I never cared about the America’s Cup, which has always been a race for rich guys to compete against each other. But this article on the crash of Oracle’s radical 13-story, rigid-sail driven ship is fascinating from both engineering and failure analysis perspectives.
Post crash footage:
And here’s Mark 2 of the boat, back on the water and hydroplaning:
Like most Oracle products, the ship seems to need a large number of consultants to keep it operating…
About Lawrence Person
Lawrence Person is a science fiction writer living in Austin, Texas. His short fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Analog, Postscripts, Jim Baen's Universe, Fear, and several anthologies. He also edits the Hugo-nominated SF critical magazine Nova Express, and runs the Turkey City Writer's Workshop. His non-fiction has appeared in National Review, Reason, Whole Earth Review, The Freeman, The World & I, Science Fiction Eye, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and Slashdot.org. He owns such a large library (mostly science fiction first editions) he had to buy a two-story house to put it in, and then adopted a golden retriever to drag him out of his house on a regular basis. He also makes a mean batch of salsa.
Operating system, core, maximum load – sounds like a computer program to me, not a sail boat. Still, awesome video.