It's a good thing that they had dissolvable weight releases but I'm still amazed at the lack of backup systems and still letting passengers onboard.
Related to this, the Hydraulic Press channel did a somewhat similar implosion test of a composite tube with metallic ends. Thought it was relevant due to other discussion on this topic:
That video is really just for entertainment purposes.
As a lot of the comments talk about, it visually looks [1] like the glue failed and there's no provided evidence that a submersible would use the same 2 part epoxy glue.
If the bond failed before the tube, then it would probably just leak like they did earlier in the video. The high velocity/high deformation collapse inward would probably cause any bond line or the fibers in that proximity to fail anyway?
> If the bond failed before the tube, then it would probably just leak like they did earlier in the video.
My understanding was for that "submersible" the glue never had a seal in the first place. But I can see the argument that instead the glue failed early on.
> The high velocity/high deformation collapse inward would probably cause any bond line or the fibers in that proximity to fail anyway?
Well, my overall point is that there is no evidence that the test is an accurate reproduction/simulation of Titan. Honestly a better test is probably just having carbon fiber on "dry-land" and pushing on sheet of it using the press at a known pressure so see if at 400 atms it just deforms or breaks. The whole point of it being a submersible test is to ride the curtails of the deaths (i.e. entertainment not education).
Anyways, the carbon fiber definitely deforms but the glue failing is a very fast shock that precedes the implosion. Surely the carbon fiber would've broke when more force was applied (assuming the glue didn't). But I think the test only showed the breaking point of the epoxy.
If you're testing submerssibles and one of them has (>5% maybe less) deformation that should count as a test failure. But that deformation doesn't count as an implosion.
What is the result of their test? Their accent and lack of detail makes it a bit of a pain to understand. I expect something like "we did 20 dives at half capacity and then it imploded at 75% capacity"
They say they had dissolvable weight releases. It seems that is another place one would cut costs by lying, as a real such system would require a lot of swap-outs.
It's actually pretty wild that people make money making these videos. It's incredible what cheap mass access can make possible. YouTube is a masterpiece: the engineering, the BD, the partner management and monetization. Absolutely genius invention.
Starting an ice cream business means you have some money but not a lot. So the people with more money want to profit from you failing.
Starting a submarine business means you have a lot of money, and the people with a lot of money see that as too much of a hassle to go after for a quick pay out. Probably could afford lawyers, and for positive press releases, ew.
Why is the drop dependent on the battery? Why in the world wouldn't they be held on electromagnetically so if the battery goes kaput the weights immediately drop?
Well, as the article explained. There was a non-battery backup.
> “We had special weights on the submersible that will dissolve after 24 hours so they will just drop off and then we would be able to get back to the surface.”
Maybe it's just a good idea that didn't occur to them? (Not being snarky, I'm curious too.)
Related: Is there a way to design an electromagnetic coupling that only uses significant power when it needs to work hard to maintain the connection? Because otherwise I could see battery drain being an issue.
I think they didn't do that because they would need to have that system independent of the system inside the submarine or otherwise they would need to drill holes in the main hull to provide power for that. Given the fact that the aystem was controlled by a cheap controller pretty sure they didn't spend that much money on the weight drop system either.
Probably because simple electromagnetic locks use quite a bit of power continuously, and nobody with enough experience was involved to know that low-power electromagnetic latches and pin pullers exist.
A better way would haven been to have mechanical latches, that are connected to the weights and which use the battery to unlatch the locks.
I am curious how the weights are wired, because you cant just run wires from inside the sub to outside. The pressure gradient is too high. So with mechanical cables holding the weights.
I really don't understand the lack of a backup here. I understand they had a budget, but that budget couldn't include a spare battery or two? They also didn't appear to test the batteries at all before going down? My high school robotics team had more redundancy than this sub did.
Wouldnt the ascent decompression kill the occupants anyways? Getting them up to surface isn't the saving grace to something like a battery failing. Maybe I'm missing something?
Edit. Thank you for the responses people, I learned something new today!
That's not a backup, that's a contingency. I'm saying why not put another fully charged battery in the sub so it would be less likely to be completely unpowered at some point.
I don't know anything about submarines, but it doesn't seem crazy. Maybe they figure the battery has a 1 in 100 chance of failure and the sub can only make 50 trips in it's lifetime and it wasn't worth it considering the other systems like the weights and the hydrolic something or other that they actually used to get to the surface. Everything is a trade off and the extra battery would have cost money, take up space, could catch on fire, etc.
The report is that college interns designed the electronics. People with no experience in building reliable systems with redundancy. It was basically all hobbyist SBCs with zero professional design features.
At what point do we start taking the "talking points" from the so called conspiracy theorists seriously? For all we know they did hire sub par individuals and because it was under the guise of DEI or ageism no one wants to touch it with a 10 ft pole.
