Titan/Titanic tragedy

[Dhal22]

THIS! Just tonight, the wife and I were talking about how many machine and manpower resources were expended on this fruitless search for some rich people that decided to go into a sub that virtually all of the experts (Robert Ballard, for example) said that this was a fool's journey. I mean, come on, the sub's main controller was a Nintendo-ish game controller. It had completely exposed thrusters on the outside that apparently had the mounts drilled right into the carbon fiber pressure vessel. Maybe there will be some lessons learned with this "accident."

In the meantime... 117 US citizens died in gun violence today. 15 Canadian senior citizens died last week when their van was involved in a crash.

And over 100 daily US traffic fatalities.

 

[Aaron_W]

Must have been stress cracks that weren't noticed; the sub had made two previous dives successfully

The owner / builder cut corners to reduce costs, and was quoted as saying the submersible industry was stifling innovation through excessive safety regulation.

I read that components including the viewing hatch were not rated for the depth it was intended to operate at. Likely a corner cut trusting that the safety factor which is often 10-20x the rated capacity would be "good enough".

Apparently there have been serious issues on prior dives, it sounds like the company was basically beta testing the sub while carrying living humans.

It is one thing to risk your own life with untested, and unrated equipment. Something else entirely when you place others at risk. The more I learn about this operation, the more the outcome seems to have been inevitable. The owner / designer sounds like one of those guys who knows he is smarter than everybody else and dismissed the warnings from the submersible community as uninnovative and unwilling to take risks.

I saw an interview with a guy from a submersible organization yesterday and he said the number of dead from this one incident out numbers the total fatalities ( think he said 4) in deep submersibles in the past 60 years.

To give some description of the environment they were in, I saw it described as like being in the piston engine of a diesel engine. The pressure is so extreme that the bodies would have combusted as they were crushed, but it was over in a millisecond or about 100x faster than the brain can even recognize what is happening.

I hope the others on board at least made an informed choice so knew the risks. It is an unfortunate situation but I have a hard time finding much sympathy for essentially rich bungee jumpers.

Glad there were no major incidents during the search and rescue operations. That is not always the case.

 

[Deleted member 69715]

This seemed foolhardy to me, so I was not all that interested, didn't read about it much. This was a corporate enterprise that built this, am I right?
If I am, that tells me at least a few corners were cut due to $$$. Bean counter engineering.
Only one that really bothers me is that kid. He had the instincts to not go but was forced to.

 

[RJSakowski]

This is how it was designed, yes.
But you don't want to pop a sub hatch below water anyhow, ever.

But you can suffocate from lack of oxygen when you are floating on the surface. Assuming a simple communication failure, if the mission had been aborted and the submersible surfaced, the individuals would still be at the mercy of search and rescue.

 

[Ulma Doctor]

This seemed foolhardy to me, so I was not all that interested, didn't read about it much. This was a corporate enterprise that built this, am I right?
If I am, that tells me at least a few corners were cut due to $$$. Bean counter engineering.
Only one that really bothers me is that kid. He had the instincts to not go but was forced to.

The irony.
A billionaire , who had more money than 10 men could spend in a lifetime , was killed by someone or some entity, who was trying to save money and cut a couple corners.

 

[tq60]

Commercial aircraft, or any aircraft with a pressurized cabin have limited cycle count due to the movement of things as the pressure changes applied stresses.

Same must apply to this, it may have worked fine before, but every dive causes stresses that may limit the viability of the thing.

I understand the CEO of the company was one, carma...

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk

 

[pdentrem]

The CEO refused to hire 50 year old white guys with experience with the excuse that they are not likely to think outside the box. My uncle worked for Dominion Engineering which was part of GE until Jack the Hack Welch showed up. My uncle had to rework and show the errors and why, on most of the new design plans by the new young guys to fix their assumptions that school teaches everything but in the real wild world shows this to be false.

