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

bbc.com

411–420 of 1001 posts

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

#411

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. My opinion is the complete opposite, I think it has more coverage because it's a feel good event for 90% of the world who absolutely despise rich fucks in that specific part of the dumb X rich venn diagram I haven't seen a single post about how sad the sub…

Exactly. Most people are bothered to see how rich folks like this waste money when most people struggle to survive. Being paid ok in tech does not make me feel any closer to the sort that spends 250k on a fun trip.

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

#412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt it was kind of telling that they found the two titanium end caps in the debris field, presumably intact, but only pieces of the pressure hull.

I'm curious if the window remained intact. This seemed like a logical failure point.

My guess would be that the window wasn't the failure point, assuming that pressure hull was indeed found in many pieces. If the window did go first, the pressure delta on the rest of the hull immediately begins to equalize, so the amount of force the hull is under immediately goes down, making failure of the hull instantly less likely. The inertia of all the water rapidly entering the vessel might do some damage, but that inertia would have to overcome both the pressure of the ocean pressing in on the outside of the hull, and the tensile strength of the carbon fiber, which is stronger in tension than compression. So my guess would be that if the window failed, it would result in mostly just the titanium end caps being blown off rather than a complete destruction of the hull.

If the hull itself failed, however, given the way carbon fiber fails, finding the hull in many pieces seems to be the expected result.

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

#413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I felt it was kind of telling that they found the two titanium end caps in the debris field, presumably intact, but only pieces of the pressure hull.

I'm curious if the window remained intact. This seemed like a logical failure point.

[deleted]

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

#414
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

would they be vaporized or instantly compacted? my morbid curiosity kind of wants to see what would happen to a body under such insane pressure conditions.

You're in luck, the Mythbusters tried this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEY3fN4N3D8

... and that was like, a couple hundred feet. The Titanic is at 12,500 feet. An unfathomable amount of pressure.

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

#415
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the other souls onboard fully understood the risk of death, otherwise that isn't fair to them. To relate it to flying in an airplane, “If you take one flight a day, you would on average need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.” I'll take those odds. Take a deep dive in an experimental vessel with public safety concerns expressed over years, nope I'm out.

They all had to sign multi-page waivers that mention "death" no less than three times on the first page.

It also occurs to me that there should be no more sophisticated consumer than a billionaire. If one really wanted, I'd imagine they could build their own submersible to their own safety specifications.

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

#416
post #258

Stockton Rush (OceanGate's CEO) was known in the Seattle tech community [0] My understanding (very much not first hand) is that he was seen as an expert in the specific engineering disciplines necessary to safely build and operate deep sea submersibles like Titan. He was also apparently a father to members of the Seattle tech community, who are no doubt grieving at the moment. Please remember that, for some members o…

"Two months later, OceanGate faced similarly dire calls from more than three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — who warned in a letter to its chief executive, Stockton Rush, that the company’s “experimental” approach and its decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us…

I don't understand why they didn't just drop it to the bottom of the ocean without people hundred times to see if it still holds. Who experiments with a crew in the age of remote control sensors and computers?

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

#417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not gonna shed a tear given how avoidable this entire tragedy was, and how terribly managed and selected his engineering team was.

I hope the other souls onboard fully understood the risk of death, otherwise that isn't fair to them. To relate it to flying in an airplane, “If you take one flight a day, you would on average need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.” I'll take those odds. Take a deep dive in an experimental vessel with public safety concerns expressed over years, nope I'm out.

It also looked so terribly janky. I feel like all the lights were flashing red for this craft, but maybe people were swayed by assurances from people who were a bit too enthusiastic about their product.

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

#418

Stockton Rush (OceanGate's CEO) was known in the Seattle tech community [0] My understanding (very much not first hand) is that he was seen as an expert in the specific engineering disciplines necessary to safely build and operate deep sea submersibles like Titan. He was also apparently a father to members of the Seattle tech community, who are no doubt grieving at the moment. Please remember that, for some members o…

He's also on record as saying things like, " It's obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn't innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations. " ( https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about... )

LOL, Guardian published information about documents describing the danger of this thing, the lack of regulations and how deep sea exploration of this kind is probably finished for many years to come.

Him saying "it's obscenely safe" just sounds like a Silicon Valley CEO saying they're going to save the world by selling their users' personal data under the table. EDIT seems like I interpreted this wrong according to comment below.

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

#419
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope the other souls onboard fully understood the risk of death, otherwise that isn't fair to them. To relate it to flying in an airplane, “If you take one flight a day, you would on average need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.” I'll take those odds. Take a deep dive in an experimental vessel with public safety concerns expressed over years, nope I'm out.

They all had to sign multi-page waivers that mention "death" no less than three times on the first page.

Easily dismissed by "the lawyers made us do it" for people who were drawn to the "adventure" of the trip or the allure of the Titanic.

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

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sub had 7 redundant ways to surface (drop weights / ballast), several of which work without power, and one of which triggers automatically after ~20 hrs of exposure to seawater. The only way it wouldn't have already surfaced on day 1 is if it got stuck on something ( and lost power, unlikely), or it imploded.

What I don’t get is what factors could have caused it to implode now when it didn’t previously?

Fatigue failure:

https://community.sw.siemens.com/s/article/what-is-a-sn-curv...

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