Then let's find these employees and audit their credentials. Let's see all oceangate emails. Let's check all their internal testing reports and every single document. Let's pick it apart in the open.
If it's PR spin and fake outrage, then it'll be obvious.
It's obvious even from the facts that we already have: long before he claimed to hire young people for being "inspirational," he'd already tried to recruit plenty of older, experienced men, and only rejected (or, more accurately, was rejected by) the ones who told him he was going to kill someone. Paul-Henri Nargeolet hardly qualifies as a DEI selection, he was just ok with dying at the bottom of the ocean. https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-titan...
I don't feel any need to at all, in fact, I think the way you're doing the burden of proof here absolutely sucks and is part of the problem.
Which is today, it's very obvious to me that idiot rich dudes are very capable of doing idiot rich dude things without the "help" of theoretically incompetent minorities.
I'm very comfortable assuming the idiocy is coming from there. I demand proof in the other direction. It was probably rich white guy idiots. Prove to me otherwise.
The world makes a little more sense when you consider just how prolific the worship of rich white idiot guys has always been. What we’re seeing is almost business as normal. Just can’t forget to shift the blame to a boogeyman and we’re golden, apparently.
I'm referring to the reporting making the outrage rounds that cited DEI comments by the CEO. I'm not trying to bring it in, but comments here are saying stuff that really makes it hard for me to ignore that these people were, to put it nicely, doing sub par work.
People (including a now-dead comment) are trying to blame this on "wokeness" due to a fluffy statement about hiring "inspirational" young people, ignoring the facts that a) he was trying to cut costs wherever possible, and b) he did try to recruit experienced "old white guys," but most of them told him he was going to kill somebody: https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/the-titan...
He fired the engineer that told him it was unsafe (circa 5yrs ago) and need more testing. He gave that engineer ultimatum to sign it as safe or be fired. Rush fired that engineer on that refusal-to-lie-unsafe ground. He never had the intention to hire "old white guys" because of lacking budget to hire but simply prefer no one qiestion his lacknof sub experience and decision making. As for no money, it is CEO job to ensure enough funding coming in to make the venture profitable. It is HR and COO to ensure they got the right people to operate. He overstep his duty boundary in a very inexperience and lack of good business sense. Meanwhile Cameron a film director descended twice deeper than Rush EVER could while making profit and still growing his submersible company. If it is incompetent say it so. Cutting cost to the point plane felling from the sky is no excuse.
That depends on where the batteries are located. In this case they are on the other side of the pressure hull. You then get to decide if you want your transfer switch to sit on this side or the other and how you get to pass the signal to switch over from the one to the other (maybe you could automate that). In a design such as this one nothing is really simple and even a silly switch or relay can add quite a bit of complexity. The pressures you are dealing with are immense, it's not as if you're going to run an extra wire with a grommet through the pressure hull on a moments notice. If the cable duct has already been sealed then you're out of luck unless you added spare wiring and even that isn't trivial with this much pressure on the other side of it.
Who said anything about retrofit? This should have been done from the very beginning. I still can't believe they never tested a round trip without people to the depth they were going.
The weirdest thing is that folks paying 6 figures learn about these safety mechanisms only after sinking to the bottom of the ocean. It's a sensible safety mechanism to have, but shouldn't there be a briefing where participants learn about something like that?
Are the participants passengers or crew? Crew, I'd expect to have full systems understanding of the sub, how it works under normal operation, and how to modify how it works under abnormal/emergency/degraded operation.
An early pilot said, “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.” Space and submarine operations are even less forgiving than sea surface or aviation. Almost all of my transition training into more advanced aircraft has been systems-related (like 90+% systems and 10-% operation).
I feel like the purchasers of these experiences were basically passengers. I don't expect the occupant of 2A on an airliner to understand anything more about the safety systems than where the exits are and how to put on a mask if it appears in front of them.
I've read, that for legal reasons, OceanGate made them "crew" for the dives. My understanding was that it was a measure to reduce the liability against the company in the instance something went wrong.
> but shouldn't there be a briefing where participants learn about something like that?
They are in a sealed tube underwater where most of the systems are automated. Practically, the only thing they can do is sit down and hang onto their butts. Even the press interviews reveal a simple button to submerge or ascend. Beyond the simple controller for limited maneuverability there isn't much anyone can do from inside the capsule.
For untrained crew or passengers this is probably the best setup. But there should have been a lot more critical engineering involved before even a single crew dived.
Did you know that the planes you fly on essentially have a windmill in the event of a total power loss[0]? I don't think it's common knowledge and I don't think there's any reason that it would matter if the passengers were aware of it.
I still don't exactly understand why these subs aren't just tethered to the ship.
