Welcome to a Hollywood mega-director who decided subsea exploration would be his next hobby...and consequently immersed himself sufficiently in the hobby to become a leading expert.

On the knowing before anyone, the diver/acquaintance of the Oceangate team Jesse something or other, who was also claiming on Day 1 or 2 that they imploded, makes me thing that before comms were permanently lost, messages were sent from the sub to that effect.  "We're getting noises from the crackle-detection-thingy.  Dropping ballast.  GLURCH!"

Which the mothership crew then blabbed about to Jesse, Cameron, and who knows who else.  But not to the media at large.  Maybe not even to the Coast Guard.

Finally, the USN ret-sub officer who was hired to review the engineering of the sub and the program, and whose report excerpts were linked upthread, mentioned that:   The CF construction of the body was novel, but that in the event of any shock impact to the structure, likely would require scrapping for human-carrying purposes, due to the inability to perform nondestructive testing of the full CF thickness for resulting cracks, voids, etc.

EDIT, as noted in more detail, a few hours ago in this post:

They admit bonking a few things with the sub.  Yet still took people down in the thing afterwards.

Somewhere upthread is the claim that the acoustic detector thing wasn't actually operational. Perhaps they heard a loud pop and thought it was time to go topside and avoid water in the people tank. The thing that strikes me is, they're at such a pressure that I cannot believe failure was incremental. I mean it would have been incremental, but not in a timeframe a human can acknowledge.

SCBA tanks load the CF in tension, which it's really good at. the sub hull loads CF in compression, which it's not good at

Subs are like CNCs.  If you aren't crashing them every now and then, you aren't using them right.

Thanks for this.

I guess its also possible there was a problem with a passenger, health wise or mentally, requiring an abort and the hull failure was coincidental.

There's a world of difference between tension and compression. A scuba tank is in tension (holding air in), whereas a sub hull is in compression (holding air out). Different materials handle those things differently. Think of concrete - you can easily put together concrete that will hold 5000pis+ in compression but it'll crumble under tension.

As a fun what-if, if its weight didn't make this absurd, and its porosity didn't make it moot, concrete itself would make a decent hull material. You'd just have to coat it with something waterproof under pressure. I don't think flex seal would work.

100 pages is impressive!

I’ve read some responses but not all. So they were crushed instantly is what i’m reading. What happened in the events leading to that? Would the implosion have been unsuspecting or as they went deeper must have there been signs that the vessel was imploding?  Trying to get sense of a timeline here leading to the event

All of that misses my point, which still stands, so I'll reiterate it: Making a profit by meeting the needs or wants of other people, is a lofty goal. Nothing more about his motivation needs to be said.

Your post addresses his methods and his recklessness. Plenty of good thought there, but you're making a category error by taking criticisms of his methods and applying them to his motivations. His motive was fine. His methods, sucked.

According to James Cameron, explorer of the sea, they dropped ballast and were trying to come up when they were crushed. So they might have had an oh shit moment right before instant death
Could it be? Yea it's him, James cameron

It's impossible to know with the data we have. It's within the realm of feasibility that they recognized an impending failure, jettisoned ballast, and headed up, but not fast enough to get the pressure off before at some point moments, seconds, or minutes later, it failed.

It's also possible that one second they were saying 'oh, look, sea trash floating by the window' and a few milliseconds later they had ceased to exist. We just don't know yet. We may never.

While no where near the extreme in question CRS-7 was lost due to uncertified hardware in the cryo tank. My understanding of it all was those were the drawing call outs and it wasn't just a grabbed the wrong piece issue.

So do meth addicts.  Though I see what you're saying.

Rush was a con artist, and for many con artists, the first person who needs to really believe their bullshit is themselves.  I can admire his level of commitment, but that a con artist conned 5 people into recklessly throwing away their lives, is hardly laudable.

Yep. And considering how many issues they've had on other dives they could have been trying to come back up because of other communication or electrical issues and this catastrophic failure was out of the blue. This thing had so many known problems it's really tough to do more than speculate because there's so many things that were wrong with this design.

Tycoon who turned down tickets for him and HIS son on doomed Titanic sub reveals texts from company boss trying to sell him last-minute cut-price seats for $100,000 off and telling him 'it was safer than crossing the street'


A Las Vegas financier turned down cut-price seats on the Titan's doomed trip after raising safety concerns – but was told by the company boss that it 'was safer than crossing the street', MailOnline can reveal today.

