# Does the bad engineering in "The Cold Equations" ruin the story for you? (open spoilers) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [March 20, 2011, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384 "2011-03-20T19:00:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/161 "2013-01-08T00:29:42Z")
> [@Odesio](#): > > Hell, _Flowers for Algernon_ is another critically successful science fiction book. Thematically, it may very well be. But most people simply don’t think of it as a work of science fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/162 "2013-01-08T00:41:16Z")
> [@audit1](#): > > I think that we could make the story more plausible this way. The ship has an ordinary range of X. A flight of X would have plenty of safety margins. Now an emergency has developed and the ship has to fly a distance of X + Y. The engineers calculate an X + Y flight can be done if and only if we use every bit of safety margin, strip the ship of every thing we do not need. Now a stowaway becomes more of a problem. Um, the story as written sets this up nicely. They are in a disposable emergency capsule for a rescue mission, and they calculate the fuel for the smallest safety margin. That’s not where the problem with the story lies. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > What attitudes? They’re in a spaceship and it only has so much fuel. That’s the situation. > > If it makes you feel better pretend the reason the spaceship only has that much fuel is because there was a leak or the fuel tank was contaminated by cosmic rays or the fuel was stolen by space pirates. None of that is important. The story isn’t about why the spaceship doesn’t have enough fuel. It’s about what do you do when you’re in a spaceship that doesn’t have enough fuel. I disagree. A key element of the story is that the girl made a deliberate choice to disregard an instruction, and the consequences are determined by the needs of physics (for the ship to land safely). The point is that she made a decision and her ignorance had huge consequences for her that she didn’t understand. By making the problem that there was a fuel leak or an accident on the thrusters or anything else takes away the point - that the girl is guilty. Then it’s just “shit happens”, not “ignorance can get you killed”. > [@CalMeacham](#): > > Godwin imagined a situation where the margin of error was precariously small. You can say it’s bad engineering, but it might have been bad management – the company might have decided that the cost wasn’t worth it for so unlikely an event. The point of the story is that physical reality trumps human feelings, morality, and compassion. The young woman is doomed by her actions and the workings of physics. She’d thought she’d get away with it because it was a minor transgression, but the laws of physics effectively made it a death sentence. The idea has been used countless times in other fiction (for instance, in Jsames Cameron’s _The Abyss_), and the details may differ, making the scenario more or less likely. You’d be a fool to argue that this kind of thing can’t happen in the Real World – people certainly _have_ died because of poor engineering and bad management cost-cutting. Yes, the concept of the story is good. It’s the execution that has problems. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Suddenly, there’s a reasonable human error - and it doesn’t crowd the rest of the story or the intended moral. I think it does change the moral of the story. The story isn’t “shit happens, now what do you do?” The story is “ignorance can get you killed.” The girl is guilty for breaking the rules, but she didn’t know why the rules were what they were, and her society has left her breathtakingly unprepared by thinking the only conceivable penalty for breaking rules is a fine. If the girl is supposed to be there but someone else made a mistake in a hurry, then that is a different story, a story about the brave sacrifice of a young girl when placed in a tragic circumstance, but not a story about a girl making a bad choice and being stuck with the consequences. I’ve seen a better version of the “you made a bad choice and can’t escape the consequences”, though it didn’t involve spaceships. It’s in Lois McMaster Bujold’s _Komarr_. Miles is on a planet with colonists where the atmosphere is toxic, they need breathing masks when outside. He’s with a man who used his mask and forgot to service it like he’s supposed to - clean and recharge. So Miles and the man are captured by bad guys, the bad guys tie up Miles and the man, give them their gas masks, and leave. The bad guys don’t wish to kill, they make an anonymous call to the authorities to go rescue Miles and the man, but it will take time for the authorities to get there. But the man’s mask wasn’t recharged, and so runs out of air, and he ends up dying, and Miles can’t do anything to save him because they’re both tied up and unable to reach each other. The man would have been fine if he had followed protocol and serviced his mask, or if any of the bad guys had considered that the man wouldn’t have serviced his mask. But it was such a natural thing to the locals where the man was a transplant. That story works fine. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/163 "2013-01-08T00:45:56Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > I know a little something something about science, engineering. and doing dangerous shit thats dangerous if not done right and this doesn’t peg my OMG meter. > > Yeah, there are points that make the safety officer in me go “shit, you could prevent that with procedure X”. > > But you know what? I can say that about most disasters that happen. Dude. Seriously? _They didn’t even lock the door._ This spaceship was easier to get into than a _restroom at Starbucks._ You need to have a pretty damn good imagination to figure out how that makes any sense. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/164 "2013-01-08T00:54:05Z")
