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

bbc.com

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

#651

Post by maronato »

dvt wrote: post #431
deanc wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone walk me through what would have happened, physically, to a human body in the moment this happened. I’m curious. Similar to wondering what happens to people in space.

Gas-filled cavities in the body instantly compress. So this means that your lungs, stomach, etc. instantly get crushed, rupturing in the process. Depending on circumference, depth, etc., the hull itself moves at speeds of ~1000+ mph towards itself, crushing everything inside in less than 100 milliseconds. Someone linked a great safety video of what happens under a pressure column (not gore)[1]. Though as some people…

One comment regarding the video you shared. The tank shown implodes due to the atmospheric pressure, since they imploded it by creating a vacuum inside.

The sub, on the other hand, would be under something like 350x the atmospheric pressure, so we can expect its implosion to be orders of magnitude more violent.

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

#652

Post by Spastche »

kristjansson wrote: post #466
beowulfey wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many things about this venture were not really considered. I am terrified that this guy was an aerospace engineer. It feels like he threw the book about engineering safety out the window. The big one is designing the sub to travel to 95% of the expected maximum depth, leaving a 5% margin of safety. I was taught to aim for a margin of safety of (I think it was) 50% back in the day. Operating so close to the safe li…

There ... there were screws into the structual carbon fiber??

this is the first I've heard of that but it would not surprise me one bit

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

#653

Post by yreg »

Hamuko wrote: post #231
mcguire wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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... )

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…

>which seems to now have been in a pretty active role in the demise of the Titan.

I know little about the topic but it sounds terribly early to rule what exactly had 'a pretty active role' in the incident. Is it not?

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

#654

Post by yreg »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #615
bilekas wrote: post #357

What really bothers me about the coverage of this, and I'm not totally anti media etc, was that nobody mentioned on the fact that the tracking system lost contact also. It was only mentioned that the communications was lost, if there had of been media mentioning that the tracking device also lost contact, I think a lot of people would have recognised straight await that it was a critical collapse. No deep gauge devic…

More than that, one report mentioned the US Navy notified the search teams that they heard an explosion Sunday night and used it to limit the search area. The US Navy has literally has experience detecting underwater explosions (see project Azorian). It's not guaranteed of course, but any loud sound near the point of contact loss seems pretty open shut. Imo, it made a more interesting story in a slow news cycle. How…

It's not entirely the media's fault that people are drawn into this topic even though it's fairly unimportant as you say. Take a look at /r/worldnews, users consistently chose to upvote all stories about Titan to the top of the page.

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

#655

Post by krisoft »

beowulfey wrote: post #331
FinnG wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess would be that the Oceangate ship ignores everything that it's not 'expecting' to hear. I don't really know anything about deep sea exploration, but having general purpose microphones in the water seems like a bit of an oversight to me, given the marginal cost of having them.

So many things about this venture were not really considered. I am terrified that this guy was an aerospace engineer. It feels like he threw the book about engineering safety out the window. The big one is designing the sub to travel to 95% of the expected maximum depth, leaving a 5% margin of safety. I was taught to aim for a margin of safety of (I think it was) 50% back in the day. Operating so close to the safe li…

> The big one is designing the sub to travel to 95% of the expected maximum depth, leaving a 5% margin of safety.

Sorry, but this does not follow. I believe you are confused about the fact that the Titan was designed to go down to 4,000 meters, and the Titanic lays at 3,840 meters.

And because 3,840 is so close to 4,000 you believe they had no safety margin. Do I understand you well?

But the thing is when you design a submarine which can go down to 4,000m you don’t design a hull which instantly implodes at that precise depth. You add a safety margin on top of your design requirement and that is what you design for. And then using calculations, simulations and tests you convince yourself that your submersible is still safe even at that extra safety padded depth.

I’m not saying that this is how they designed it. After all it seems their engineering culture was deficient in several ways. But you simply can’t conclude that they had no safety margin because they dove close to their design limit.

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

#656

Post by mahogany »

thinkling wrote: post #266
AH4oFVbPT4f8 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the search team/agency simply eat the cost or does the cost get passed back to the insurance for the company, the company itself, or the CEO personally since he has the means to pay. Further, everyone on board has the means to pay for a recovery, should they too share some of the cost?

I believe almost all Search and Rescue is free because S&R organizations don’t want people to hesitate to call 911 (or equivalent) because of cost concerns, and have the situation deteriorate while they delay calling. As to who should share in the cost… my take is that it’s time to discuss whether some expeditions (e.g. risky commercial tourist rides) should sign a Do Not Rescue pledge before they head out and/or sel…

There has been at least one case in the White Mountains where the leader of a search and rescue team recommended charging the person they rescued, because that person acted with negligence and put the lives of the search and rescue team in unnecessary danger.

I'm sure this is rare though.

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

#657

Post by windexh8er »

olalonde wrote: post #435
stef25 wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The "obscenely safe" remark was directed at "regulated" vessels, not at his own sub. He was acknowledging that he was taking risks by not conforming to regulations.

From what I understand he was also complaining about those regulations holding back the private industry and also it's been stated as of late that he's on record saying how he's broken rules. That among allegations of a safety director being fired in 2015 for pointing out design safety oversights. [0]

I don't think it's great to make this guy into a folk hero just because he was pushing the limits. Imagine, for a second, how this would be reacted to in the aviation space.

If the CEO cut corners then that should be his legacy. Great people can be flawed. Flaws can be fatal. It's just a shame if those flaws weren't properly portrayed to those who dove with him.

[0] https://fortune.com/2023/06/21/titan-titanic-missing-sub-dav...

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

#658

Post by onionisafruit »

mcguire wrote: post #209
seattle_anon wrote: post #166

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... )

It’s ok to mourn somebody who caused the tragedy that took them.

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

#659

Post by danielvaughn »

invalidator wrote: post #634
scotty79 wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The carbon fiber hull has a limited cycle life. It's designed for a single-digits number of dives, and it becomes weaker on each cycle.

That makes sense, but to me that just means "keep dropping it until it implodes and then you can find out exactly how many dives it's good for". I still see absolutely no reason why humans should have been inside that thing. It's easy to criticize from an armchair, but goodness it just boggles my mind.

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

#660

Post by userbinator »

tptacek wrote: post #350
dmonitor wrote: post #337

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.

As I understand it: the pressure vessel was full of air, and at the moment it failed, that air-filled space became the equivalent of the cylinder of a 2-stroke engine, instantly heating as the air compressed.

You probably meant diesel engine. The compression pressure of those is around 300-500psi, and that's sufficient to heat the air to a few hundred degrees and ignite the injected fuel.

For comparison, what happened in this sub was 10x that pressure.

(Yes, 2-stroke diesels also exist, and sound absolutely amazing.)

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