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You started one the other night to distract from your trolling. Get over yourself already
Stating my opinion and defending myself from people attacking my faith isn't trolling anymore than you spewing your opinion.

Pull your big boy pants up mate.
 
Allow me to diverge from your pissing match and get back to the thread...

Some comments from a former Maersk Chief Engineer

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I bet the captain of that ship was crapping himself. No worse feeling than having zero control over the one thing you’re supposed to be controlling. I’ve had these sort of moments in my truck. Obviously not near as much at stake, but yeah. Wow. I feel for that guy and his crew
 
I am an engineer, although not a structural engineer, I did take all the structural design courses that were available in undergraduate studies because I thought I would go that route after graduation. Lack of available jobs took me a different direction. So take my analysis with a few grains of salt and understand that bridge design is a whole other can of worms.

The bridge failed about how I would expect. The bridge appears to consist of 2 different types of construction. There is the central steel truss section and then on both ends there is a simple post and beam style of construction. It looks like the post and beam sections remained standing. From the photos that google has provided me it looks like the connections on the standing sections are more "fixed" style of connection. Fixed meaning rigid and each span is it's own self supporting structure. The 2 central piers that supported the truss seem to have more of a pivot style connection. The truss section itself acts in a counterbalanced or cantilever manner. Watch how the far section of the truss actually lifts off of its support before collapsing as the bridge teeters on the other central pier. That entire truss section functions as one unit. If the ship had hit the pier supporting the end of the truss it still might have collapsed the whole thing.

As for designing for impact, that may be a newer requirement or the cost/risk analysis determined to design for a lesser impact force. Just like most things that are designed to sustain specific loads based on risk. We design houses to sustain wind and snow loads but we don't design them to resist the force of semi-truck driving into the wall.

I am also reminded of an engineering joke: "Anyone can build a bridge that will stay up, it takes an engineer to build a bridge that will barely stay up."
 
As much as strategic and economic importance, do not discount the expediency of election year urgency...
It will be after the election before the debris is cleaned up and the shipping lane opened up. Full disclosure after I left the USACE I worked for an structural engineering company that specialized in the forensic analysis of structure and super structure failure.
 
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Hydraulic engineer here, not structural so take it with a grain of salt. If we design bridges to take that kind of impact, the entire US transportation budget will be lucky to build one every 10 years. Everything is a balance of risk vs cost; with enough money anything is possible, but design criteria are selected so that a bridge will survive any expected event in its design life, and I’m pretty sure a 100,000 ton impact to a pier isn’t currently and will never be one of the design criteria.
This why most structure codes have 2:1 saftey factor required for design...That impact was way above the 2:1 saftey factor.
 
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