Dude Who needs locked doors in the future? Heck, they don’t even need guns. Though God apparently needs to hitch a ride now and then so who knows. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/165 "2013-01-08T00:55:52Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > I disagree. A key element of the story is that the girl made a deliberate choice to disregard an instruction, and the consequences are determined by the needs of physics (for the ship to land safely). The point is that she made a decision and her ignorance had huge consequences for her that she didn’t understand. By making the problem that there was a fuel leak or an accident on the thrusters or anything else takes away the point - that the girl is guilty. Then it’s just “shit happens”, not “ignorance can get you killed”. If I go into the woods, dig a deep hole, cover it with lichen, and then go home, and then you go for a walk in the woods and fall in the hole and die… is it your fault because you didn’t know there was a hole there? Is it gravity’s fault, maybe? Hell, no. That’s not gravity, it’s _manslaughter._ ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/166 "2013-01-08T00:58:53Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > Dude > > Who needs locked doors in the future? Heck, they don’t even need guns. Though God apparently needs to hitch a ride now and then so who knows. what ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/167 "2013-01-08T01:00:16Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > …if Apollo 13 was flexible enough to survive and land with a damaged fuel tank and loss of air, it goes without saying that a spacecraft centuries more advanced would be even more so. Not necessarily. Apollo 13 had the good fortune to have a second complete and functional spacecraft tagging along with the damaged one. While I’d hope that future spacecraft have better redundancy and repair capability, they aren’t likely to be completely ‘dual’ systems for reasons of economy. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/168 "2013-01-08T01:02:16Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > I disagree. A key element of the story is that the girl made a deliberate choice to disregard an instruction, and the consequences are determined by the needs of physics (for the ship to land safely). The point is that she made a decision and her ignorance had huge consequences for her that she didn’t understand. e. This part is IMO the BIG thing…that seems to be less and less obvious as life gets better and beter. One bad decision can still royally fuck up your life. These days you have to be pretty damn stupid, or a sociopath. Or on rare occasion just damn unlucky. But it can happen. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/169 "2013-01-08T01:04:07Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Dude. Seriously? _They didn’t even lock the door._ This spaceship was easier to get into than a _restroom at Starbucks._ > > You need to have a pretty damn good imagination to figure out how that makes any sense. Did you know that commercial aircraft–big ones, like 747’s–don’t even have “ignition” keys? That if you can sneak past the right people (and know how to fly one), you can essentially hop in one and take off? And that this is actually done semi-frequently by specialized airplane repo men? Most stuff is way less secure than most people believe. I could easily see the girl in the story sneaking into a “secured” area on the mothership via tailgaiting, social engineering, etc., and that after that it was trivial to simply walk onto the ship. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/170 "2013-01-08T01:07:26Z")
> [@billfish678](#): > > This part is IMO the BIG thing…that seems to be less and less obvious as life gets better and beter. > > One bad decision can still royally fuck up your life. These days you have to be pretty damn stupid, or a sociopath. Or on rare occasion just damn unlucky. > > But it can happen. But only if everyone else on the planet is either profoundly mentally retarded or murderously, eyeball-eatingly insane? ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/171 "2013-01-08T01:09:08Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > Did you know that commercial aircraft–big ones, like 747’s–don’t even have “ignition” keys? That if you can sneak past the right people (and know how to fly one), you can essentially hop in one and take off? And that this is actually done semi-frequently by specialized airplane repo men? > > Most stuff is way less secure than most people believe. I could easily see the girl in the story sneaking into a “secured” area on the mothership via tailgaiting, social engineering, etc., and that after that it was trivial to simply walk onto the ship. Funny you mention “people,” because the vessel in the story didn’t have a door guard posted either. No social engineering required. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/172 "2013-01-08T01:11:50Z")
> [@colander](#): > > But only if everyone else on the planet is either profoundly mentally retarded or murderously, eyeball-eatingly insane? Dude. In hindsight I could say that about most disasters. Which usually involve hundreds if not thousands of people. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/173 "2013-01-08T01:18:34Z")
> [@colander](#): > > If that story is considered classic, then I begin to see why SF was consigned to the literary refuse pit all those years ago. Who consigned it there? The only people I’ve met who dismiss it out of hand tend to dismiss fiction in general. _The Cold Equations_ is a stupid story, but that’s no reason to toss out Octavia Butler, Gene Wolfe, Philip K Dick, William Gibson, and a host of other authors working within that field. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/174 "2013-01-08T01:23:14Z")
