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The sinking of MS Estonia: Case Reopened Part VII

JesseCuster said:
Which is something she said she read somewhere and said she'd get back with the citation. Which she never did, after being asked multiple times.

She said it was something she read on some website and can't remember where she read it. Funny that someone who claims that everything she posts that doesn't have an "IMV" qualifier is properly sourced and cited facts, repeatedly and continually is unable to provide citations for so many of her claims.

I'm going to ask again, knowing that she will absolutely not be able to provide an actual valid citation for this claim.

Vixen, what is your evidence for the claim that the Atlantic lock was only added as an accessory to make people feel safer? An actual valid citation please.
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As I said, it was something interesting I read. Over to you: why do YOU think it's called an 'Atlantic Lock'?
 
JayUtah said:
Then he's not a reliable witness, is he?

It's not really a separate issue. Not only did Braidwood blatantly misrepresent the hole, he did so in a certain direction. He drew it to look like it had been made by an explosion. It's not just an error or bad artistry, it's bias. This then colors his attempt to interpret a bit of flotsam in the video. That too "must" be connected to some kind of explosives plot. Amazing how an explosives guy tends to see evidence of explosives everywhere, even if he has to make it all up. The claim that it was later "edited out"—instead of the more parsimonious explanation that it was just flotsam that later washed away in the current—is purely conspiratorial. It's a made-up narrative, not evidence.


Indeed, which makes it nearly worthless because it's untethered to anything outside his claim.

When acting as an expert called to identify something, I know what it is because my expertise gives me a reasonably encyclopedic knowledge of what's actually out there. If someone says, "What's this?" I can say, "It's part of the composite wing structure of a Boeing 787," and I can show pictures of what that looks like so the reader knows I'm not just blowing smoke. Depending, I can even tell you where on the airplane it came from. I can identify the thrust bearing on a Liberty ship because those exist outside any opinion I might have. I can tell you whether a snippet of recovered data is from a Fairchild flight data recorder because I can show you what parts of that data stream correspond to what's documented elsewhere as an expectation.

An expert judgment is not just, "Because I say so." An expert applies his knowledge of the world to show the correlation. Braidwood provides no reference comparisons to known explosive devices or packaging techniques. See next section.


That's 100% speculation. He gives no testable basis for identifying it as an explosive. All he can say is that he thinks the box might be big enough to hold a bomb. He gives no evidence that it is a bomb.


And the reason you can't see why he did no such thing in this case is why you don't get to be a real investigator.


A book you have now copied from several times, despite telling me you wouldn't provide any photographic copies from it due to copyright concerns. You claim that book contains the full metallurgical reports, portions of which we've discussed here. But you won't prove it does.


A satchel charge won't cut a ship-sized steel retaining bolt. You need a linear shaped charge, which looks absolutely nothing like what Braidwood saw in the video. And yes, I'm qualified to know that. Some of our designs have indeed used explosive devices to cut structure. You don't know what you're talking about.
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Braidwood provides a photo of the small hole. I could upload a copy of one of the independent metallurgy lab reports but I am not sure anyone will appreciate it.
 
Vixen said:
Braidwood provides a photo of the small hole. I could upload a copy of one of the independent metallurgy lab reports but I am not sure anyone will appreciate it.
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Could you, just for once, try to make your reply in some way connected with the post you're replying to? Maybe, also, read and understand the post you're quoting, and demonstrate that by actually addressing the points it makes?
 
Mojo said:
For the record:
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Oh dear, we were discussing the volume of a banging noise. Edit: I'll come back to this.
BazBear said:
Maybe it might have something to do with water being over 800 times denser than air?
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And the Heweliusz windows didn't likewise smash, in 44 m/s hurricane force winds? <sfx Brummie accent> Yes, mate.
 
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Vixen said:
Sorry are you seriously claiming I don't know the difference between a bow visor and a perishing bolt lock?
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As Mojo quoted, and Steve points out, this is what you said.
Vixen said:
The guy was on a promenade deck. He was a PhD student. He was not a moron. He knows what he felt.

The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.
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When several posters pointed out this howler, you ignored it initially, and then, rather than simply accept you'd made an error, you made your post about the casing making up the rest of the 55 tonnes.
 
Vixen said:
Oh dear, we were discussing the volume of a banging noise. Edit: I'll come back to this.
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No, we were discussing your claim that:
Vixen said:
I have never mistaken the bow visor for the Atlantic Lock...
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...and your earlier statement that:
The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.
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The bow visor would not have a mass of 15kg whatever was being discussed, and it did not, as you have claimed, have a 54,985kg "casing".
 
Vixen said:
Sorry are you seriously claiming I don't know the difference between a bow visor and a perishing bolt lock?
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As you seem to have forgotten what was being discussed, and that you were "not seeing", it was your claim that the bow visor had a mass of 15kg, and your subsequent invention, once it was pointed out to you that it actually was much bigger than this, of a 54,985kg "casing".

