Live data from Hacker News

Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

bbc.com

361–370 of 1001 posts

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#361
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon fiber is a lot easier to work with than metal in this case because welding metal creates failure points. I don't think they could afford building a titanium pressure vessel. Weight is a factor too, carbon fiber is lighter so you can make the pressure vessel thicker and still have enough buoyancy to reach the surface(probably a good thing). From their perspective it kinda made sense even though its not safe at…

Obviously there seem to be some compelling reasons why the choice of a carbon hull was a faulty idea to begin with. The CEO would have been familiar with those critiques and proceeded anyway, presumably because of counter arguments he put more confidence in. Anyone out there familiar with what some of those counter points may have been?

[flagged]

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of poor decision making changes the fact that several precious human lives were lost. Frustration over the company's potential negligence and sadness over the loss of life can coexist.

Thank you for calling this out. It's also disheartening and quite frankly scary, to see how the passengers get dehumanized on other online platforms due to their wealth.

[flagged]

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#363
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He seemed especially proud about combining titanium and carbon fibre against the advice of others, which seems to now have been in a pretty active role in the demise of the Titan. > "I'd like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General MacArthur who said "you're remembered for the rules you break." And I've broken some rules to make this. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me…

Apparently if you put titanium and carbon fibre next to each other in salt water the titanium begans to corrode at quicker rate. Can read more here: https://www.corrosionpedia.com/galvanic-corrosion-of-metals-...

> Therefore, there is no significant gap between titanium and carbon-fiber-reinforced composite to create galvanic corrosion. This means that commercially pure titanium and its alloys are completely resistant to galvanic corrosion when they are coupled with carbon composites.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#364
post #326
post #206

I am curious how we (the society) justify the shared costs incurred in searching for people involved in such a reckless mission.

What's your definition of reckless? Were the boys stuck in the cave in Thailand reckless? Should we not have rescued them? Where is the line of who is deserving of our sympathy?

The grown ups involved in that who didn't pay heed to warnings would be reckless. We still rescue them but we can charge those who can pay for it.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder too that literally everyone is one country-ending catastrophic event away from being on a refugee boat

You must live on the coast. There's plenty of us in the midwestern US that could never make it to a coast before the boats were all gone.

Go down the Mississippi :-)

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#366

The conversation around this event is incredible. Why can’t I do something risky and deal with the consequences myself (i.e. death)? I want to climb K2 alone in shorts, don’t cry my loss. I’ll die doing what I love.

You absolutely can - so long as you don't get other people killed in the process. The CEO of this company convinced customers to join him on his death march, which IMO is a worth crying about.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#367
post #196
post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least he died doing it and not someone he employed.

It's also probably related to the "launch or die" ecosystem that Y Combinator, Sand Hill investors, and pretty much the entire ecosystem promotes. When was the last time an investor handed an additional $10 million check for 0% to a startup to improve and test their safety systems before launching? Instead their usual mandate is "launch yesterday or die". Which is okay for a SaaS platform or grocery delivery app, but…

Yeah, it really is a failure of the kind of engineering hubris that you see all over HN every day.

This event reads like nature going "no, seriously, you monkeys aren't anywhere nearly as clever as you think you are".

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of me has been wondering if the noises being heard might be an unexpected discovery of a military (Russian, Chinese, US) submarine operating in the general area. Don’t they submerge for long periods of time without comms?

They do, but not the depths we're talking about (12,500 feet) https://navalpost.com/how-deep-can-a-submarine-dive/ The depth limits of the most known nuclear powered submarines’ depth limits, as follows; Typhoon-class: Test depth 900 m (3,000 ft) Astute-class: Over 300 m (984 ft 3 in) Akula-class: 480 m (1,570 ft) test depth for Akula I and Akula I Improved, 520 m (1,710 ft) for Akula II and III, 600 m (2,000 ft) max…

> They do, but not the depths we're talking about

We really don’t know what depth the noise was comming from.

That being said it is vanishingly unlikely that an unrelated submarine trying to remain stealthy would be banging on their hull every half an hour.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#369

It is notable how much news-coverage this received (for understandable reasons [1]) relative to the almost simultaneous disaster in the Mediterranean [2], where a shipwreck killed hundreds of people. [1] What springs to mind: Dramatic search action well suited for live blog coverage; psychological impact of the idea of people stranded in a submarine for days; And of course the average person here is probably a lot cl…

> And of course the average person here is probably a lot closer to taking a holiday trip in a submersible than to taking a refugee boat across the Mediterranean.

The average person here might think they are, but they'd be deluding themselves.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#370

It is notable how much news-coverage this received (for understandable reasons [1]) relative to the almost simultaneous disaster in the Mediterranean [2], where a shipwreck killed hundreds of people. [1] What springs to mind: Dramatic search action well suited for live blog coverage; psychological impact of the idea of people stranded in a submarine for days; And of course the average person here is probably a lot cl…

First time I read the comparison with the Med disaster and couldn't agree more.

I'm never the first one to start whining about refugee related disasters but hundreds of women & children drowning on a boat after having been in a miserable state for days on end is just the worst. Other boats had been circling it for days and apart from providing some food & water nothing was done. Maybe an attempt to tow it, which could well have led to the capsizing.

How could such a ship have been rescued? Any attempt at evacuation would have probably led to a capsizing anyway due to people moving around in a panic, unless ... the boat was wedged between two strong boats?

Post reply on HN