A man and son who canceled on this Titan dive

https://www.independent.co.uk/...b-safe-b2363060.html

Text messages have revealed how OceanGate CEO tried to convince a Las Vegas investor to take a trip to the Titanic on the company’s doomed submersible at a reduced rate with alarming claims about how safe it was.

Jay Bloom, a Las Vegas investor, revealed in a Facebook post that he turned down CEO and founder Stockton Rush’s offer of seats on the Titan submersible trip due to safety concerns.

Ultimately, Mr Bloom and his son pulled out of the trip due to scheduling conflicts.

“Our seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood,” Mr Bloom revealed on Facebook.

“I expressed safety concerns and Stockton told me: ‘While there’s obviously risk it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving.’ I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong,” Mr Bloom wrote.

Mr Bloom said he last saw Mr Rush in early March when the two went to the Titanic Exhibit at Luxor together.

Mr Bloom added: “Then, at lunch in the Luxor food court we talked about the dive, including safety. He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street.”


another quote from Stockton Rush: "What worries us is not once you’re underwater," Rush explained at the time. "What worries me is when I’m getting you there, when you’re on the ship in icy states with big doors that can crush your hands and people who may not have the best balance who fall down, bang their head. That’s, to me, the dangerous part. But, the scary part for most people is going down to 6,000 PSI [pounds per square inch]."

https://www.foxnews.com/entert...g-submarine-disaster

The media hype is typical of air time needing to be filled.

More people die on Mt Everest every year, on average, that died in this submersible. Both are extreme tourist sites, very harsh conditions and very expensive to undertake. On Everest, there is extreme levels of training required to make the attempt.

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Originally posted by 229DAK:
From WTOPnews in Washington DC:

A day after revelations that the Titan submersible imploded, officials searched the ocean floor for evidence and grappled Friday with vexing questions about who is responsible for investigating the international disaster.

It was not entirely clear Friday who would have the authority to lead what is sure to be a complex investigation involving several countries. OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the Titan, is based in the U.S. but the submersible was registered in the Bahamas. OceanGate is based in Everett, Washington, but closed when the Titan was found. Meanwhile, the Titan’s mother ship, the Polar Prince, was from Canada, and the people on board the submersible were from England, Pakistan, France, and the U.S.

Why bother at all? We know what happened, we know that all the passengers are dead, and we're pretty sure there are no remains to be recovered. The only people with any vested interest in details beyond those, are the ones who will be filing or defending the inevitable lawsuits. Let them assume the responsibility (and pick up the tab) for any "investigation" that they feel needs to be done.

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Originally posted by heathtx:
More people die on Mt Everest every year, on average, that died in this submersible.

True. There have been 17 deaths on Mount Everest in the last three months alone. Over 3x as many deaths as this submarine.

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OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was piloting the Titan when it imploded, complained that regulations can stifle progress.

This statement needs to be read, reviewed, and posted often.

This is why we don't skirt regulations and process in the name of progress. Especially when those regulations are in place because incidents like this have already occurred.

I'm all for people doing whatever crazy dangerous thing they think of. But not when they take paying passengers along, and especially when they apparently obscure important safety information from those paying passengers.

^^^^ Yes, but without guys like him you'll never know what the regulations need to be.

It's like aircraft crashes. Despite the regulations and processes, things still happen which result in the loss of life. Those instances result in investigations which determine what went wrong so that similar occurrences can be avoided in the future.

I was reading an article on how strong this carbon fiber cylinder was. Did it fatigue? Did the bonding fail at the cap rings? Did the view port fail? Apparently this company was working with NASA to develop carbon fiber pressure vessels for deep sea use, and I assume that technology has some correlation to use in outer space as well.

For me it comes back to my earlier post. This guy was a fucking dangerous liar. Telling clients it is safer than helo rides and scuba diving. While I know he can claim nobody has died in submersibles in years, that is clearly bullshit. He is riding other people's safety records and acting like his corner cutting was in the same ballpark. Likening getting your hand caught in a ship hatch as the most dangerous aspect of the trip is amazing. And as far from the truth as humanly possible.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:
^^^^ Yes, but without guys like him you'll never know what the regulations need to be.