Clearly, you either mixed the bow visor up with something much smaller, or actually thought that the visor had a mass of 15kg.
 
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Vixen said:
As I said, it was something interesting I read. Over to you: why do YOU think it's called an 'Atlantic Lock'?
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I know it was something you read. I know that you said you'd provide a citation. I know you never did provide a citation.

I've no idea why it's called an Atlantic lock, and it's irrelevant. I'll ask you why it's called an Atlantic lock, but I've no doubt that whatever answer you provide will not be accompanied with an actual valid citation, and may not actually be an answer to the question at all.

So tell us Vixen, with an actual valid citation (remember that you explicitly said that all your posts that are not qualified with "IMV" has are factual, are properly sourced and properly referenced), why is it called the Atlantic lock?

And while you're at it. why is the reason for the name "Atlantic lock" relevant to whatever argument you think you're making.

Please answer the question, with a valid citation that shows where you learned the origin/meaning of the name "Atlantic lock".
 
Mojo said:
No, we were discussing your claim that:

...and your earlier statement that:

The bow visor would not have a mass of 15kg whatever was being discussed, and it did not, as you have claimed, have a 54,985kg "casing".
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Here's the full context, and in future, please quote me in proper context:


  • [*]
    Vixen said:
    There are four other main senses apart from the eyes.
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    So uhh what does a collision smell or taste like?

    He felt a deceleration, you cannot feel a collision from within your cabin.

    The way this could have occurred from the bow visor has been explained by JayUtah. He heard loud crashes/banging noises... a collision. Well yes with a large, heavy, metallic, part of the ship.

    And all of this is a pointless exercise. We know the ship collided with the visor. There WAS a collision.


    [*]
    lobosrul5 said:
    So uhh what does a collision smell or taste like?

    He felt a deceleration, you cannot feel a collision from within your cabin.

    The way this could have occurred from the bow visor has been explained by JayUtah. He heard loud crashes/banging noises... a collision. Well yes with a large, heavy, metallic, part of the ship.

    And all of this is a pointless exercise. We know the ship collided with the visor. There WAS a collision.
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    The guy was on a promenade deck. He was a PhD student. He was not a moron. He knows what he felt.

    The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.

    Irrelevant. If he didn't see a collision then he is not a witness to a collision.

    He was a PhD student.
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    Irrelevant. If he didn't see a collision then he is not a witness to a collision.

    He was not a moron.
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    Straw man. No one is claiming he is. The claim is that his inference for what caused his sensation is not witness evidence.

    He knows what he felt.
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    We stipulate that he knows what he felt. But unless he saw an actual collision then his inference regarding the cause of what he felt is not evidence.

    The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.
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    Asked and answered many times.

    ETA: You may want to verify your units.

    Do you want to try again with that recollection?

    In the meantime, may we strike your claim Estonia was "mid-point of journey distance-wise" from your list of suspicious facts, or do you want to have another go at showing this to be the case?

    • Sep 29, 2023
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    • #2,338
      The guy was on a promenade deck. He was a PhD student. He was not a moron. He knows what he felt.

      The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.
    Apart from your mistake of claiming the visor was only 15kg, it formed the bows of the ship.
    You know, the pointy but that cuts through the water?
    It also keeps water out of the ship.
    What do you think will happen if you take the bows off a ship and let water flood in.

    What is there about being a student that gives him experience with ships behaviour in storms?

    • Sep 29, 2023
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    • #2,339
      The guy was on a promenade deck. He was a PhD student. He was not a moron. He knows what he felt.

      The bow visor in the scheme of things is tiny, just 15 kg IIRC, whilst the vessel itself is a 15,000 tonner.
    That seems rather unlikely even as a back-of-an-envelope figure, unless it was made of expanded polystyrene.

    The weight, CoG and volume of the bow visor of M/S Estonia has been calculated based on the original drawing from Meyer Shipyard. The weight was calculated to 64.0 tonnes with a LCG of 5.25 m from frame #156 and VCG of 6,99 m above DWL.
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    https://www.estonia1994.ee/en/technical-report-ms-estonia-bow-visor-calculation-weight-and-volume#:~:text=The weight, CoG and volume,6,99 m above DWL.

    I'm not qualified to judge how accurate that figure is, but I'm sure Jay can tell us if it's in the right order of magnitude. I'm sure it's closer to the correct value than 15kg though.


    Have you considered the possibility that some random passenger just picked up the bow visor and carried it away in her shoulder bag?

