Titan Submersible Vessel

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/j ... on-titanic

Director James Cameron has spoken out about the Titan submersible tragedy.

The Titanic film-maker appeared on ABC News after today’s announcement that the crew are believed to have died in a “catastrophic implosion”. The five men were in a remotely operated vehicle to tour the wreckage of the Titanic two miles beneath the ocean’s surface.
The Titan submersible.

“Many people in the community were very concerned about this sub,” Cameron said in an on-air interview. “A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified and so on. I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

(And I'm with you, Neon, on the crew thing.)

[neonzx]

U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago
Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first detected Titan tragedy

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-d ... malertNEWS

A top secret military acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard what the U.S. Navy suspected was the Titan submersible implosion hours after the vehicle began its mission, officials involved in the search said.

The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after the submersible’s disappearance Sunday, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.

“The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost,” a senior U.S. Navy official told The Wall Street Journal in a statement. “While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

The Navy asked that the specific system used not be named, citing national security concerns.

[Liz]

“While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission.”

“While not definitive", if you believe in coincidence... what made it definitive for me was when contact was lost and it did not resurface... dropping ballast would have been the thing they'd have done if able. .. those view ports have been known to fail... even those much smaller.

[Suranis]

(I wish the media would stop calling the tourist passengers "crew")

Thirded.

[Greatgrey]

[raison de arizona]

CEO Stockton Rush: "I have broken some rules to make this. (…) The carbon fibre and titanium there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.“

#Titanic #OceanGate #Titan

[MN-Skeptic]

YouTube is filled with videos of what happens when people don't do what they should do. Hopefully no one is hurt when their shortcuts fail. When the worst happens, you end up with Wikipedia entries documenting the results of sheer stupidity - city blocks destroyed by explosions, toxic oil spills, Chernobyl, etc.

[poplove]

Saw these on my daughter’s Facebook page.

IMG_1463.jpeg (131.11 KiB) Viewed 1039 times

IMG_1464.jpeg (82.57 KiB) Viewed 1039 times

[RVInit]

Poplove, thanks for sharing.

Sounds like the CEO of OceanGate had done the same another another infamous CEO (can you say Elizabeth Holmes) had done. In many of her written materials given to prospective investors she had logos from highly reputable companies and even made statements that some of them were involved in verifying her equipment worked. So, OceanGate CEO claimed that several companies, Boeing, and even NASA had helped with the design of their submersibles. Turns out not to be true at all. Boeing put out a statement this morning that they had no part in design or any other aspect of OceanGate submersibles. I bet OceanGate is scrubbing their YouTube and website of all the advertisement videos where they make these kinds of claims.

And Elie Honig explained that despite having signed waivers, no, as I suspected, the families still can and probably will sue. And they will most likely win. I bet OceanGate will not be solvent for much longer anyway, they probably will get nothing.

[Dave from down under]

Perhaps some wrongful death charges?

[RVInit]

Their website and YouTube channels have been taken down. yeah, I think the misrepresentation that Boeing helped design things probably played a big part in paying customers feeling comfortable with going on one of those submersibles. That is going to bite them big just like it bit Holmes at trial.

[neeneko]

Their website and YouTube channels have been taken down. yeah, I think the misrepresentation that Boeing helped design things probably played a big part in paying customers feeling comfortable with going on one of those submersibles. That is going to bite them big just like it bit Holmes at trial.

You would think that if they were going to lie about someone helping them design the thing, they would have gone with something with a better current reputation...

[Azastan]

You would think that if they were going to lie about someone helping them design the thing, they would have gone with something with a better current reputation...

Boeing has a lot of engineers in this part of the country. OceanGate is based in Everett, WA, which has an extremely large plane building factory belonging to Boeing located here. It would make sense to say that Boeing helped with the design.

They were also claiming that the University of Washington had helped with design--if that is true, they probably had a couple of first year engineering students help.

[RVInit]

You would think that if they were going to lie about someone helping them design the thing, they would have gone with something with a better current reputation...

Boeing has a lot of engineers in this part of the country. OceanGate is based in Everett, WA, which has an extremely large plane building factory belonging to Boeing located here. It would make sense to say that Boeing helped with the design.

They were also claiming that the University of Washington had helped with design--if that is true, they probably had a couple of first year engineering students help.

The University of Washington has spoken. They allowed OceanGate to use one of their pools, but beyond that, no association, cooperation, or help in design or testing of their vessels. Oops. Two down so far. I wonder if NASA will weigh in now. They are probably running the wording by lawyers at this point. That's just me making a WAG.

