511–520 of 1001 posts
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Power loss?
Power loss is a real stretch to happen at the same time of communications, I understand that the coms to fail is a non-zero chance of failing, it happens. A transponder is super rare on it's own, but when they both go at the same time, protocol dictates you declare an emergency straight await (the top-side cnc). Not that it would have made a difference, but they certainly would have told the coast guard all of this.…
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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.
If you die doing something dumb, then yeah, people are gonna point that out.
If you die doing something dumb that you spent house money to do, the pointing out will be much more pointed.
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I think the migrant boat disaster is horrible. But I was more interested in this missing sub because it was a bit mysterious what happened to it initially. Then it all comes out how badly built it is, how it's a death trap, etc. It's just more interesting personally. It doesn't mean it's worse than the migrant boat, it's just more interesting and I'd rather read about it. Mysterious cases always get more traction on…
Do you have any details about why it was a death trap? I watched one video that complained about off the shelf parts being used, but the two examples was an RV light (not safety related) and the gaming controller (which they had multiple back ups). They also claimed to have been reviewed by Boeing and University of Washington. There was 7 different mechanisms that could force a return. Some of those were purely mecha…
The issue as far as I have read is that the hull was made of carbon fibre. There hasn't been any submersible that has reached those depths before made of that material. The effect continued pressurization/depressurization had on the carbon fibre wasn't understood. Composite materials are so much more complicated to model and understand. There was no non-destructive testing to see what effect the repeated cycles had on the hull, no way of knowing whether cracks could form beneath the surface. The failure mode at depth is catastrophic, there's no room for error. Someone pointed all this out to them and was fired https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face....
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/21/us/titan-sub-safety-ocean...
In response to them knowing the sub wasn't fit for purpose they opted to install a "real time health monitoring system" which acoustically checked the integrity of the hull. But it's pointless. By the time any acoustic monitoring system picked something up it would be too late, because carbon fibre just shatters into a million pieces. It's not like Steel where it can gradually fatigue, it's crack BOOM dead.
Using carbon fibre for the hull is like rolling your own crypto. Maybe you can get it to work but unless you properly scrutinize it there is most likely fundamental flaws in your implementation and it's just better to use tried and true methods. In the sub world that tried and true method is just thick steel.
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> It's a strong indication of bullshit -- name dropping that doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter It means you're using a material that's been vetted over decades in life-critical applications in harsh conditions by expert engineers all over the world. Aerospace aluminums today are derived from Japanese alloys invented in WW2 and were a major innovation in metal aircraft. It's much more expensive than…
this wasn't an aircraft
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I think the migrant boat disaster is horrible. But I was more interested in this missing sub because it was a bit mysterious what happened to it initially. Then it all comes out how badly built it is, how it's a death trap, etc. It's just more interesting personally. It doesn't mean it's worse than the migrant boat, it's just more interesting and I'd rather read about it. Mysterious cases always get more traction on…
Do you have any details about why it was a death trap? I watched one video that complained about off the shelf parts being used, but the two examples was an RV light (not safety related) and the gaming controller (which they had multiple back ups). They also claimed to have been reviewed by Boeing and University of Washington. There was 7 different mechanisms that could force a return. Some of those were purely mecha…
A lot of this is bewilderment at the choice of carbon fibre for the pressure vessel, which is sensitive to impact damage and wear from repeated load cycles, damage is hard to diagnose, and as it's very brittle, prone to catastrophic failure. It's not commonly used for this sort of application, and there may not be good data on (1) when it would eventually fail and (2) whether you'd be able to tell before use.
As I understand, the choice was motivated by wanting the sub to have the large interior space necessary to bring along that many passengers. Deepsea subs usually don't attempt that either.
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I think the migrant boat disaster is horrible. But I was more interested in this missing sub because it was a bit mysterious what happened to it initially. Then it all comes out how badly built it is, how it's a death trap, etc. It's just more interesting personally. It doesn't mean it's worse than the migrant boat, it's just more interesting and I'd rather read about it. Mysterious cases always get more traction on…
The contrasting coverage is IMHO largely due to the novelty of the situation, and nothing to do with any moral judgement on the victims. Tragically, migrant boat disasters are common.
People can't survive for long in cold seas. By the time a migrant boat disaster makes the news, hopes of finding survivors may already have faded.
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…
Can you expand? To a layman like myself, tracking is part of communications and it seemed clear there was no tracking because they didn't know where the sub was. What is the specific type of tracking device you're referring to? What signals does it emit? And if overall power was lost, for example, why wouldn't the tracking stop just like communications stopped?
As an example I can immediately think of the Compatt devices, they're tested and proven far beyond 4Km depth, and they come with a few options of power supply.
They have their own independent power source as you would expect, but depending on the configuration can pull from the device / vehicle.
The v4 of the Compatt also comes with extensive warnings around the power draw in relation to reserve so if for example they left and it was only on battery-power for some reason, it will start screaming.
The fact that from reports (obviously we don't know for sure) they went at the same time, sadly Occam's razor.
Edit : Disclosure : Worked on firmware for off-shore drilling rigs with devices measuring the vibrations and resistance of material being probed for viability.
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> 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…
It's not so much stupidity as knowingly embarking on a dangerous adventure for the purpose of fun, basically. Someone who took the trip before said they had to sign a waver which mentioned death multiple times. It's like climbing Everest, walking to the north pole, commercial space flights, base jumping etc. The med disaster was people embarking on a dangerous "adventure" out of what they perceived as being a necessi…