It's like aircraft crashes. Despite the regulations and processes, things still happen which result in the loss of life. Those instances result in investigations which determine what went wrong so that similar occurrences can be avoided in the future.

Engineering has changed a lot in the last 50 years. Even monkeys are outdated now. Heck, things have changed even since the Shuttle disasters.

Use Space-X as a guide to how to do things right. Yes, even Space-X's failures.

There are a lot of tools that a modern engineer can use, and people are not put at risk until things are good and ready. In this case, Seems these jerks took too many shortcuts.

Yes, aircraft crashes happen for various reasons and need to be investigated like in the case of Boeing's Software, but in this case, these guys were reckless in their lack of proper methodology.

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There are a lot of tools that a modern engineer can use, and people are not put at risk until things are good and ready. In this case, Seems these jerks took too many shortcuts.

This was engineered, and engineered above specs (at least the carbon fiber portion). This wasn't something he put together in his garage, he had a known composites company build the cylinder.

https://www.compositesworld.co...-in-deep-deep-waters

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Spencer Composites’ president Brian Spencer signed a contract with OceanGate for the Cyclops 2 hull in early January 2017 and was presented with very basic — but challenging — performance parameters: Length, 2,540 mm; outside diameter, 1,676 mm; service pressure, 6,600 psi; pressure safety factor, 2.25. “They basically said, ‘This is the pressure we have to meet, this is the factor of safety, this is the basic envelope."

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Initial design work indicated that the hull, to be rated for 4,000m depth with a 2.25 safety factor, should be 114 mm thick or 4.5 inches, which OceanGate opted to round up to 5 inches (127 mm) to build in an additional safety margin.

After layup and winding was complete, the cylinder was bagged with cellowrap and then cured in an oven at 137°C for 7 days. There was no postcure. Spencer says initial assessment of the cured cylinder shows that it has porosity of <1%. As CW went to press, the cylinder was being prepared for machining to cut it to length, square up the ends and bond it to the titanium end caps.

It will then be sent to OceanGate in Seattle to be instrumented before undergoing pressure testing. Assuming the hull passes muster, it will then become part of the first Cyclops 2 unit.

^^^ but a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

He was a woke clown and he got himself and other people killed.

Nothing I've heard about this guy impresses me in a positive way. I am sorry for those he lead to their deaths and sorry for their families, but quite frankly, I am glad that this jackass is gone.

From a SSBN Vet on Twitter:

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So for those friends who have been talking,, and asking me questions,, about the loss of the 'Titanic' submersible. This was posted on one of the Submariners pages (thank you to the original author)

What happens when a submarine implodes?

When a submarine hull collapses, it moves inward at about 1,500 miles per hour - that’s 2,200 feet per second. A modern nuclear submarine’s hull radius is about 20 feet. (Bear in mind the submersible had a hull radius of about 6 ft) So the time required for complete collapse of a full sized military nuclear boat is 20 / 2,200 seconds = about 1 millisecond.....
A human brain responds instinctually to stimulus at about 25 milliseconds. Human rational response (sense→reason→act) is at best 150 milliseconds.

The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapors. When the hull collapses it behaves like a very large piston on a very large Diesel engine. The air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion. Large blobs of fat (that would be humans) incinerate and are turned to ash and dust quicker than you can blink your eye.

Sounds gruesome but as a submariner I always wished for a quick hull-collapse death over a lengthy one like some of the crew on Kursk endured. ⚓️

and with respect to the USN detecting an 'event':

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^^^ but a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link.

Also true, which is why this is will be investigated, probably regulated in some fashion, and made less likely to happen again in the future. There is no success without failure.

^^^

These are purely static parameters. I see no mention of fatigue life under severe loading and unloading cycles.

