Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] standards - broader view

[Brent Hartwig <brenthartwig@hotmail.com>]

Wil,
 
You nailed the issue on the head, with your quote below.
 
"What concerns standards in general, they have that good side to keep 
people from doing dangerous things - and the dark side to suffocate all 
progress if you overdo it."
 
This is the balancing act that we as a group need to maintain, between the; don't say or do anything or everybody will; die, get put in the poor house, or get put in jail, to the other side of, lets light it and see if it burns crowd. Well perhaps it's not a crowd, but perhaps a cluster of wild eyed Nessi hunters. I got a great black powder rifle. How deep do you think I can go with it, before my powder isn't dry anymore?
 
I've seen it so many times before in the big mountain man Rendezvous I go to. That reenact the 1840's era of the north american beaver trappers gatherings.  Some want to make it a tame, super safe, family affair, and others want to shoot it up and drink and fight all night like the real thing. We have all sorts of legal waivers with this sort of activity as well, and it's getting harder and harder to find private and public land to host a Rendezvous because of legal fears.

Regards,
Brent Hartwig

> Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2007 11:20:36 -0700
> From: clientes@tolimared.com
> To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
> Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] standards - broader view
> 
> 
> Hello Randy,
> I thank you for your important contribution to take the step to 
> compare safety standards of different fields of engineering and giving 
> us this - so needed broader - view.
> 
> My background is tecnical, medical, cientific, and commercial.
> In medicine for example you simply NEVER can cover ALL BASES. This is 
> why other than in material science each person is DIFFERENT by genetic 
> nature you NEVER can test and prove a method to absolut certainty as 
> you can not test out a killing point (breaking point).
> 
> So by nature any treatment and anything you do contains a factor of 
> uncertainty and not cover all bases.
> 
> Similar as in aviation there are several levels of regulation that go 
> from Public health and registration with FDA to a "hospital ethic 
> comission" where 3 doctors sit together and decide what should be done 
> and what not.
> 
> There is science, and pharmaceutical testing, and medic research, 
> operating within, outside, beyond FDA - which still is science and 
> still is ethic and still is necessary and still is reasonably safe and 
> still is wanted and is not a - NO NO NO.
> 
> Similar i believe that there is still a safe engineering outside 
> Government regulations as long as you keep Peters 1:10 standard 
> Carstens "calculate double and test standard" - or any other standard 
> that a reasonable and ethic mind can suggests.
> 
> What concerns standards in general they have that good side to keep 
> people from doing dangerous things - and the dark side to sofocate all 
> progess if you overdo it.
> 
> My personal impression - please correct me if i am wrong - is that 
> many of the pressure vessel standards - developed under the shock of 
> the COMET disaster - may a aviation specialist comment on this - got a 
> little to far to sofocate. (sheet material).
> 
> Since COMET we all are aware of the importance of cyclic load in 
> unexpected catastrophic failure. What is a good thing - so test 
> frequently - and life goes on...
> 
> For me this forum gets a lot of its value by working as a "tecnical 
> ethics comission" that guarantee still science still safety still 
> reasonable building ethics even outside of what standards can and will 
> cover. If you do a prototype you are by nature sometimes a bit "out of 
> standard"
> 
> So jon, - please - do not sofocate "out of standard" statements - or 
> the forum just becomes a lot less interesting.
> 
> I also see that there is some interest of taking the K subs to a kind 
> of self building class so i understand the pressure to close in with 
> government regulation - anyhow you still have a good pool of "wild 
> auto standard" and still resonable submarine building here - this is 
> one of the best ! don´t loose it.
> 
> Kindest Regards
> Wil
> (concretesubmarine.com)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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