Sure have a battery system as back-up for loss of shore-power (so that you can surface). But if the ROVs [1] they used to find the wreckage can be tethered to a ship why can't the dive sub? It would just be a glorified elevator at this point which sounds much simpler.
Don’t have a source handy but have read the tethering is possible but required more specialized and expensive ships.
When the tethers /are/ used I found it interesting the whole reel is welded onto the ship’s deck
73 comments
[ 6.0 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadRelated to this, the Hydraulic Press channel did a somewhat similar implosion test of a composite tube with metallic ends. Thought it was relevant due to other discussion on this topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQGDwE3yMb0
As a lot of the comments talk about, it visually looks [1] like the glue failed and there's no provided evidence that a submersible would use the same 2 part epoxy glue.
[1]: https://youtu.be/BQGDwE3yMb0?t=317
My understanding was for that "submersible" the glue never had a seal in the first place. But I can see the argument that instead the glue failed early on.
> The high velocity/high deformation collapse inward would probably cause any bond line or the fibers in that proximity to fail anyway?
Well, my overall point is that there is no evidence that the test is an accurate reproduction/simulation of Titan. Honestly a better test is probably just having carbon fiber on "dry-land" and pushing on sheet of it using the press at a known pressure so see if at 400 atms it just deforms or breaks. The whole point of it being a submersible test is to ride the curtails of the deaths (i.e. entertainment not education).
Anyways, the carbon fiber definitely deforms but the glue failing is a very fast shock that precedes the implosion. Surely the carbon fiber would've broke when more force was applied (assuming the glue didn't). But I think the test only showed the breaking point of the epoxy.
If you're testing submerssibles and one of them has (>5% maybe less) deformation that should count as a test failure. But that deformation doesn't count as an implosion.
> A clip shows Rush inside Titan elaborating on the plan saying that eventually the sub will “drift down” and “hit the bottom.”
Dear Lord.. Even running an ice cream shop is subjected to more scrutiny than selling rides in a submarine.
It is more a cultural staple than a trend at this point, since the Watergate scandal happened fifty years ago.
Starting a submarine business means you have a lot of money, and the people with a lot of money see that as too much of a hassle to go after for a quick pay out. Probably could afford lawyers, and for positive press releases, ew.
Some of the other legal issues is that the passengers signed waivers, which are generally considered common, and that the submersible ran in international waters: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titan-sub-oceangate-famlies-law....
> “We had special weights on the submersible that will dissolve after 24 hours so they will just drop off and then we would be able to get back to the surface.”
Related: Is there a way to design an electromagnetic coupling that only uses significant power when it needs to work hard to maintain the connection? Because otherwise I could see battery drain being an issue.
The Deepsea Challenger used such a system.
A better way would haven been to have mechanical latches, that are connected to the weights and which use the battery to unlatch the locks.
I am curious how the weights are wired, because you cant just run wires from inside the sub to outside. The pressure gradient is too high. So with mechanical cables holding the weights.
Our team could use swerve drive and that’ll cover the parts.
The article does mention "one" of them went out, implying they had more than one.
As to why that was not sufficient to release the balast, that's another question.
Edit. Thank you for the responses people, I learned something new today!
For scuba, you are breathing pressurized gasses much higher than 1atm at depth, which causes decompression issues.
If it's PR spin and fake outrage, then it'll be obvious.
Which is today, it's very obvious to me that idiot rich dudes are very capable of doing idiot rich dude things without the "help" of theoretically incompetent minorities.
I'm very comfortable assuming the idiocy is coming from there. I demand proof in the other direction. It was probably rich white guy idiots. Prove to me otherwise.
Everything is a tradeoff. Why not 20 spare batteries? Because it's too heavy.
An early pilot said, “Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect.” Space and submarine operations are even less forgiving than sea surface or aviation. Almost all of my transition training into more advanced aircraft has been systems-related (like 90+% systems and 10-% operation).
I feel like the purchasers of these experiences were basically passengers. I don't expect the occupant of 2A on an airliner to understand anything more about the safety systems than where the exits are and how to put on a mask if it appears in front of them.
They are in a sealed tube underwater where most of the systems are automated. Practically, the only thing they can do is sit down and hang onto their butts. Even the press interviews reveal a simple button to submerge or ascend. Beyond the simple controller for limited maneuverability there isn't much anyone can do from inside the capsule.
For untrained crew or passengers this is probably the best setup. But there should have been a lot more critical engineering involved before even a single crew dived.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_air_turbine
Sure have a battery system as back-up for loss of shore-power (so that you can surface). But if the ROVs [1] they used to find the wreckage can be tethered to a ship why can't the dive sub? It would just be a glorified elevator at this point which sounds much simpler.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROV_Odysseus_6K