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also in terms of hull fairness. What is lish Measurement System in the US. A

For every column I write, MREN has my biggest concern? What is your big- pointless move that, among others, re- agreed to make a small donation to an gest concern? sulted in a failed Mars Climate Orbiter organization of my choice. For this col-

Some of these discussions may be Mission in 1998. We need an actual umn I nominate the US Metric Associa- quite awkward, but once these issues great communicator who can get the US tion. https://usma.org/#information- about Metric.

have been established, it will be possible to ? nally buy into the metric system. to reach back to them and develop fair and reasonable solutions when things get dif? cult.

When I was young, I worked with somebody who always asked very sharp, almost rude, questions at the start of the project. Even I would feel a little uncomfortable and felt it would upset the customer. Today I know that it is not important to be friends at the start of the project; what is important is to be friends at the end of the project. Therefore, ask the dif? cult questions at the beginning, and tell your project partners that you ask those questions so the project can be ? nished as friends, and siblings at arms, instead of enemies.

Ship construction projects never are easy. There will always be complica- tions, some rational, and some totally unexpected and wackadoodle, but not talking about them will not solve them.

Getting back to the Vasa, while it may have been inef? cient to use two different measurement systems in the construction of the Vasa (something we still do today in ship construction), it did not have to result in a failure to ? oat. As long as, at some stage, somebody point- ed out to everybody else that there will be two measurement systems during construction. This may have been just before contract signing, or may at the cocktail party celebrating the signing, or maybe in the sauna.

Later in the game it would have been particularly annoying, but if there was no alternative, it would not automati- cally result in a failure to ? oat. Commu- nication will save the day.

Since I started with trivia I will end with trivia. Not everyone may remem- ber it, but in 1981, Ronald Reagan, “The

Great Communicator”, pulled the plug on earlier efforts to get rid of the Eng- www.marinelink.com 17

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