Jay Bloom has shared texts between himself and OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush showing he and his son were offered a 'last minute price' of $150,000 a head (£120,000) – a discount on the usual $250,000 (£195,000) fee.



In a Facebook post he said: 'I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me: “While there's obviously risk – it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving".

'He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street. I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong'.





















In February this year Stockton Rush asked Mr Bloom and his son Sean to go on the dive to Titanic in May. Both May dives were postponed due to weather and the dive got delayed until June 18, the date of the ill-fated trip.

Mr Bloom said: 'I told him that due to scheduling we couldn’t go until next year. Our seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, two of the other three who lost their lives on this excursion, the fifth being Hamish Harding.

'RIP Stockton and crew. As for Sean and I... we are going to take a minute to stop and smell the roses. Tomorrow is never promised. Make the most of today'.

Texts between Mr Rush had repeatedly tried to reassure Mr Bloom about the safety of the Titan and heading to the Titanic's wreck.

He said his son was very worried about the risks after speaking with a friend. Mr Rush said: 'I'm happy to have a video call with him. Curious what the uninformed would say the danger is and whether it's real or imagined'.

They discussed how the hull would deal with pressure, or even if it came into contact with a whale or squid.

Mr Rush said: 'While there's obviously risk it's way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving, There hasn't even been an injury in 35 years in non-military subs'.



Titanic director and submersible expert James Cameron said he predicted Titan's implosion days before the debris from the missing submersible was found, calling the search a 'prolonged nightmarish charade'.


More

I think it's unlikely, and if they did, it couldn't have been more than a second or two. They MIGHT have heard a creaking or popping sound a split-second before the implosion.  Like, "hey, what.....KABOOM."  Or maybe there was a tiny leak spraying water inside the tube.  But, like the tiniest pinprick causes a balloon to instantly explode violently, at 6,000 PSI a tiny breach, even microscopic, can cause a instant, violent implosion, and they would be like, as one person described, an ant between two hammers.

Reading the article on composites world it seems the pressure vessel was built by spencer composites.  

NASA standard for human rated is a safety factor of 4 and it seems they used 2.25. Article also mentions 0 and 90deg tows but no 45s… which leads me to wonder if they had any 45s and -45s at all, video doesn’t show any either… 45s and -45s on the outer surfaces are critical for buckling protection.

Knockdowns for buckling on composites structures are pretty big too, I wonder if they took that into account.

https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/composite-submersibles-under-pressure-in-deep-deep-waters

Yeah. That's a bad place to be.

If that thing was a rifle, would I take it on a once in a lifetime hunt?

No.

If he allowed his motivations to compromise his methods his motivations become very relevant.

He wasn't ignorant, the guy he fired wasn't ignorant.  He knowingly chose to take the risk and take customers with him. They didn't give fully informed consent that we know of, they couldn't because even the people that built it didn't know enough to properly asses the risk.  That's negligence.

In complex systems, especially new ones, shit happens.  You can legitimately not see a failure coming when you are doing something new, but this guy had the world's knowledge base on the topic write him a letter pointing out the risks, after he fired his own risk guy for pointing out the same risks.   That's negligence, not ignorance.

So he was either compromised by motivations like money and ego, or he was literally so stupid that he had to label his shoes right and left.

Given that he was a Princeton trained engineer I'm going to lean towards the former.

Has the guy who was the onboard tour guide been named? We know there was the douche ceo, the billionaire and his 19 yr old son, the French explorer guy and then #5 worked for oceangate and was like a expert on the wreckage but who was he

We don't have regs for passenger submersibles, but you should be able to assume that the operator isn't using things like known defective hulls and viewports.

And in 90% of the (theoretical) cases, you probably can.  Fact is, this guy was a dick, and you can realistically only do so much to protect yourself when the information you're being fed is inaccurate or deliberately misleading.  These trips just aren't ready to be a commodity yet.  If ever.

In on 100

In on 100

Sounds like this guy, but with more water involved.

