OceanGate Submersible Goes Missing During Titanic Dive

[swansont]

57 minutes ago, mistermack said:

It's becoming clearer that there has been a lot of "news management" in this incident. 

I posted earlier that there would have been a very loud bang when the sub imploded, and that they would surely have heard it, or at least detected it on the ship.

Asserted but did not provide anything to support the assertion.

57 minutes ago, mistermack said:

 

And that's why they found the wreckage so quickly. They knew it had gone bang. They knew exactly where it was when it went bang. And as the sub was only about 15 minutes off the bottom, they knew that the wreckage would be directly below that spot, exactly as James Cameron said. So as soon as the ROV arrived, it went straight to the wreckage. 

The Coast Guard was informed by the Navy about the bang, using their sonar net.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/23/1183976726/titan-titanic-sub-implosion-navy

 

57 minutes ago, mistermack said:

So all the talk about oxygen supplies, and the scanning the surface, was just to cover the one-in-a-million chance that the sound of the collapse was a freak false lead, but they all knew in their heart of hearts that the worst had happened. 

If it turned out that the noise was something other than an implosion, it would not have looked very good, and who was talking about air supplies - the coast guard, or the pundits and consultants, who did not have this information?

 

57 minutes ago, mistermack said:

I'm quite claustrophobic, I wouldn't even go in a cave or a mine, unless I had to. I sometimes look up in wonder when I'm on the ground floor of an office block, and picture the lot coming down on my head. So I can't imagine how people can go down to those depths voluntarily. 

If I was going down 300 feet, I would like to see the reports where it had previously been tested down to 1,000 feet. Minumum. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Titan. The testing seems to have been only to a small percentage over the Titanic depth. I just couldn't handle the thought of that. 

The testing was an actual dive to to Titanic, and then more dives.

What they apparently didn’t do was test the fatigue of their device, other than this event.

 

[John Cuthber]

10 hours ago, StringJunky said:

But built to a price, probably not adequate for a mission as critical as that. The price you pay in high-end mission critical equipment is the testing of the individual products. ie The test sampling rate on the production would be much higher than a shop bought controller.

At 20 bucks, and well under a kilo in weight, why not just take a spare?

[StringJunky]

12 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

At 20 bucks, and well under a kilo in weight, why not just take a spare?

In a space like that? What spares do you take? It might not be that problem you have a spare for.

[John Cuthber]

13 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

What spares do you take?

The bits that haven't already been tested by a million game players?

It's a bit beside the point. The game-boy didn't include an "implode" function.
In theory the only things that are "critical" are
  Maintaining air and
   getting back to the surface.
They had at least one "get back to the surface" mechanism that was independent of that controller and the controller had nothing to do with the air supply.

Edited June 24, 2023 by John Cuthber

[StringJunky]

1 hour ago, John Cuthber said:

The bits that haven't already been tested by a million game players?

It's a bit beside the point. The game-boy didn't include an "implode" function.
In theory the only things that are "critical" are
  Maintaining air and
   getting back to the surface.
They had at least one "get back to the surface" mechanism that was independent of that controller and the controller had nothing to do with the air supply.

It was symbolic of his approach: "It'll do."

[Alex_Krycek]

3 hours ago, John Cuthber said:

The bits that haven't already been tested by a million game players?

It's a bit beside the point. The game-boy didn't include an "implode" function.
In theory the only things that are "critical" are
  Maintaining air and
   getting back to the surface.
They had at least one "get back to the surface" mechanism that was independent of that controller and the controller had nothing to do with the air supply.

What about "hull integrity"?

Excellent analysis of the Titan's design defects here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOVYkWgpcM

 

Edited June 24, 2023 by Alex_Krycek

[mistermack]

I'd like to know what means they use to control the ROV. If it's so hard to maintain communication with the Titan, how come they manage it perfectly well with ROVs, and have been doing so for decades ? 

The ROV that found the wreckage of the Titan did so quickly and easily while being controlled from it's mother ship. 

This page : https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/facts/rov.html#:~:text=These underwater machines are controlled,the operator and the vehicle.  describes how they use electrical cables, sending control instructions down and live video and stills up to the operators, so the weight of cable is clearly not a technical prohibiting factor for communicating with the sub. If you can do it with an ROV, then all of the technology is obviously already there, and they much have made a choice to not use it on the Titan. 

