I apologize if this has been posted already. But here is a news report CBS did on Oceangate and this same sub just 6 months ago. The reporter went down with a few other people to the Titanic in it. They also interview Stockton Rush.

It's eerie now how they talk about how it seems Macgyvered.

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Anyway, of the materials I saw tested, glass shatters, hardened steel shatters, the stuff Titans viewport was made from shatters, but carbon fiber composite does not

This is another thing that has been repeated by many posters that simply isn't true. The carbon fiber didn't turn to dust. We don't know if they have found any of it, but why wouldn't the pieces have been found at the wreck site?

For the same reason that that those that are using this material for pressure hulls are. It's buoyant. In their world it eliminates the need for an additional foam application over a metalic hull. In this case it's likely that whatever was left of it floated away after the implosion.

aileron,

I am curious as to why you declined Rush’s invitation to fly in his plane.

Did you see defects in the aircraft or anything questionable about its construction, or did he talk like an ignorant or arrogant asshole, or both perhaps?

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Originally posted by aileron:
I've stayed out of this conversation, but I will just leave this. The inventor and CEO of Ocean Gate assembled a kit built aircraft, a Glasair III. I've built several homebuilts, including assisting on an Oshkosh Grand Champion Lindy winning Glasair III. I saw and inspected Rush's handiwork on *his* Glasair, and although he offered a ride in it... I declined. Most kit built airplanes are reasonably safe, as they go together like erector sets - but the builder has free reign on the components, wiring, mechanical bits lifted from production certified GA aircraft, etc. I haven't declined many rides or first fights of homebuilts, but I wasn't getting in Rush's bird N78G. By the way, primary structure is fiberglas, not carbon fiber.

Hey, that’s my airport! I’ve probably talked to him a few times between Paine and BFI. The fact that I don’t remember his callsign means he probably wasn’t a bad pilot.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:

This is another thing that has been repeated by many posters that simply isn't true. The carbon fiber didn't turn to dust. We don't know if they have found any of it, but why wouldn't the pieces have been found at the wreck site?

For the same reason that that those that are using this material for pressure hulls are. It's buoyant. In their world it eliminates the need for an additional foam application over a metalic hull. In this case it's likely that whatever was left of it floated away after the implosion.

It’s not buoyant in water, but that doesn’t mean your point isn’t important. Carbon fiber is lighter than titanium which gives it an advantage that the Titan would float without special foam (glass bubbles in an epoxy resin).

Let’s look at the densities of the various materials: sea water at 8,000’ below sea level, 1.06 g/ml; carbon fiber composite, 1.55 g/ml, titanium, 4.51 g/ml; and that stuff the viewport was made of, 1.18 g/ml. Yes, I looked all that up. With any kind of current, none of those things would hit the bottom of the ocean at the same place. If the implosion really happened at 9,000’ below the surface and there is any current from there to the bottom, the viewport and cylinder would be on the bottom away from the rest of the debris.

Here is another question. I just read an article about a dive in 2019, a sub expert was onboard and heard “cracking” noises. According to the article, Rush didn’t respond to the mans claims but built a new hull. Are we calling TITAN numerous actual hulls? I ask because the number of actual dives seems purposely murky on OceanGates answers.

If a new hull is built and attached and called TITAN then TITAN didn’t dive 20 times, it’s a whole new submersible.

Somebody should go to jail over this. The obvious choice is a dead guy.

^^^^

an interview w Karl Stanley

https://twitter.com/i/status/1672417882100097027

if you need a twitter account to view the video, see link below that lets you see the video w/o account

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news...es-viral/ar-AA1cY02r

Karl Stanley, who organizes "deep diving submarine" trips in the Caribbean, made the remarks during an appearance on Anderson Cooper's CNN show on Friday, where he claimed the "real failure" on Titan was caused by "cracking over time."

Describing his April 2019 trip on Titan to Cooper, Stanley said: "Stockton warned us ahead of time to prepare us; he told us that when he was down there the submarine had made many loud noises and that this was to be expected and it was not anywhere near to catastrophic.

"He had also tested models at this point, and he knew exactly where the models failed and so I didn't feel that our life was really in grave danger at that point.

"I feel the real failure came with cracking over time, and also with the joint...and water getting in there, and another thing that happened was electrolysis, because even though carbon fiber is not a metal, in some ways it behaves like a metal and is conductive, so the salt water in between there and the titanium flange over time would have corroded things," Stanley said.

"From the intensity of the sounds, the fact that they never totally stopped at depth, and the fact that there were sounds at about 300 feet that indicated a relaxing of stored energy would indicate that there is an area of the hull that is breaking down/getting spongy."

Stanley said he put his concerns in writing because he did not want a "heated exchange" with Rush, claiming the deceased explorer was "not the kind of character that would take criticism very well."

However, he said Rush did take additional safety measures, including canceling the rest of the year's dives and fixing a carbon fiber tube "at the cost, I believe, of well over $1 million."

