Political Engineering or The Lack Thereof

  Blender Dumbass
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The main reason a lot of the Roman concrete structures are still standing is that those structures were not engineered, but rather, built to be the strongest. The difference is that anybody with enough resources can make a strong building, or an unbreakable bridge, but rarely those resources are available. Engineers on the other hand have to design structures that barely hold, with the least possible resources. The lunar lander had walls as thin as foil, because taking up to the moon, the mass required to make a strong lunar lander was extremely expensive. Engineer's job is therefor to come up with weakest acceptable design beyond which any waste is too expensive. But here if an over-complication occurs, the manufacturer just loses money. In other activities, if an engineer fails to make the structure just barely on the edge of what's acceptable, the entire thing collapses. And I'm of course talking about politics.