Old Man Murphy vs. Sci Fi franchises

[The Yosemite Bear]

Ok, everything that CAN go WRONG, Goes wrong at once.

besides Trek which franchises are completly screwed and which have backups on hteir failsafe's backups.

[Darth Wong]

Ok, everything that CAN go WRONG, Goes wrong at once.

besides Trek which franchises are completly screwed and which have backups on hteir failsafe's backups.

In a modern CANDU nuclear reactor, every system can simultaneously fail and the reactor will still SCRAM from the gravity-drop rods. Any sci-fi society that takes similar design precautions will be fine. It's hard to say who's done this, although Trek has obviously not done it.

[Sea Skimmer]

Ok, everything that CAN go WRONG, Goes wrong at once.

besides Trek which franchises are completly screwed and which have backups on hteir failsafe's backups.

In a modern CANDU nuclear reactor, every system can simultaneously fail and the reactor will still SCRAM from the gravity-drop rods. Any sci-fi society that takes similar design precautions will be fine. It's hard to say who's done this, although Trek has obviously not done it.

If all cooling pumps fail then shouldn't the reactor should still have enough heat left to melt its containment vessel? Only a few paper only designs' can avoid a melt down in the case of complete failure of all systems to my knowledge.

[Darth Wong]

If all cooling pumps fail then shouldn't the reactor should still have enough heat left to melt its containment vessel? Only a few paper only designs' can avoid a melt down in the case of complete failure of all systems to my knowledge.

The containment vessel will be fucked, but the reaction will die. Nothing will leak out into the environment. Even in the worst-case scenario where all the systems fail, the containment vessel is ruined, and piping starts rupturing all over the place for some reason, the pressure valves open autonomously and everything gets sucked into the vacuum building. There will be no disaster, which is what the safety systems were designed to ensure.

[Sea Skimmer]

If all cooling pumps fail then shouldn't the reactor should still have enough heat left to melt its containment vessel? Only a few paper only designs' can avoid a melt down in the case of complete failure of all systems to my knowledge.

The containment vessel will be fucked, but the reaction will die. Nothing will leak out into the environment. Even in the worst-case scenario where all the systems fail, the containment vessel is ruined, and piping starts rupturing all over the place for some reason, the pressure valves open autonomously and everything gets sucked into the vacuum building. There will be no disaster, which is what the safety systems were designed to ensure.

Worst-case scenario should involve the IAF and multiple 2000-pound bombs, Fools. Your reactor is clearly venerable to intercontinental F-16 strikes...

[The Yosemite Bear]

Yeah, I know, Old man Murphy would just rape any federation ship, but most of the hard Sci-Fi universes would be safe.

Starwars, just has occasional problems with murphy's law (Accounting for the Destruction of two Deathstars, and an Executor misfire, while switching control to the auxilery bridge, The death of Jek Porkins, etc)

B5 seems to get a bad case of the Murphys every so often...

[Atlan]

In the Perry Rhodan books of late the safety levels in most starships have been increased to what would appear to be ridiculous amounts, with at least two of everything: Three different sublight drive systems, two different FTL systems, three power supply systems of which the main one is present in dulpicate, two different computer systems, etc, etc.
They have a good reason though. There is a rather nasty multi-dimensional "computer virus" which is sometimes used as a weapon. It tends to shut down MORE advanced (relying on multidimensional processes) machinery, thus the comeback of less advanced technologies.

One thing is sure though, you`ll have trouble finding ways of completely shutting down a Perryverse ship, and there`ll be no way it will happen by accident.

[Raxmei]

The Culture seems to be pretty good with its safeguards. In Excessio the Elencher combat drone had a crazily large number of backup substrates for its consciousness. See also the suicide sequence and how much the Mind had to do to accomplish it. Consider Phlebas shows how much of abuse a Mind can take without failing.