On the evening of Friday, July 17, 1981, a band was playing in the atrium of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel. About 1,600 people had gathered for that night’s popular tea dance. Women in elegant dresses and men in pressed suits were dancing on the atrium floor, while observers admired the festivities from walkways suspended above. Suddenly, the highest walkway tore loose and, along with the walkway two levels below, crashed to the atrium floor. Over 100 people were killed and many others were injured.
In the fascinating 26 lectures of Epic Engineering Failures and the Lessons They Teach, you will go behind the scenes of painstaking and captivating investigations that not only reveal what actually caused the tragedy in the Hyatt Regency that night, but also explore the catalysts for more than 24 other epic engineering failures. Your professor, civil engineer and award-winning educator Stephen Ressler PhD, reveals the story behind each disaster by not only demonstrating the scientific and engineering issues involved—with easy-to-follow explanations accompanied by fascinating videos, models, and graphics—but also by examining the individual personalities and sometimes dysfunctional organizations that led to catastrophe.
Is there any way we can move forward without continuing to make mistakes that cost so many lives, from the astronauts lost in the Challenger disaster due to bureaucratic dysfunction to the more than 1,800 lives lost due to ineffective hurricane protection system in New Orleans? There is one way we could make sure we never have such epic failures in the future—stop innovating, and only use the same design concepts and the same materials repeatedly. But that’s just not who we are. If we continue to act on our very human desire for innovation, then we will sometimes reach beyond our abilities. As shown in this course, however, we can and do learn from our mistakes, ultimately, making the world a safer place.