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What is the most difficult machinery to operate?

PETER ROWLES, ESSEX

There is no Guinness World Record for the trickiest machine to control, but I suspect that keyhole surgery must be up there with the procedures requiring the most skill. A paper published last year in medical journal The Lancet found that the learning curve was far greater for laparoscopic procedures in prostate cancer than for traditional open surgery. Keyhole surgeons needed to do 750 procedures to match the success rates achieved by traditional consultants after just 250 operations. Fighter jets are surely among the hardest machines to operate too, requiring hundreds of hours of flight training. It takes some serious skill to manoeuvre at twice the speed of sound or fly across terrain below radar at under 50m altitude. Landing on an aircraft carrier is one of the biggest challenges – pilots must control machines travelling at 240km/h and land them on a patch of rolling, pitching deck just 45m long. Not for the faint-hearted.

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Submitted by NatalieHarrison

Endo-probes

Sat, 2011-10-15 13:38
M Paul Lloyd

We used to use fibre optic endo-probed for gas turbine diagnostics in the RAF back in the early 1980's even before most surgeons had even seen one. They do require a fair degree of dexterity to operate but if you know what you are looking at, be that a turbine blade or a prostate gland they are an invaluable tool that can save so much effort using more conevtional, and potentialy damaging techniques.
Any unfamiliar device can seem overwhelming until you actually become proficient in its use, mobile phones used to baffle me but now I can turn mine on all by myself. ;)

I reckon a nuclear submarine takes some effort to operate.

Helicopters always struck me

Fri, 2011-10-14 12:54
Jamie

Helicopters always struck me as being difficult to operate.