The world makes the box and is continuing to test everything that we make.

Working with millions of pounds of water pressure and being the alpha tester is not my idea of safe.
Pierre

 

[great white]

This is how it was designed, yes.
But you don't want to pop a sub hatch below water anyhow, ever.

Good luck opening a hatch at even 300 feet. Impossible with human power.

 

[great white]

Lets see here:

2 founding members. One handled business side and was an MBA.

The other was an MBA and with an aerospace engineering degree. Also a licensed aircraft pilot. Same guy claims he "engineered" the vessel.

So, an MBA and an MBA/undergrad aerospace engineer designed a vessel to take the pressure of the oceans depths.



I'm sure they had others, but the CEO specifically stated he has final design authority to design and changes.

Sounds like Musk claiming he’s the “chief design engineer” when he’s only got an MBA (ie: lying piece of chit). He stands on the shoulders of giants and steals their credit.

Claims he's like McArthur (delusions of grandeur anyone?): "you're remembered more for the rules you break, I broke some rules but I think I did it with engineering and logic." (all evidence to the contrary)

CEO claims it "can't be certified" because the industry doesn't have the knowledge to test or certify it, only he does.

Multiple joints and seals in the pressure capsule itself when nearly every other deep submergence vehicle has tiny windows and spherical construction (best shape for resisting pressure).

Game controller to maneuver it.

Lighting from camping word.

Gawd knows what other COTS or substandard items they poured into that thing under the veil of "innovation", "fiscal responsibility" or "I decided it was fit for purpose" because "i are an enganeer". It brings to mind a picture of a guy in a lawn chair with helium birthday balloons tied to it and claiming he will cross the Atlantic......I actually had to “rescue“ one of those morons in the middle of wild Newfoundland:



Moron, total moron…

A design and materials choice that everyone who was anyone in the industry was warning them about.

No surface communications link besides a text message system.

No underwater acoustic beacon other than a 15 minute "ping".

No deploy-able beacon to float to surface and notify mother ship of problems.

No data recorder.

A mother ship that is just an oil rig tender with a ramp and winch on the back.

No capability for any type of rescue system on the mothership.

No capability to even send down an ROV to check if they loose coms with the submersible or to accompany it to see if it runs into trouble at the wreck site.

No testing on the hull once operational other than "acoustic sensors" around the hull (ie: when they go off at depth, its' already too late).

They order the pressure hull and spec'd it at 7" thick. It arrives and it's 5" thick, but they accepted it. An employee protests and they fire him. Shortly after another employee quits citing safety concerns.

A business model that funds "research" by maximizing commercial opportunities (IE: fleecing bored wealthy "tourists").

Lies in the advertising about having Boeing and NASA (both aerospace entities, not marine) involved in the design of the craft.


What could possibly go wrong?


Maybe it's my egress training talking, but there's no effing way I'm being bolted into a pressure vessel that I can't get out of even if I have to (IE: at the surface and the recovery vessel can't find you).

And aerospace engineering degree? To design a deep water pressure vessel? That's a tragedy waiting to happen. The forces involved in aerospace and underwater are about as far opposed as you can get. Even a marine engineer is going to point you to specialized marine engineers to build such a pressure vessel.

Would you feel safe flying in an airplane designed by a marine engineer? Engineers specialize in specific fields for a reason.....

No, this was a foreseeable tragedy and they were warned or cautioned more than once. They (IE; CEO) decided he was a "maverick" and knew better than everyone else. States "safety rules stifle innovation". WTF?!?!?

Now there's 5 families paying the price for his hubris.

I don't feel that bad for these billionaires looking for something to stave off their boredom, I feel bad for their families they left behind.


PS. Apparently, the rich guy who took his son down; the son didn't really want to go and the father talked him into it.....

 

[markba633csi]

Cameron said he knew it was a goner immediately- and he's been down there several times
Wonder what the bodies looked like? Expensive fish food