[TheVat]

I would guess that deep-sea craft will trend back towards the spherical hull, and use the traditional titanium or HY steel alloys. Sounds like carbon fiber can delaminate.

Quote

The Titan had made more than two dozen deep-sea dives, which put repeated stress on the hull, said Jasper Graham-Jones, an associate professor of mechanical and marine engineering at the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom.

That stress could potentially cause delamination, a horizontal splitting of the carbon-fiber hull, he said...

https://apnews.com/article/titanic-shipwreck-titan-submersible-search-deepsea-atlantic-implosion-90b9c54c3887c99099170a5afded15bc

Edited June 24, 2023 by TheVat
fix

[swansont]

6 hours ago, StringJunky said:

In a space like that? What spares do you take? It might not be that problem you have a spare for.

If you’ve got a separate way to shed ballast, the unlikely loss of the controller would be moot. You surface. You can’t steer, but there isn’t much you’re going to bump into.

[StringJunky]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

If you’ve got a separate way to shed ballast, the unlikely loss of the controller would be moot. You surface. You can’t steer, but there isn’t much you’re going to bump into.

True. 

[swansont]

To continue my previous thought, much of their procedure seems to have been “if there’s a problem, we surface” rather than having redundancy, other than multiple ways to surface .

But there’s no recovery from loss hull integrity once you’re past a certain depth, be it from fatigue of the carbon fiber or a problem with the viewing port, or a weld, etc.

[toucana]

Documentary video footage taken during a previous dive by the Titan submersible about a year ago has  emerged, which shows an incident when the crew discovered that one of the craft’s unidirectional thrusters had been re-installed backwards during its last maintenance overhaul.

https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/14gnn9q/horrifying_footage_of_previous_dive_from_the/

The crew discovered this problem when they were 13,000 feet deep under the surface, and just 300 yards off the bow of the Titanic. The pilot found he could only drive around in circles when applying normal inputs on the PS3 controller.

Instead of of aborting the dive, the pilot conducted an urgent text dialogue with CEO Stockton Rush and the crew on the surface support vessel 3 mile above, to figure out how to remap the PS3 controller inputs ("Try turning the controller around” ...)  - and carried on with the  dive.

Edited June 24, 2023 by toucana
reduplicated 'maintenance' removed

[mistermack]

It's quite astounding that they didn't do the most basic operational checks, when the sub was first put into the water, prior to submerging in this video. 

Fitting the propeller wrongly, and not testing it properly, and then not doing a basic manouvering test before diving, it's all amazing stuff, and really sheds light on the general attitude of mind pervading the operation. 

I wouldn't want to get in a taxi run that way, let alone a sub, and especially not a super-deep-diving sub.

[StringJunky]

One chap, who was his friend, said he was a lovely chap, but drank too much of his own Kool-Aid. Elon Musk is also prone to this sort of thinking.... and he wants to send people to Mars.

Edited June 25, 2023 by StringJunky

[swansont]

7 hours ago, StringJunky said:

One chap, who was his friend, said he was a lovely chap, but drank too much of his own Kool-Aid. Elon Musk is also prone to this sort of thinking.... and he wants to send people to Mars.

One difference is that Musk doesn’t ride in his own rockets. It’s also not clear how “hands on” Musk is; I get the impression that Rush was a little more involved, but it might be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

And safety, or lack thereof, is part of the culture of an organization. It flows from the top. 

[StringJunky]

14 minutes ago, swansont said:

One difference is that Musk doesn’t ride in his own rockets. It’s also not clear how “hands on” Musk is; I get the impression that Rush was a little more involved, but it might be a case of a little knowledge being a dangerous thing.

And safety, or lack thereof, is part of the culture of an organization. It flows from the top. 

Musk will be exponentially more impactful, I think, when one his plans goes wrong.. Would I be right in thinking Musk is more like Edison (of lightbulb fame), who thought of an idea, then got people together and was the money man?

 

Edited June 25, 2023 by StringJunky

[iNow]

[swansont]

4 hours ago, StringJunky said:

Musk will be exponentially more impactful, I think, when one his plans goes wrong.. Would I be right in thinking Musk is more like Edison (of lightbulb fame), who thought of an idea, then got people together and was the money man?

 

IIRC Musk has gotten into trouble for not following safety regs for the recent launch that blew up. But there is more oversight, since he’s dependent on federal funding.