Stockton Rush was under pressure from investors to do dives to the Titanic

Here's a more in depth video of how the "sub" was built.

That seems so sketchy. Watching those guys mix the epoxy and apply it is astounding. Watching that video would have been the best submersible birth control ever.

At last we now know another way not to do it.

I do like how at 1:09 this cuck motherfucker has a shiner. I wonder who punched him in the face and why they stopped?

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Originally posted by honestlou:

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Originally posted by parabellum:
acrylic

They should have gone with transparent aluminum.

Nice ! I remember that scene. Funny !

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They should have gone with transparent aluminum.

Wonder why we don't see aluminum used in these things.

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Originally posted by a1abdj:

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They should have gone with transparent aluminum.

Wonder why we don't see aluminum used in these things.

My best guess is strength and manufacturability/weldability.

Higher end common AL alloys have a yield strength around 65-70 ksi, where steels and nickel alloys can be well over 100 ksi. Carbon fiber composites are typically over 100 ksi along the fiber direction (depends on a lot of things). Higher strength AL alloys do exist, but they are very expensive and quite possibly can't be made in the required sizes for a manned submersible.

The higher strength AL alloys also can't be welded (maybe some can, but the common ones can not) so you'd have to figure out a way to join components without welding. This is doable, but not as reliable and requires special care in surface preparation and choice in adhesives. The size of a single tube in both diameter (4+ ft. I'd guess) and required thickness (I may calculate this over the weekend to have some gut check on my statements) due to the lower strength is probably pretty prohibitive as well.

Galvanic corrosion in sea water could also be a concern, but there would have to be a material mismatch.

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Originally posted by DanH:
Here's a more in depth video of how the "sub" was built.

I watched this video and I think there are some serious deficiencies, though admittedly their entire manufacturing process was shrunk down to a 3 min. video. He did call it the "Cyclops II" during the video, so I'm also making the leap that they rebranded it "Titan" or it's representative of any sub they built for this type of dive.

They are using tape winding with pre-preg material (see my previous post about my suspicions on this). It also appears they are only winding in the hoop/circumferential direction. This is the dominate stress direction for burst/collapse loading, but in the case of the submersible it isn't the only one. The end caps will exert an axial compressive force (pretty massive by my calculations) on the composite tube and without fiber along that axis (or at say +/-45o to it) the force is not transmitted to the fibers in their optimal direction. Most of the load would be taken by the matrix material. Typical pressure vessels have wind angles of +/-45o plus layers as close to 90o (hoop, basically what OceanGate did do) to handle all the different stresses in the component.

I'm also not impressed by their bonding of the titanium to the carbon fiber composites. I'll just leave it at that.

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Originally posted by pedropcola:
That seems so sketchy. Watching those guys mix the epoxy and apply it is astounding. Watching that video would have been the best submersible birth control ever.

A more elegant and concise way of saying what I described above.

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Originally posted by Cookster:
aileron,

I am curious as to why you declined Rush’s invitation to fly in his plane.

Did you see defects in the aircraft or anything questionable about its construction, or did he talk like an ignorant or arrogant asshole, or both perhaps?

Curious about this as well. Sounds like there's a story here.

I think we are missing something in the implosion scenario, which is the sudden imbalance of forces and the momentum of the inrushing water.

The forces on the sub are balanced the instant before implosion. The sub is not being pushed around by water. If the viewport failed, in that instant there is zero pressure pushing on the structure from that area. The pressure on the other side starts to push the sub towards the missing viewport. At that same instant a column of water is moving into the sub at high speed, propelled by 5000 psi. This column has great momentum. The far end of the sub is moving towards the column of water as the column moves towards the far end, compressing the air.

This is not a slow event, so the momentum of the water rushing in plus the momentum of the sub being pushed cause the air inside to pressurize well above 5000 psi. The inside of the sub instantly has much higher pressure than the water outside. This could cause the carbon fiber tube to fail outwards and the other endcap to be blown off.

All instantaneously.

And then the air pressure drops and the water pressure crushes in. All in less than a blink of the eye. If carbon fiber does turn to powder upon failure, this would explain how a viewport failure could result in no carbon fiber pieces being found.

If the carbon tube failed first, that overpressure from the momentum of inrushing water would still happen.

^^^ How can the pressure inside exceed the pressure outside as it's the outside pressure creating what happened inside?

ETA: I understand what you're saying about the additional compression of air via the boat movement against water coming in, but it seems like an equalization would happen too quickly.

Really interesting article in The New Yorker here: The Titan Submersible Was “an Accident Waiting to Happen.

If true, it outlines a lot of details not previously posted. For example, OceanGate was reported to both OSHA and the United States Coast Guard years before the Titan imploded.

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Originally posted by trapper189:
Really interesting article in The New Yorker here: The Titan Submersible Was “an Accident Waiting to Happen.

Wow. That project and what Rush did was even worse, far worse, than what many of us thought.