“I can’t believe they built that (the 3 gorges dam) in a straight line”
My guess would be the viewpoint of the Communist Party affects everything they do, including the engineering. What I mean is, everything is either pared down to make it cheaper, or elaborately overdone, like the flower arrangements at state meetings. Which would be cheaper, a straight line or a long curve? Less material, lower engineering time.
Or, possibly, some party official drew it out on a map and he used a ruler. Then nobody would dare change it. When I worked at Honeywell, a DCAS rep with zero engineering sense sketched out a fixture like it was done on an Etch A Sketch. Management refused to let the mechanical engineers change it as they were afraid of this guy. It failed miserably. The design done on a different project that worked looked like a spider. Instead of fifty pounds of hogged aluminum, it was a few ounces of spring steel.
Just like Chernobyl.
“It was cheapeer”
“it’s not 3 roetngens per hour, it’s 20,000” (the original sensor maxed out at 3)