[krisoft]

> can you remember any cases where the person with "common sense" thought "this crap ain't gonna work" but it worked anyway

I have one! Totally different field though. Cruise ships (and roro ferries) look sooo ungainly in water that regular people frequently ask how do they not just roll over. The Icon of the Seas goes 9 meter underwater and 20 stories over the water. It does not feel or look right. Yet it is right, and keeps upright :), because it does not have uniform density. The engines and machinery, and tanks at the bottom of it keeps the center of gravity low enough to make it stable.

The funny twist is that vehicle carrier ships also look unstable the same way and there the intuition is more correct. There have been multiple accidents where such ships capsized. But the intuition there is still not correct about the reasons why they flip over. (It is not that they don’t have enough draft, but due to free surface effects and the cargo destabilising).