http://www.fordpinto.com/mitzar2.htm
http://www.fordpinto.com/mitzar3.htm

I seem to recall that in the late 1970's and growing up in Simi Valley, someone else tried the flying pinto trick as well, building on what was learned from the previous version. And didn't fare any better either, as it supposely crashed on take off.