Youve been in on this since the beginning and have some strong viewpoints.
Question sir:
If you were betting on what little we know, port failure or hull failure ?
Not a trick question, just curious, after watching that one video about "crackle", I'm betting port failure.

@arowneragain

I believe creaks and groans would be normal sounds with decent, that kind of pressure compresses things.
Once things go wrong, its done. I doubt they knew for more than a second, (if at all) and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
Even if they knew and dropped ballast, they're still 2 miles down.

Do you think musk will be using a window that is less than half the strength required to stay alive or do you think he’ll use the correct parts and have basic shit like communications devices?

The CF fibers (any fibers) are much stronger in tension (pulling on it) than they are in compression (pressing on it).  Just pluck that loose thread out of your pants pocket, now with both hands, pull on it.  It does a great job of keeping your hands from moving apart.  Now, while it is stretch out, press against it.  Not a lot of resistance right?  Now stretch it out again and press the middle against something (side loading), it flexes/bends right?  Once again, not a lot of resistance.

Your cylinder, with pressure in the can; the pressure is equally distributed onto every square mm of surface inside the cylinder.  The force is trying to expand the cylinder (stretch) and the fibers are in tension.  Once again, very strong.  As you mentioned, can hold 4000 psi.

If you were to place a tiny jack inside and push against a single spot on the internal wall, it would take much less pressure to cause the wall to fail (flex/bend) outward.  Same thing on the outside, a single point load will make the wall fail (flex/bend).

Now compression.  No matter hard much we stiffen the thread (resin, plastics, cement, etc.), and comparatively speaking, it simply won't resist much compression.  We can add more fibers and make it more ridged but it will never be as ridged as a material that naturally handles compression better (crystals, solid plastics, metals).  If you take your CF air cylinder and tightly cap it with zero gauge pressure, and place it in a pressure chamber, and start pressuring it up, It will likely fail before you reach 4000 psi because we are not trying to stretch or flex the fibers, we're compressing them long ways (their weakest way).  Now, layered fibers are relatively strong and I am not going to be able to crush your cylinder with my hand but it isn't as resistant to outside pressure as it is to internal pressure.

Now, if there are ANY flaws in the layering and bonding of the CF cylinder (or hell, the design thickness wasn't adequate)(or, the repetitive service stresses were too high)(or, a combination of factors) and a weak point was created, the compression strength (its weakest strength) will be reduced.

With all that said, your simple air gun cylinder has gone through more real engineering/development and QC testing before it was sold to the general public than the Titan did.  Much more!

Government oversight of procedures and efficiency of government operations?  No, no we can't have that.

The French man was expert. You missed the Hamish Harding, the third passenger.

Thanks for the link, and the personal SME interpretation.  One of the great things about Arf.

Is it bad that my first thought after reading your post was, "Wonder how much $$$ and insurance Spencer Composites has?"

Maybe a pop as something failed in the carbon fiber tube before the whole thing failed?

Even with these risky experimental ventures, there are usually other options/competition. Not doing the research and comparing all the options = stupid.

If one guy sends you a text message saying "oh it's safe, no worries" - and their competition offers a thick stack of technical documentation including detailed test results, and has good reviews from real world undersea explorers, who would you go with?  

(Never mind the fact that one of them has a tiny plexiglass window to peer out of, while the other one is a big acrylic bubble where you can see pretty much everything.)

Humm.. 100 pages of..?

Let’s condense it.
Ego, poor judgment and horrible critical thinking builds private Sub.

The Sub Imploded as those with less ego, better judgment and significant critical thinking expected.

There is something very interesting in that article:


I wonder if a problem started at the window which was also indicative of bad things happening to the hull laminate.

Are you trolling?

Ahh ok. I think I conflated the Hamish guy and the paki guy who had his son with him

So the number of man hours spent determines if something is reasonable?  If that was true then you could just hire 50 minimum wage workers to surf the internet and expend 100k man hours in a year to make your product safe.



One man's corner cutting is another man's improvement in process efficiency.  CEO was an experienced engineer, the "SME" he fired was not an engineer.  Who determines what an SME is?  



If two experts disagree who decides which one is right?  Lawyers?  Politicians?  A third engineer?  I contend that the free market does.  
So if I have an employee who refuses to come to work because driving is too risky I'm not allowed to fire him because he pointed out a risk?  
Who "rates" parts for a use and why should the "rater" have the ultimate say in how their product is used after they sell it?  



