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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

#971
post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic." I love to bemoan about the media just like the next person, but sadly this is just human nature.

There’s nothing sad about it.

From one perspective I agree with you. E.g. there's nothing sad about the fact that I have followed some of the news about this incident, it is interesting afterall.

But I think most of us would agree that it is sad that humans cannot allocate public resources in a more utilitarian way to save lives or maximalize happiness.[0]

And I think the reason of that is human nature. Our empathy doesn't care about scales of a tragedies. An individual sad tale can make us feel exactly the same as a war where millions are affected.

[0] Planet Money had an insightful episode on this: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/835571843

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

#972
post #890

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what do you think happens to those talented young engineers when they get older? Are they no longer talented, just old?

[flagged]

What a remarkable distortion of humanity.

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

#973

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea specifically how loud it would have been. However with some probably-reasonable guesses, it looks like it actually would have been quite loud. Here's a naval study where they measured underwater sound propagation: https://www.navymarinespeciesmonitoring.us/files/7514/2780/4... They found that a 10lb block of C4 exploding produced ~210db of underwater sound. If we use that sound level as an approximatio…

Your calculations might be wrong. If the distance is 1000 km (1M meters), and inverse square law is correct, then the sound would become 1M*1M = 1T times more silent. 1M times smaller is 120 dB less, and 1T times smaller is 240 db less, so the amplitude of sound should be at 210 - 240 = -30dB less than threshold of hearing. Also, I wonder, if sound of explosions propagate that well, can one install multiple sensors t…

You just invented ShotSpotter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShotSpotter

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

#974
post #348

> OceanGate’s submersibles are the only known vessels to use real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring. With this RTM system, we can determine if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening, and safely return to the surface. This innovative safety system is not currently covered by any classing agency. Given that Stockton Rush risked and lost his own life, he must have believed these words. He…

In an interview with James Cameron, he mentions[1] that he and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked and that they did in fact have warning, as they had dropped the weights (which were found far away from the debris field) and were attempting to resurface before the implosion: [1]: "This Oceangate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crac…

> [Cameron] and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked.

Cameron did not say "the system worked" nor do I agree with summarizing what he did say as "the system worked."

The claim in the blog post was this:

> With this RTM system, we can determine if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening, and safely return to the surface.

It obviously did not do that. The system failed catastrophically.

In the part you elided Cameron said: "I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong."

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

#975
post #943

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>vaporized I mean, that’s not what happens either.

I would assume 5700 PSI of water pressure jetting through any breach would qualify as "vaporised", on top of the structure collapsing. 5700 pounds of pressure per square inch. Ouch.

[deleted]

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

#976

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Virtually the entire world has taken a peek behind the curtain of these extreme sub adventures. Anyone that matters now understands they are extremely risky , and its very likely no 1 company will be able to nurture this market for years without serious engineering bonafides. And as an additional bonus, the main culprit has been taken out of the gene pool. This is actually rare. We can arg…

>> Virtually the entire world has taken a peek behind the curtain of these extreme sub adventures. Anyone that matters now understands they are extremely risky... Right. People will be afraid of subs for years. I'm glad we learned so much from this.

as well they should be. the ocean is a deadly place, and tiny screw ups can and will kill people, doubly so in submersibles.

thing is, we know how to do it safely, too; "regulations are written in blood" etc etc.

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

#977

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both media reports are vanity. They don't impact the reader, don't change society and have no repercussions. Both are read for (different) emotional value. People don't change their life or opinion because of either of them.

It's hard to imagine anything more vain than thinking immigration politics don't affect societies or media consumers. Immigration politics are among the most important issues to voters in certain western countries for very good reasons. These issues are extremely economically impactful, massively violent, and extremely exploitative to all working class people across the globe.

i'm not in mediterranian, nor in italy, nor greece, nor any other part of europe or north africa. this situation is a tragedy, but outside of online virtue signaling my opinion is meaningless since i have no connection to those going through it and no ability to impact the greek or italian governments.

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

#978

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't most/all materials much stronger in tensile load than compressive loads, because of buckling anomalies?

No, brittle materials like concrete are famously weak in tension and strong in compression. Ductile materials are generally equally strong in both. I can't think of any material offhand that's stronger in tension and weaker in compression. Buckling is not a material failure, it's a structural failure. In pure buckling [0], the strength of the material is not actually a factor in whether something buckles or not. In m…

> I can't think of any material offhand that's stronger in tension and weaker in compression.

Rope.

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

#979
post #974

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an interview with James Cameron, he mentions[1] that he and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked and that they did in fact have warning, as they had dropped the weights (which were found far away from the debris field) and were attempting to resurface before the implosion: [1]: "This Oceangate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crac…

> [Cameron] and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked. Cameron did not say "the system worked" nor do I agree with summarizing what he did say as "the system worked." The claim in the blog post was this: > With this RTM system, we can determine if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening , and safely return to the surface . It obviously did not do that. The sy…

Cameron implies that the system did detect a crack in the hull, giving them at least a few minutes of warning.

Obviously, a few minutes isn't enough, but the point is that the occupants were likely aware something was wrong because of this system, as opposed to being vaporized without having enough time to comprehend their reality.

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

#980
post #873
post #829

The most troubling thing about this to me is Stockton Rush’s cavalier attitude toward ageism [1]. In considering young college graduates as uniquely “inspirational” he set them up for a lifetime of guilt. I don’t think age or race has any place in inspirational calculus. I’m uncomfortable with how comfortably he dismisses submariner veterans as “old white guys”. Engineering is a discipline that requires experience an…

And yet despite the naivety of their youth, his engineers still spoke out against his contraption and were fired. I don’t think an old man in the room would have helped.

> I don’t think an old man in the room would have helped.

I guess in this case it actively hurt.

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