Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search

[Dody]

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, currently entombed aboard that cigar tube of death off Newfoundland, once said, during an interview with Teledyne Marine, that he refused to hire any "fifty year old white guys" with military experience, since he found them not to be "inspirational," and that almost anyone could be trained to use the Titan's Playstation controller, at four thousand meters.

Ironically enough, he could be somewhat correct in that vile assessment, since Rush, one of the whitest of self-loathing white guys at sixty-one, presumably piloting the submersible and banging, perhaps even with his head on its walls, is not, in the least bit, inspirational . . .

That one is nasty.

 

[gamon]

Wonder if it landed inside the wreck? That would be a bad day!

Worse if bobbing on the surface and not being found before the air runs out. At least if they were inside the wreck they'd have something to look at.

 

[lowwall]

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions and currently entombed aboard that cigar tube of death off Newfoundland, once said, during an interview with Teledyne Marine, that he refused to hire any "fifty year old white guys" with military experience, since he found them not to be "inspirational,"

That's odd coming from a direct descendant of one of the more inspirational white guys with military experience in US history.

Benjamin Rush - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Dan]

This one is a carbon fibre sub not made of metal… I don’t know if fatigue testing of carbon fibre is required and whether it’s strength and lack of deterioration were overestimated…

I can see the confusion about this submersible, as OceanGate Home do have several kinds of submersibles and the news sometimes use Cyclops Submersible: 500 Meter Manned Submersible when they are discussing about Titan Submersible that is rated up to 4000m.

Cyclops, since it's rated only up to 500m has big viewport in front and top hatch.

Titan, since it's rated up to 4000m has tiny viewport (for the high pressure rating) in front that is also used as hatch bolted to a titanium dome that is glued to composite cylinder.

What are the maximum allowable working pressure (MAWP) rating of the viewport and the composite cylinder and the life cycles of the parts going through pressure and temperature swings (expansions and contractions), when descending to 4000m depth (400 bars) and ascending to the surface? Typical MAWP is about 1.5 x of the operating pressure or 6000m depth (600 bars). Did they test the parts to 600 bars?

 

[rhwestfall]

Just had to....

 

[FF / EMT]

Worse if bobbing on the surface and not being found before the air runs out. At least if they were inside the wreck they'd have something to look at.

Maybe they could finally turn that darn faucet off…

 

[makar0n]

Just some fun from wiki:

OceanGate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Limitations​

Once the occupants are aboard, the hatch is closed and bolted from the outside; there is no way to open the hatch from inside the vessel. In addition, there is no on-board navigation system; the support ship, which monitors the position of Titan relative to its target, sends text messages to Titan providing distances and directions.[23] In 2019, OceanGate published a blog post explaining why Titan was not certified by a ship classification society. In the post, OceanGate stated "the vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure" and argued that classification focused solely on the physical state of the vessel and not its corporate actions, which it characterized as a "constant, committed effort and a focused corporate culture" of "maintaining high-level operational safety".[24] Journalist David Pogue, who rode in Titan to view the Titanic in 2022, noted that Titan was not equipped with an emergency locator beacon; during his expedition, the surface support vessel lost track of the Titan "for about five hours, and adding such a beacon was discussed. They could still send short texts to the sub, but did not know where it was. It was quiet and very tense, and they shut off the ship's internet to keep us from tweeting."[25]

Testing and inspection​

A 1⁄3-scale model of the pressure vessel was built and tested at APL-UW; the model was able to sustain a pressure of 4,285 psi (29.54 MPa; 291.6 atm), corresponding to a depth of approximately 3,000 m (9,800 ft).[26]

David Lochridge, the OceanGate Director of Marine Operations, inspected the Titan as it was being handed over from Engineering to Operations and filed a quality control report in January 2018 in which he stated that no non-destructive testing of the carbon fiber hull had taken place to check for voids and delaminating which could compromise the hull's strength. Instead, Lochridge was told that OceanGate would rely on the real-time acoustic monitoring system, which he felt would not warn the crew of potential failure with sufficient time to safely abort the mission and evacuate. The day after he filed his report, he was summoned to a meeting in which he was told the acrylic window was only rated to 1,300 m (4,300 ft) depth because OceanGate would not fund the design of a window rated to 4,000 m (13,000 ft). In that meeting, he reiterated his concerns and added he would refuse to allow crewed testing without a hull scan; Lochridge was dismissed from his position as a result.[27] OceanGate filed a lawsuit against Lochridge that June, accusing him of improperly sharing proprietary trade secrets and fraudulently manufacturing a reason to dismiss him. The suit was settled in November 2018.[27]

OceanGate stated that unmanned testing of Titan to 4,000 m (13,000 ft) was performed in 2018 to validate the design,[28] followed by a statement that a crew of four had set a record by descending in Titan to 3,760 m (12,340 ft) in April 2019.[29] The tests were conducted near Great Abaco Island, near the edge of the continental shelf, as the platform would only need to be towed 12 mi (19 km) to depths exceeding 15,000 ft (4,600 m).[2] During the first human-piloted descent, which Rush performed solo, he used the vertical thrusters to overcome unexpected positive buoyancy when descending past 10,000 ft (3,000 m), which caused interference with the communication system, and he lost contact with the surface ship for approximately one hour. Rush became the second human to dive solo to 13,000 ft (4,000 m), after James Cameron, who in 2012 dove to Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, approximately 36,000 ft (11,000 m).[2] After these tests were completed, in January 2020, the hull of Titan began showing signs of cyclic fatigue and the craft was de-rated to 3,000 m (9,800 ft).[30] The Spencer-built composite cylindrical hull either was repaired or replaced by Electroimpact and Janicki Industries in 2020 or 2021, prior to the first trips to Titanic.[27]

No navigation, no emergency beacons, no way of getting out, no teether, no comms beyond text messages, not bothering with things like hull scan "bc we have our monitoring system 5000" or certifications "bc we have corporate culture ya know". Plus material fatigue. And a window certified to 3x less pressure. Well, what could possibly go wrong. Seems a rush job alright.

Interestingly the company who built the original hull, Spencer Composities, also did DeepFlight Challenger, also using carbon composites and things. But then:

Based on testing at high pressure, the DeepFlight Challenger was determined to be suitable only for a single dive, not the repeated uses that had been planned as part of Virgin Oceanic service. As such, in 2014, Virgin Oceanic "scrapped" plans for the five dives project using the DeepFlight Challenger, as originally conceived, putting plans on hold until more suitable technologies are developed.[23]

DeepFlight Challenger - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

One would think that people with 250K to spare would be more careful as to how and where they spend it, but then 250K for a bored 1%-er (and nothing to do with motorbikes) is a mere pocket change I suppose.

 

[Rearviewmirror]

I thought this visualization was good:

 

[gamon]

Maybe they could finally turn that darn faucet off…

Which faucet? There's one open on the Titanic? I've heard that rather amazingly, after all this time, the swimming pool is still full of water.

 

[DebbyDiver]

I thought this visualization was good:

That's brilliant. Thanks for the share.