Minimizing risk is why the US government can't put humans into space right now without the help of an African immigrant or Russia.
Risk aversion is also why we can't replace the a10 or oh58 or complete any number of other projects that have been done in the past.  


Here's a recent article on NASA's risk aversion.  NASA is a joke in terms of human space flight specifically because of their risk aversion.  About a week before he died Gus Grissom said "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."  Some other famous guy said that without risk there can be no reward.  

This has come up in GD in the past about various catastrophes and it's always the same result.  The fact is that risk is necessary and, at least in America, you are generally free to take whatever risks you want.  Most people draw the line at what their uneducated "gut feeling" of risk tells them is risky.  My mom always rolled car windows down when going over a bridge and my grandma always told me to be careful with knives.....

In my mind there is only one key question about the CEO guy I would want investigated:
Did he accurately convey the risk that he placed on the sub to the paying passengers?  Risk has two components: severity and likelihood - he accurately conveyed the severity in writing with the "you might die" waiver.  But how accurately did he convey the likelihood of the "you might die" risks?  
The details of this will surely be litigated and I bet there will be laws or regulations made by the US government about activities such as this.  
The unfortunate outcome is that government regulation does not foster innovation or economy - it fosters bureaucracy, monopolies, and barriers to entry into the market.

Last note: 20/20 hindsight makes it easy to retroactively condemn the CEO guy.  Don't be a bitch, look at it objectively.  I contend that there is no wrong answer (to anything) if everybody involved has full awareness a decision making process.  Freedom is scary!

I just had my RV propane tanks requalified. I'm pretty sure that process was more rigorous than whatever testing procedure Oceangate performed after every dive.

Hamish Harding - Challenger Deep




Billionaire investor Ray Dalio and "Avatar" filmmaker James Cameron back the submarine company Triton Submersibles. The company offers submersibles that cost between $2.5 million and $40 million. The customizable subs can be used for anything from yacht exploration to tourism.

Everything I’ve read about the Triton subs leads me to believe that they are legit.

The Titan Mickey Mouse operation??

They performed cyclic testing on scale models.

Before I answer, a confession: I have argued that 'meh, the port window was probably ok' since early on, appealing to the maker's aversion to liability in fudging its certification on the side of safety, and hoping that the owner wasn't so stupid as to use a window that he reasonably expected to fail.

As time goes on it more and more seems that he was reckless; that's no longer a mere accusation, it's a fairly well-established fact now. So I have largely lost faith in his trust of the window. I'm now firmly in the 'this guy was reckless' camp.

I still don't think the window failed. I think the hull failed. I think it simply was cycled too hard, too many times, and that may have been confounded by the recent accidental impact that's been referenced before.

I don't *think* we'll ever know, but I sort of loosely suspect that if the port failed they might find a partially intact section of hull - maybe from the opposite end, maybe from the ring around where the port would have been.

Conversely, I think that if the hull is essentially nothing but sea-dust now, that supports the notion that the hull failed and when it failed, it essentially turned to dust.

So I'm still in the 'hull failure' camp but I am much, much more open to 'window failure'. Either are possible. Heck, both were inevitable, it's just a question of which happened first. Knowing what we know now, yeah, his 'it'll crackle first' comment is a monument to his ego. What a way to be remembered.

Also - my earlier optimism was based on the evidence at hand, which, at the time, pointed to a minor system failure and the possibility of a still-recoverable vessel. Put another way, I refused to believe catastrophic failure had happened because TPTB were treating it like a rescue. We now know that info was withheld. I'm not saying they were wrong to do that - they owe me nothing - just that I had to go with what I knew.

*shrug*

I've seen too many carbon arrows fail catastrophically for me to have trusted that hull

modern America's greatest strength:  litigation.

that's why employees can not stop shoplifters.  Lawyers have ruined this country.  Litigation mindset.

In on 100?

No, differing circumstances and standards. Space has a plethora of quality, testing and aviation engineering standards, as well as FAA approvals. It appears the submersible community does not. Add in Rush's hubris, poor engineering, lack of quality standards, no true failure testing, etc., etc., and for the first time in 60-years we've suffered what appears to be a preventable failure.