    • Sep 29, 2023
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    • #2,369
      I'm not qualified to judge how accurate that figure is, but I'm sure Jay can tell us if it's in the right order of magnitude. I'm sure it's closer to the correct value than 15kg though.
    Yes, 64 tonnes is a plausible value for the mass of a significant portion of a ship's bow. I should add that even those of us who do this for a living make this sort of mistake all the time. It's just natural when you're flinging around lots of numbers with lots of SI units and lots of prefixes. It's even worse when we have to work in legacy designs that use EES units. This is why my company has full-time technical editors that review all our documents and drawings looking for exactly that sort of thing. No one person gets it right all the time, including me.

    The funniest was one in which a junior engineer transcribed a whiteboard sketch that in which a certain electrical power specification was annotated as 20 mW, but due to the sketcher's handwriting looked an awful lot like like 20 MW and got transcribed that way because the engineer didn't really know the context and didn't recognize it as an absurd amount. I was amused by how long far that made it through the editing process. (Luckily we photograph all our whiteboards after meetings.)

    [Aside.
    Also in deference to usage by other highly knowledgeable and qualified people, I will note that while SI doesn't specify whether a space should appear between the numerical quantity and the unit, NIST does. American engineers and scientists working in SI must properly introduce a space. For temperatures this annoys the [bleep] out of me, because now we have to say 72 °F and 22 °C, but still 295 K. If you remember my lecture on how we got primes notation, the ° is an Italian ordinal superscript (e.g., 22 °C = ventisecondo grado di temperatura Celsius or 22<span>o</span> grado di..., 3me arrondissement in France's visitor-hostile method of dividing Paris) and really properly belongs attached to the numerals. So I'll continue to write "15 kg" while understanding that "15kg" is acceptable and even required elsewhere.
    Clearly if Vixen wants to pursue the insinuation that the bow visor's mass was inconsequential and thus its striking the ship on its own journey to the seafloor shouldn't be considered to explain the witness testimony, she'll have to supply a credible value for the structuring including the units. Here's where we see whether this is just another example of her refusal to admit error.

    • Sep 30, 2023
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    • #2,403
      The generosity extends only so far as the errant quickly corrects and says, "Whoops, I meant ___." Since Vixen habitually makes elementary errors, she doesn't get the defense, "C'mon, you all know what I meant." Many times she is literally so wrong that we don't know what she means. So it looks like it's another example of Vixen being so amazingly and obliviously wrong and deciding to pretend nothing happened.
    I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

    *yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight

    • Sep 30, 2023
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    • #2,405
      I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.
    It would be easier to be charitable if she'd got the number right. The bow visor weighs neither 15 kilograms nor 15 tonnes.

    *yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight
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    We live in a world where kilograms-force (kgf) is a non-ironic unit. You're fine.

    • Sep 30, 2023
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    • #2,415
      I wonder if she thought the bow visor is something else entirely. Like I have no frickin clue how anyone could think that massive chunk of steel only weighs* 15kg. And she brought its weight up deliberately. I do no think it was an oops I meant tons moment.

      *yeah I know technically kg is not a UOM for weight
    With the casing it weighs 55 tonnes.


    Can you describe this "casing" that was provided for the visor, say what it's purpose was, and explain why it weighed over 3,500 times as much as you claimed the visor itself weighed?

    It was weighed onshore at around 64 tonnes, or about the displacement of a small-to-medium-sized fishing vessel. Are you still insinuating that a ship contacting a mass like this would be inconsequential?

    • Sep 30, 2023
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    • #2,425
      Can you describe this "casing" that was provided for the visor, say what it's purpose was, and explain why it weighed over 3,500 times as much as you claimed the visor itself weighed?
    The bow visor consists of the steel plates and stiffeners, three tiers of horizontal girders in support on the upper deck and a bottom horizontal support girder and some vertical web frames. Total weight 55 tonnes. The vessel is 15,543 tonnes sans bow visor. Or, in other words, the bow visor was 0.35% of the total weight of the entire vessel. Nought point three-five percent of the whole ship.

    No. Go look up what gross tonnage is and report back.

    Or, in other words, the bow visor was 0.35% of the total weight of the entire vessel. Nought point three-five percent of the whole ship.
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    What is your point?

    The idea that the 'collision'-type sensations of several of the witnesses were caused by the bow visor dropping off is nonsense as the bow visor having dropped off will immediately sink. It really didn't hang around to bully the hull.

    Vixen said:
    As I said to another poster I got the 15kg mixed up with the Atlantic bolt.


    It is no big deal.



    Sheee-eesh!
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    OK, here's the post in which you defended that claim by inventing a 54,985kg "casing" in order to avoid admitting that you had made a mistake:

    http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=14174978#post14174978




All this because you spotted a simple typo. Where do you get the idea I never acknowledged the error when I very clearly wrote the following:


As I said to another poster I got the 15kg mixed up with the Atlantic bolt.


It is no big deal.



Sheee-eesh!

1 Oct 2023

Did you really spend hours and hours going back two years looking for a 'got-cha!' that never even happened?
 
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