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5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301737&org=NSF&from=news

and this

https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=301674

What seems to be the definitive statements.  We know that one cable failed and learned that others were about to fail, and did so, along with the towers.

Seems like the cables could have been replaced at some point in the past, but either people were asleep at the switch, or something went on that was undetected or undetectable.

It sounds like it's a similar situation to the world trade tower. The top floor structure failed, and the subsequent pancaking of extra loads upon the floors below caused a cascade effect.  The individual cables were designed to carry their load alone with not much extra capacity, so when one fails they'll all inevitably fail.... or not.  

The age of the cables also contributed as their tensile strength was probably being slowly stressed/decreased over the yers.

I can't image the difficulty of the calculations when it was designed. 

Or the critical maintenance issues in that environment.

Edited by washparkhorn

I won't even try very hard to true a bicycle wheel.  Same basic principle, on a much larger scale, except the rim doesn't just get bent.

12 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It sounds like it's a similar situation to the world trade tower. The top floor structure failed, and the subsequent pancaking of extra loads upon the floors below caused a cascade effect.  

Agree. Losing the tower like that confirms the decision not to repair. It collapsed on its own. Unless there is a fix; keep people away for safety. It was a time bomb ticking.

Any compelling reason to rebuild at that site?

2 minutes ago, washparkhorn said:

I can't image the difficulty of the calculations when it was designed. 

Or the critical maintenance issues in that environment.

Cable engineering has been around a good long while, but yeah, that's some seriously smart shit they have too do.

17 minutes ago, Onboard 2.0 said:

It sounds like it's a similar situation to the world trade tower. The top floor structure failed, and the subsequent pancaking of extra loads upon the floors below caused a cascade effect.  The individual cables were designed to carry their load alone with not much extra capacity, so when one fails they'll all inevitably fail.... or not.  

The age of the cables also contributed as their tensile strength was probably being slowly stressed/decreased over the yers.

Jet fuel can't melt telescope cables

Just now, miguelito said:

Jet fuel can't melt telescope cables

Of course not, it was aliens shooting laser beams from their secret moon base duuuuu'h.....

  • Author

so it turns out they actually had a maintenance drone flying and zoomed in on the exact fail point at the time of the failure.

reason being, the cables didnt just snap, they had been having individual strands fail periodically that resulted in cascading failures of more and more strands which reached a point of no return..

 

 

1 minute ago, AUS-97HORN said:

so it turns out they actually had a maintenance drone flying and zoomed in on the exact fail point at the time of the failure.

reason being, the cables didnt just snap, they had been having individual strands fail periodically that resulted in cascading failures of more and more strands which reached a point of no return..

 

 

I love it when I'm right.... it happens so infrequently...

What was that thing still finding

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