It may have been fine as designed for a number of dives. But all materials that are not steel, WILL fatigue and fail eventually after enough loading and unloading cycles. Cyclic loading causes eventual failure at far lower loads than the max static load. So even if this thing could handle 12000 psi - enough cycles to 6000 psi and back will cause failure. It all comes down to how many cycles?

Steel has a unique property of a fatigue limit under which failure under cyclic loading will not occur. The fatigue limit is a lot lower than the plastic yield limit though.

Everything else will fail in time. It's just a function of the cyclic load amount and the number of cycles.

This is why aircraft made largely from aluminum get inspected for fatigue on a schedule. If you remember the one in Hawaii that turned into a convertible mid flight - the schedule was based on flight hours and not adjusted for the frequent takeoffs and landings of an island hopper, which significantly increase the cyclic loading rate.

BUT it also could have been the bonding method between the hull and the titanium caps, or the front window that failed. We will probably never know.

BUT I'm going to guess that the approved methods in the industry do not include any of this, and probably require heavier and more expensive all metal construction. And that's why standards were ignored and regarded as excessive.

There is no progress to be made from this, other confirming what the industry already knew based on decades of "old white guy" experience.

The lawsuits from the survivors of billionaires will be massive. But in the end, the owner is dead and depending on how the company was incorporated there might not be a whole heck of a lot to recover.

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There is no progress to be made from this, other confirming what the industry already knew based on decades of "old white guy" experience.

I'd say there are several players, with much more knowledge than us, that would disagree:

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/...worthy-submersibles/

CMA provides the material for the Boeing 777 and 787 wings:

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Toray CMA’s vice president of industrial sales, Philip Schell, said the materials planned for OceanGate’s submersibles will be made for a target depth of 4,500 meters (14,763 feet) below sea level, where the hull will have to withstand pressures of 6,600 pounds per square inch.

“This project with OceanGate is one that not only allows us to use our materials in a new way, but to also provide technology that will help advance the understanding of our planet and the vast unexplored regions below the surface of Earth’s oceans,” Schell said.

https://www.compositesworld.co...ber-pressure-vessels

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“NASA is committed to cutting-edge composites research and development that will not only further our deep space exploration goals, but will also improve materials and manufacturing for American industry,” says John Vickers, principal technologist for advanced manufacturing technology at NASA. “This Space Act Agreement with OceanGate is a great example of how NASA partners with companies to bring space technology back down to Earth.”

The reality is that carbon fiber is a new player in the underwater world. There are several advantages to having that as an option, and some fairly smart people are trying to figure it out. It will have exploration and military value here on earth, and likely value for the exploration of outer space. Sounds like there are several 50 year old white guys who think it's a viable technology.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
This was engineered, and engineered above specs (at least the carbon fiber portion).

Engineered by whom? And who's specs? Spencer Composites or Stockton Rush's specs?

Employing carbon fiber as a material to protect the humans in this type of application is frowned upon by the sub community. The Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, comprised of expert engineers and builders of these submersibles, wrote letters to Rush, expressing their concern over the sub design, stating the design could lead to catastrophe. Rush refused to have independent inspection and analysis done to rate and class the vessel.

As far as I can tell, the Titan was the first, and likely the last deep sea sub to use carbon fiber technology.

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Engineered by whom? And who's specs? Spencer Composites or Stockton Rush's specs?

Great question, and one I can't answer because I'm not privy to the discussions between Rush and Spencer. What I can tell you is that a quick look at Spencer's website shows that they've been in this industry since 1994 and are not a backyard or garage operation. They certainly appear to know what they're doing.

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As far as I can tell, the Titan was the first, and likely the last deep sea sub to use carbon fiber technology.

It's not, and it won't be. This Rush guy wasn't the first to have this idea, and there are clearly several big players already involved with these types of designs. In fact, Spencer Composites was working on a very similar project for another very well known person back before 2010.

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Originally posted by sdy:

A man and son who canceled on this Titan dive

He’s like the 21st century version of the guy who gave up his seat on the plane for Buddy Holly.

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gave up his seat on the plane for Buddy Holly.

^That'd be Waylon Jennings.