This is a list of engineering blunders, i.e., gross errors or mistakes resulting from grave lack of proper consideration, such as stupidity, confusion, carelessness, or culpable ignorance, which resulted in notable incidents. *

Deepwater Horizon oil spill The ''Deepwater Horizon'' oil spill was an environmental disaster off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico, on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect. It is considered the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum in ...

caused by a faulty blowout preventer. * Fort Montgomery was sometimes referred to as "Fort Blunder", because the first version of the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

fort was inadvertently built on the Canadian side of

Lake Champlain Lake Champlain ( ; , ) is a natural freshwater lake in North America. It mostly lies between the U.S. states of New York (state), New York and Vermont, but also extends north into the Canadian province of Quebec. The cities of Burlington, Ve ...

. *

Millennium Bridge, London The Millennium Bridge, officially known as the London Millennium Footbridge, is a steel suspension bridge for pedestrians crossing the River Thames in London, England, linking Bankside with the City of London. It is owned and maintained by Br ...

, nicknamed "Wobbly Bridge"; it took almost two years to fix the engineering error * The

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Mars Climate Orbiter The ''Mars Climate Orbiter'' (formerly the Mars Surveyor '98 Orbiter) was a robotic space probe launched by NASA on December 11, 1998, to study the Martian climate, Martian atmosphere, and surface changes and to act as the communications rel ...

, launched in 1998, burned up in the

Martian atmosphere The atmosphere of Mars is the layer of gases surrounding Mars. It is primarily composed of carbon dioxide (95%), molecular nitrogen (2.85%), and argon (2%). It also contains trace levels of water vapor, oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and nob ...

. A mixup between

metric Metric or metrical may refer to: Measuring * Metric system, an internationally adopted decimal system of measurement * An adjective indicating relation to measurement in general, or a noun describing a specific type of measurement Mathematics ...

and US Standard measurements in the controlling software caused the spacecraft to miss its intended 140–150 km altitude above Mars during orbit insertion, instead entering the Martian atmosphere at about 57 km. * The NASA

Genesis Genesis may refer to: Religion * Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of humankind * Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Bo ...

mission was an attempt to sample particles from the

solar wind The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's outermost atmospheric layer, the Stellar corona, corona. This Plasma (physics), plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy betwee ...

. It successfully collected a sample and returned to

Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...

. However at the last moment the landing parachute failed to open and the return capsule smashed into the ground at high speed, contaminating the samples. The parachute failure was traced to an accelerometer installed backwards. *

Palace II ''Palace II'' (, lit. ''Locked Beaded Curtain'') is a 2012 Chinese television series written and produced by Yu Zheng and directed by Lee Wai-chu. It is a sequel to the 2011 television series ''Palace''. The series was first broadcast on HBS ...

, Brazil; parts of it collapsed, due to engineering error, killing eight people. *

Quebec Bridge The Quebec Bridge () is a road, rail, and pedestrian bridge across the lower Saint Lawrence River between Sainte-Foy, Quebec City, Sainte-Foy (a former suburb that in 2002 became the arrondissement Sainte-Foy–Sillery–Cap-Rouge in Quebec Cit ...

collapses * Sand Point Light: it was constructed with its tower facing the land instead of facing the water. Whether this was intentional or an engineering blunder is unknown. *

Tacoma Narrows Bridge (1940) The 1940 Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the first bridge at this location, was a suspension bridge in the U.S. state of Washington that spanned the Tacoma Narrows strait of Puget Sound between Tacoma and the Kitsap Peninsula. It opened to traffic ...

; it began to move vertically in windy conditions, so it was nicknamed "Galloping Gertie". It collapsed in November 1940, after four months of operation

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Engineering Blunders History-related lists Science-related lists Error

See also

References