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The sub possibly imploded.
(comment deleted)
Possibly is a little optimistic.

The landing skid could have been jettisoned, but the rear cover was integral to the structure.

It imploded.

I wonder at what depth and how would the bodies look like after such an event...
Imagine taking a small balloon between your hands and squeezing it till it pops. Now imagine that balloon is filled with thousands and thousands of tiny balloons all popping at the same time the main one pops. That's implosion.
There might not be much left to recover from the bodies even assuming fish didn't eat them.
RIP. Imploded. Everyone else take note not to make your sub out of carbon fiber and get it properly classed.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230622104822/https://oceangate...

(A good example of how 'counterintuitive' no-everyone-else-is-wrong logic can fail spectacularly)

Hey thank you for this link, absolutely fascinating. Fascinating for how predictable it was.

Main quote:

> While classing agencies are willing to pursue the certification of new and innovative designs and ideas, they often have a multi-year approval cycle due to a lack of pre-existing standards, especially, for example, in the case of many of OceanGate’s innovations, such as carbon fiber pressure vessels and a real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring system. Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.

In other words, they're say "we're so far ahead of them that educating them would slow us down". That sounds great, until youre dead.

Well, the morbid silver lining I guess, I was watching an interview with some expert earlier in the week, and he said if it developed a leak at those pressures, it'd implode and they'd all be dead before they even knew it.

For me at least, that'd be much more preferable than being stranded in a tiny box with no hope, waiting to die.

That article is the funniest thing I've read in a week. "Why bother with all the mechanical inspections? The mechanical parts are never what fails!"
I am interested to know whether or not the screws into the carbon hull, for example the monitor mount, might've had anything to do with the likely implosion. I have trouble imagining it being something so small, but I don't believe a whole lot of engineering rigor went into the design and build of this sub.
I wonder how long it will be before someone resurrects this idea and starts another company like this.

Sounds like something Billy McFarland could get into.

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