[mistermack]

The day that decided their fate really would have been the day that they decided on carbon fibre for the body of the sub. (probably).

Certain decisions tie you in, once taken, and there is no going back. Carbon fibre has a sexy image with the public, being used in formual 1 cars, expensive golf clubs and racing yachts etc. I think that that sexy selling image would have appealed to the boss, bearing in mind the huge sums of money that he would be charging, for trips to the deep. 

It just sounds more hi-tec than steel, even stainless. So they pictured themselves selling dive seats, and went to carbon for marketing purposes, to impress the punters, as much as anything else. That's the feeling I get. Carbon fibre on the face of it seems an odd choice, and that's the only explanation I can conjure up. 

But once that decision is made, and commenced, there's no going back. That would have been ruinous. So even if you began to experience doubts, you're stuck with it. That's why no attention was paid to the various people who expressed concern. It was too late to change. So the choice was, keep on, or ruin.

[swansont]

Ran across this, saying that carbon fiber doesn't have great compressive strength, and repeated dives probably caused defects, making it even worse

https://twitter.com/TheMcKenziest/status/1672234182553264128

 

[StringJunky]

4 hours ago, swansont said:

Ran across this, saying that carbon fiber doesn't have great compressive strength, and repeated dives probably caused defects, making it even worse

https://twitter.com/TheMcKenziest/status/1672234182553264128

 

And it wasn't spherical to more uniformly take the pressure over its surface. Apparently, it was sub' carrying fees to the Titanic site that triggered him to use carbon. The non-spherical shape was to allow him to carry passengers. One thing is clear: you shouldn't test physics with peoples lives

Edited June 26, 2023 by StringJunky

[Alex_Krycek]

On 6/25/2023 at 12:44 PM, StringJunky said:

One chap, who was his friend, said he was a lovely chap, but drank too much of his own Kool-Aid. Elon Musk is also prone to this sort of thinking.... and he wants to send people to Mars.

No to mention Elon Musk is on record saying quite nonchalantly "a whole bunch of people will die", in the process of going to Mars.

Downright reckless and contrary to NASA's principles of safety.

[toucana]

3 hours ago, StringJunky said:

And it wasn't spherical to more uniformly take the pressure over its surface. Apparently, it was sub' carrying fees to the Titanic site that triggered him to use carbon. The non-spherical shape was to allow him to carry passengers. One thing is clear: you shouldn't test physics with peoples lives

Another point first raised on the Sub Brief YT channel and elsewhere, is the manufacturing process involved of bonding the Titanium end-caps onto the cylindrical CF hull with an epoxy glue - as shown below in a screenshot taken from a promotional video originally published by OceanGate.

Bonding such dissimilar materials with an epoxy is a highly dubious procedure to start with, because it creates a potential weak point whose real strength under a compressive stress of hundreds of atmospheres is very difficult to predict or test. But if you are going to adopt such a technique, then you don’t do it like this - out in an open warehouse space with a bunch of guys in carpenters aprons, standing on wooden step-ladders, and slopping the gunk on from a tin with paint brushes.

A safety critical jointing procedure of this type should really be carried out in a sterile dust-free environment with fume extraction running, and all the operatives clad in those special lint-free white hooded  suits - the sort of precautions you would normally see in publicity photos of NASA technicians assembling satellites ready for launch into deep space.

[StringJunky]

51 minutes ago, Alex_Krycek said:

No to mention Elon Musk is on record saying quite nonchalantly "a whole bunch of people will die", in the process of going to Mars.

Downright reckless and contrary to NASA's principles of safety.

Elon is a conductor on the world stage, increasingly consumed by narcissism and the desire for public exposure. He's looking to have a cage fight with Zuckerberg. If he proves one thing, and that's money can't buy class behaviour. The more money you have, the more you can isolate yourself from reality, and eventually sycophants become your only source of information that you rely on. Remind you of anyone? 

Edited June 26, 2023 by StringJunky

[TheVat]

Musk tweeted: "I have this great move that I call 'The Walrus', where I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing."

He later tweeted short videos of walruses, which suggests he may not be all that serious about the cage match.

In a possibly futile attempt to bring this post back to thread relevance, I will note that Mr Zuckerberg's penchant for profuse sweating tells me that he, like the ill-fated submersible, may lack the necessary hull integrity.  Even if advancing age assists a change from cylindrical to spherical.