[RVInit]

I found a single page that is still active on their expeditions site. 2023 Expeditions - Currently underway. They need to disable all their domains completely

CurrentTitanVoyagge.jpg (20.52 KiB) Viewed 917 times

[RTH10260]

https://twitter.com/stonking/status/1671945151961333784

CEO Stockton Rush: "I have broken some rules to make this. (…) The carbon fibre and titanium there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.“

#Titanic #OceanGate #Titan

He quoted a general, McArthur, who was speaking of breaking rules, military rules, rules that describe for the dumbest to follow to reach minimal targets. Officers are ttrained to look at military rules and decide if they are still applicable to their current situation in a theater of war. They are granted some leeway to work around limitations that are stupid, to say the least, in a situation that is far from daily exercises in the field.

Scientific rules have a foundation in R&D. If you think they do not apply in your specific application, you do not just "break" aka ignore the rule and best technological advice to date, you make your own sound R&D and have other engineers confirm your findings.

[RTH10260]

Poplove, thanks for sharing.

And Elie Honig explained that despite having signed waivers, no, as I suspected, the families still can and probably will sue. And they will most likely win. I bet OceanGate will not be solvent for much longer anyway, they probably will get nothing.

I bet those waivers - even when claiming it's a device under development - does not expunge the company from obvious design and manufacturing errors.

[Foggy]

'Course, the movie is gonna be "An Expensive and Stupid Way to Die". It'll be a flop.

But I'm glad they didn't suffer, apparently. They were almost to the bottom, and Stockton Rush had just said, "Hmm" when all of a sudden, poof. Or some other noise that represents an implosion at the bottom of the ocean. Kind of a "Pfft" maybe.

Oh well.

[RVInit]

It seems pretty clear that he had the majority of the vessel built with a lightweight material simply so he could make the submersible larger. To accommodate paying customers I would assume. And also didn't bother to do any long term R&D with this material putting it under pressure over and over again to see if it would still hold up the same after multiple dives. I think, again, largely because he wanted to be able to get paying customers into that submersible as soon as possible. It's hard not to see making money as his main objective. He called the paying passengers "crew members" I think to convince others (and possibly himself) that he was doing real scientific work. I don't know, maybe some science came of it. The main one being that carbon fiber apparently suffers fatigue after multiple dives. Or the difference between how the carbon fiber responds to multiple dives as apposed to titanium is enough to cause failure of the joints. At any rate, this is a bad way to do "research", putting paying customers lives in danger while convincing them they are some kind of scientific crew members.

[Reality Check]

There are several great interviews with James Cameron on YouTube. I will link a couple below. He and his deep submersible community colleagues knew Monday that the Titan had imploded with almost near certainty. He based his conclusion on the fact that they lost communication simultaneously on both voice and tracking systems. He said those systems are independent and that would imply something catastrophic had occurred. He also heard rumors that hydrophones had picked up the sound of an implosion.

The media probably at hyped up the idea that there was a good chance they were still alive and running out of oxygen. This makes for a better news story just as when they play up as a horse race an election they know isn't close.

[AndyinPA]

I thought that I heard on MSNBC this morning that the company had shut down, but I'm not finding a link that says that.

[Flatpoint High]

YouTube is filled with videos of what happens when people don't do what they should do. Hopefully no one is hurt when their shortcuts fail. When the worst happens, you end up with Wikipedia entries documenting the results of sheer stupidity - city blocks destroyed by explosions, toxic oil spills, Chernobyl, etc.

Mythbusters:

[Slim Cognito]

I remember that episode. Although I loved the show, that particular episode really upset me. I also thought of it when I heard about the emplosion.

Great minds and all.

[RTH10260]

It seems pretty clear that he had the majority of the vessel built with a lightweight material simply so he could make the submersible larger. To accommodate paying customers I would assume. And also didn't bother to do any long term R&D with this material putting it under pressure over and over again to see if it would still hold up the same after multiple dives. I think, again, largely because he wanted to be able to get paying customers into that submersible as soon as possible. It's hard not to see making money as his main objective. He called the paying passengers "crew members" I think to convince others (and possibly himself) that he was doing real scientific work. I don't know, maybe some science came of it. The main one being that carbon fiber apparently suffers fatigue after multiple dives. Or the difference between how the carbon fiber responds to multiple dives as apposed to titanium is enough to cause failure of the joints. At any rate, this is a bad way to do "research", putting paying customers lives in danger while convincing them they are some kind of scientific crew members.

That's also too my conclusion. A correct R&D approach would have checked out and measured the vessel after every return. Under proper conditions engineers would have ultrasound tested the vessel to disgnose its continued integrity. A proper R&D approach would have dipped an empty vessel, just filled with measurement equippment many times to the desired design depth of the Titanic, performing a stress test on the compression and decompression cycles.

[raison de arizona]

I saw a video from a materials engineer that I can't put my finger on right now. It said that while carbon fiber has a very high tensile strength, it has a relatively low compressive strength, which is what you really need for a submarine, obviously. Also, she mentioned that carbon fiber can have difficult to find flaws, and that repeated compressive cycles would exacerbate those flaws to the point that they would be likely to fail.

So, yeah.