[SauronOfMordor]

>>But they found that no-one had welded steel that thick since 1945 and by the mid-1980’s the knowledge was lost.<<

Where I worked, the term was “tribal knowledge” — information that was passed from older members of the team to new members, but never documented. It was regarded as a bad thing, to be remedied when realized.

I think we had similar issues with the details of building the Saturn V rocket.

[Macoozie]

““tribal knowledge” — information that was passed from older members of the team to new members”

That is the way the old Guild system worked.
Don’t tell anybody but your tribe how to do something to protect your jobs.

It happens today with IT projects. The folks that built it retire. Nobody new knows how to do it that way. Remember the Y2K horror stories and the search for the hold coders?
So they spend buckets o’ money on new tech, with new folks that will be gone in a few years. Rinse. Repeat.

Great for the Tribe. Bad for everybody else.

[Ikeon]

In the USN there was lots of tribal knowledge, each boat had its own querks.

watch " the African Queen" , Humphrey Bogart knew where and how hard to kick the boiler to keep it from blowing up. That wasnt in any manual.

[null and void]

Where I worked, the term was “tribal knowledge” — information that was passed from older members of the team to new members, but never documented. It was regarded as a bad thing, to be remedied when realized.

I hired on at a semiconductor company only to find that their process was 100% 'tribal knowledge'.

Took me a couple years to document every. single. step.

As a side effect I doubled the yield...

[DiogenesLamp]

I think we had similar issues with the details of building the Saturn V rocket.

Fortunately, SpaceX is building better rockets than the Saturn V ever was.

So in this area, we are exceeding the capabilities of the past.

[Sequoyah101]

Back in the 70s and 80s we developed knowledge to drill 18,000 to 20,000 foot high pressure gas wells through multiple changing pressure strata. We also learned how to effectively fracture stimulate them through economical casing designs and tubing strings and to deplete them safely in the early high pressure stages of well life. There were lots of engineered tricks of the trade at work every day.

On bottoms up after a trip we routinely burned gas flares of 60 to 100 feet high having learned to monitor the bubble point depth and circulate out on the BOP until all was clear. It was like tickling the dragon's tale sometimes but we had people who had acquired the skills and nerve to do it reliably. You also had to have the right tools and be rigged up well and tested better to do it. I doubt it could be done again today. I doubt anyone would let us.