quote:

Originally posted by sdy:
In a 2018 email, he told Rush that he was “potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic”.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

quote:

You're a big fan of this guy, I see.

I'm clearly not a fan of this guy based on my comments in this thread. What I am a fan of is factually based discussion versus emotionally based opinions as far as the technology is concerned.

Oh? "Clearly"? I must be missing it. Can you please point out your comments which "clearly" indicate you're not a fan of this guy? I've reviewed all your comments in this thread.

Here's the only thing I've found: https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...250095105#7250095105

quote:

This Rush guy may have been a loose cannon, but everybody is acting as if this was something some guy drew on a napkin and slapped together in his garage. It wasn't. Those currently under production are not. There are a number of highly experience, knowledgeable experts who have been involved with these projects. There are lessons to be learned, and the technology will advance if viable.

"This Rush guy may have been a loose cannon, but..."

The rest of your comments in this thread defend his use of carbon fiber. Saying this guy "may have been a loose cannon, but..." does not qualify as even the slightest condemnation.

So, perhaps I'm blind.

Hubris thy name is Stockton Rush.

nah, because carbon fiber, y'see.

This guy was a 'Legend in his own Mind'...Still is/was I guess! Now he's legendary though...

I expect 'Don't Rush This' has and/or will take on an entirely new meaning going forward.

quote:

Can you please point out your comments which "clearly" indicate you're not a fan of this guy? I've reviewed all your comments in this thread.

Here's the only thing I've found:

Well you found one that has me calling him a loose cannon. Is that something you call somebody you're a fan of? Perhaps your definition of fan is different than mine.

But here's more that you missed:

https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...270006105#1270006105

quote:

Nobody is arguing that the owner of this submersible didn't cut corners and take unnecessary risks

https://sigforum.com/eve/forum...530045105#4530045105

quote:

The craziness aside.......

So loose cannon, crazy, and corner cutting guy who takes unnecessary risks. Perhaps we can compare that to the great things I've had to say about the guy which would indicate my fan status?

Let's not confuse the science with the mad scientist behind it. I have in no way supported Rush or his company. What I do support is advancing technology and learning from mistakes made along the way.

A certain condemnation, no doubt.

You defending his decisions. Those decisions got people killed. You will argue this, of course, saying "we don't know for certain," just as you said he "may be a loose cannon" when it was clear from his whack-ass woke comments and his flippant defense of cutting safety corners that he was- not "may be" or "may have been"- was a loose cannon, and people died because of it.

My question for you is, would you be willing to go two miles down in the ocean in a submersible which was made primarily of carbon fiber? I can give you an unqualified answer to that question, and so can most people who've heard this story, but something tells me that that's not the case with you.

After all, it's only your life we're talking about and we have to advance the science by cutting a few decades off our lives.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:

quote:

The information now looks like it failed somewhere between 3-4000 ft. depth, well below the Titanic's depth.

I was under the impression the Titanic lies on the ocean floor at around 12,500 ft. depth?

It is. He should've said well above the depth of the Titanic but well below the water pressure experienced at the depth of the Titanic.

Here’s the thing a1bcdj. I have tried to sift through the OceanGate information. They clearly state numbers of trips and so forth. They also have 3 submersibles. I would love for you to link us to a definitive site where it clearly and accurately states the number of dives that TITAN took to Titanic depths. They (OceanGate) play the very vague game of saying dives without giving credit to a particular sub of which they have had multiple and they conflate the numbers all together.

You are nuts if you think this is how progress is made. If somebody makes a set of paper wings and jumps off a cliff and dies nobody is getting a bunch of lessons learned. For crewed submersibles the lesson has already been learned. Metal subs that cost way more than carbon fiber work at an amazing rate. Carbon fiber has a horrible record and will continue to do so. He used carbon fiber because it was cheaper. That’s it.

Feel free to enlighten us on all the other manned deep submersibles that use carbon fiber as a primary structure. None.

quote:

You defending his decisions.

I have not defended a single one of his decisions.

quote:

you said he "may be a loose cannon"

No, that implies exactly that. It doesn't mean "maybe he was, maybe he wasn't", it means "despite the fact he was": Ted Kaczynski may have been a murderer, but many believed he was a nice guy.

quote:

My question for you is, would you be willing to go two miles down in the ocean in a submersible which was made primarily of carbon fiber? I can give you an unqualified answer to that question, and so can most people who've heard this story, but something tells me that that's not the case with you.

I'm not going two miles down into the ocean in any submersible regardless of what it's made from. Something told you correctly, that's not the case with me at all.

quote:

You are nuts if you think this is how progress is made. If somebody makes a set of paper wings and jumps off a cliff and dies nobody is getting a bunch of lessons learned

You're nuts if you don't understand that is exactly how human flight began, lessons were learned, and how we are now able go to space. Progress.

quote:

Feel free to enlighten us on all the other manned deep submersibles that use carbon fiber as a primary structure. None.

Two more that I'm aware of, neither in use. One because it wasn't finished because the builder was killed, and the other because they determined it wouldn't be suitable for the multiple dives originally planned for it. Both of these owned by big names.

quote:

I would love for you to link us to a definitive site where it clearly and accurately states the number of dives that TITAN took to Titanic depths. They (OceanGate) play the very vague game of saying dives without giving credit to a particular sub of which they have had multiple and they conflate the numbers all together.