> [@colander](#): > > Funny you mention “people,” because the vessel in the story didn’t have a door guard posted either. No social engineering required. The vessel didn’t. But an entirely plausible setup on the mothership (which, IIRC, the story doesn’t exclude) is that the emergency vessels are all accessible from a “secured” area on the ship; ostensibly only accessible to pilots, maintenance crew, etc. The entry points to the secure area would have some kind of access control (guards, card readers, etc.), but these are often easy to bypass through social engineering. Heck, maybe she was on a guided tour of the area and “wandered off”. I work for a company with ostensibly hi-tech security–cameras, access badges, security personnel, RFID trackers, etc.–but in the end it’s almost trivial for someone off the street to get inside. And once inside you can travel almost at will (some internal labs have additional security, but this is even more trivial to bypass). As proven by the fact that we’ve had multiple breaches of security where people did just that. They tend to get caught–but only after the fact. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/175 "2013-01-08T01:48:51Z")
OK, so put that in the story, then. Or maybe put clear warnings on the doors, but make the stowaway a little kid who can’t read yet who wandered away from Mom. Show us that the people in the story have made at least _some_ attempt at what they’re doing. Yes, it’s essential for the story to work that the stowaway did something wrong. But by the same token, it’s _also_ essential to the story that the pilot and the rest of the crew _wasn’t_ wrong, or at least was less wrong than the stowaway. With the way the story goes now, the girl didn’t die because she did something stupid-- She died because a bunch of other people did stupid things. And frankly, that’s not a very interesting story. It’s a classic because we can all see the story he was trying to write, and we can tell that that’s a good story. It’s just not the story he actually did write. ---
**Author:** ![billfish678](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/176 "2013-01-08T01:55:25Z")
There’s a Dr. Phil joke in here somewhere… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/177 "2013-01-08T02:01:46Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > It’s a classic because we can all see the story he was trying to write, and we can tell that that’s a good story. It’s just not the story he actually did write. No argument there. But some posters seem to be arguing that the whole setup was implausible from the start, whereas I think it could be cleaned up with just a few sentences of explanation–and that with just a tiny bit of suspension of disbelief (which is necessary for just about any story, sci-fi or not), even that is unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/178 "2013-01-08T02:32:30Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > No argument there. But some posters seem to be arguing that the whole setup was implausible from the start, whereas I think it could be cleaned up with just a few sentences of explanation–and that with just a tiny bit of suspension of disbelief (which is necessary for just about any story, sci-fi or not), even that is unnecessary. And the fact that it could have been cleaned up so much so easily had the author given even the smallest fraction of a shit makes the impossible plotting seem, like the poor security on the ship, almost maliciously deliberate. ---
**Author:** ![colander](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e8c25b/32.png) [@colander](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colander)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/179 "2013-01-08T02:40:49Z")
> [@Larry\_Borgia](#): > > Who consigned it there? The only people I’ve met who dismiss it out of hand tend to dismiss fiction in general. _The Cold Equations_ is a stupid story, but that’s no reason to toss out Octavia Butler, Gene Wolfe, Philip K Dick, William Gibson, and a host of other authors working within that field. I don’t disagree, but I also don’t remember being assigned Philip K. Dick books in high school. The greats of the genre are credited very little as authors of “important literature.” ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384/180 "2013-01-08T04:52:28Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > U > > I disagree. A key element of the story is that the girl made a deliberate choice to disregard an instruction, and the consequences are determined by the needs of physics (for the ship to land safely). The point is that she made a decision and her ignorance had huge consequences for her that she didn’t understand. By making the problem that there was a fuel leak or an accident on the thrusters or anything else takes away the point - that the girl is guilty. . No, the girl is _not_ guilty. The spaceship company is criminally guilty. Either they are super incompetent, or it’s a trap set up to lure in unsuspecting visitors. > **[Attractive nuisance doctrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine)** > > The attractive nuisance doctrine applies to the law of torts in some jurisdictions. It states that a landowner may be held liable for injuries to children trespassing on the land if the injury is caused by an object on the land that is likely to attract children. The doctrine is designed to protect children who are unable to appreciate the risk posed by the object, by imposing a liability on the landowner. The doctrine has been applied to hold landowners liable for injuries caused by aband There... [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-the-bad-engineering-in-the-cold-equations-ruin-the-story-for-you-open-spoilers/575384.md?page=10)