I already provided one source that demonstrated that your assumption on the number of dives was incorrect. Instead of me looking everything up for you, perhaps you could give it a go?

Here's what I do: I go to Google, type in what I'm looking for, then restrict the dates prior to the incident to weed out all of the current reporting. It helped me find reports on the number of dives Titan had made, other submersibles made from carbon fiber, and that there are more of these things being made with a number of big players involved. I suspect that any current construction will be stopped until they figure out what went wrong with this one.

Was part of the problem that the sub was a cylinder?

I seem to recall, there have been much deeper dives done by bathyspheres, which are basically a giant steel ball, correct?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Was part of the problem that the sub was a cylinder?

I seem to recall, there have been much deeper dives done by bathyspheres, which are basically a giant steel ball, correct?

Yes, this has been discussed and is an issue. A cylinder is inherently weaker than a sphere. That doesn't mean not to use a tube (look at most military subs), but you must absolutely factor this into your design and choice of materials.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:

quote:

You defending his decisions.

I have not defended a single one of his decisions.

Oh, you're somethin' else, man.

Carbon fiber. Whose idea was that? Cap'n Crunch?

Plain and simple, you and I view the world entirely differently. Up is down, black is white...

With the depth of the water and the wreckage scattered over such a wide area, it will be a long time before anything is recovered.

quote:

Oh, you're somethin' else, man.

Carbon fiber. Whose idea was that? Cap'n Crunch?

Steve Fossett, who in 2005 in conjunction with Hawkes Ocean Technologies was building Deep Flight Challenger which used a carbon fiber pressure hull. It was 80% complete when he was killed in 2007 and later acquired by Sir Richard Branson and Chris Welsh who planned to use it in the Marianas Trench at a depth of 36,000 feet.

They had this Rush guy beat by 10 years, who didn't sign the contract for the construction of Titan until 2017.

quote:

Plain and simple, you and I view the world entirely differently. Up is down, black is white...

I just prefer viewing it through the lens of what is.

Yeah, the "lens" is the whole issue, because reality exists exclusive of a POV.

quote:

Originally posted by Aglifter:
How do the pressures involve compare to those in CF nitrogen/air tanks?

Tanks are internal pressure vessels, not external pressure. Big difference. Scuba tanks run between 2600 and 3300 psi. About half the pressure but as I said before, fiber is great at tensile strength, not so much in compression.

A proper test of a PROTOTYPE, which is what this thing was, would be to cycle it until failure. Better if multiple prototypes are tested. THEN once the design is proven and the number of cycles known, any production units would be proof tested to max pressure and monitored for signs of damage after every dive based on the cyclic testing.

Of course this is very expensive to do, and he didn't want to spend that kind of money. If you can't afford to do this then the only option is to follow known standards that have been proven over time.

I don't care that he got himself killed. I care that he got other people killed by misleading them.

Remember all the test flights of aircraft to prove out all the innovations after WWII. Lots of prototypes, lots of pilots died. Tests start rather mild and then get more and more to the design intent. It takes decades to get a new military aircraft into service now.

Same thing with rockets and spacecraft.

It is sad people lost their lives and I don't understand the fascination of the dive with such a great risk to your life. It is amazing and sad at what people will do to be part of an "elite few" in things that are dangerous. Even if I had the money, I could think of many other things to do with it that would not be a problem risking mine or someone's else life with.

Nobody. Nobody has a deep diving submersible made of carbon fiber. Nobody. You literally referenced 2 failed designs that aren’t going anywhere. Carbon fiber is attractive because compared to the alternatives (that work) it is cheap and light. It also doesn’t work. Nobody is building a deep diving manned submersible in this manner. That is just the fact.

When somebody does something that is so stupid that basically everybody told them it would fail and then it fails in exactly the way they were told it would fail there are no real lessons learned. The Wright Brothers flew 10 feet off the sand. They risked broken bones. They didn’t take their untried, untested device and launch off the side of a cliff. Because they weren’t idiots.

Of course humankind can learn from mistakes. Mistakes of this magnitude though don’t actually have great value.

What is the huge lesson here? Don’t use a viewing port that isn’t rated for the depths you are going to? Don’t use carbon fiber as a pressure vessel? Redundancy is good? Reliable comms also good? The lessons learned from this have mostly already been learned and incorporated. Except for the carbon fiber because nobody else actually is doing this with people at that depth. They won’t try it anytime soon either.

It seems like you are determined to add some meaning to these senseless, pointless, and completely avoidable deaths. There isn’t any. They died predictably and to no value. A waste of 5 human lives for nothing.

quote:

Originally posted by a1abdj:
The primary issue doesn't seem to be carbon fiber's ability to work. It's been designed, tested, and actually used successfully. The problem seems to be the potential for damage caused by repetitive diving cycles, which if unaddressed could lead to failure.

Ok, let's bring it all back to this. Since you like researching, take a look into how the aviation industry deals with damage to carbon fiber sections of airframes and it will tell you everything you need to know about how suitable is is for a high pressure submarine hull.