Navy Heard Implosion of Titan Submersible. OceanGate Accused of Exaggerating Design Partnerships (people.com) 157
Long-time Slashdot reader Zak3056 shared this report from the Washington Post:
U.S. Navy acoustic sensors detected the likely implosion of the Titan submersible hours after the vessel began its fatal descent on Sunday, U.S. Navy officials said Thursday, a revelation that means the sprawling search for the vessel was conducted even though senior officials already had some indication the Titan was destroyed...
The acoustic detection was one significant piece of information, but the search had to continue to exhaust all possibilities, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies... The United States has used a network of devices to detect undersea noises for decades. The fact that the Titan's implosion was detected this way isn't surprising, Cancian said. "I would be surprised if they hadn't heard it."
A Las Vegas financier had bought tickets on the ill-fated submarine for himself, plus his 20-year-old son Sean and a friend. The son now tells People that "The whole reason my dad didn't go was because I told him, 'Dude, this submarine cannot survive going that deep in the ocean.'"
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told the financier that their submarine was safer than crossing the street. "He was a good guy, great heart, really believed in what he was doing and saying," the financier tells People. "But he didn't want to hear anything that conflicted with his world view, and he would just dismiss it... He was so passionate about this project, and he was such a believer. He drank his own Kool-Aid, and there was just no talking him out of it." For Sean, the first red flag that alarmed him about Rush was his arrival in Las Vegas, where Sean, Jay and Rush were set to meet. He says they asked why Rush was landing at a North Las Vegas airport rather than the commercial airports like McCarran. "He's like, 'Yeah, I built this plane with my hands, and I'm test-flying it right now.' And we're like, 'What?' That was my first red flag," he explains.
OceanGate's CEO later even tried offering the financier a substantial discount on the three tickets, calling his son "uninformed."
OceanGate had also claimed their submarine was designed and engineered in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington — but now ABC News says the company exaggerated those partnerships: OceanGate's founder and CEO Stockton Rush — who was aboard the missing vessel — made similar statements about his company's partnerships during an interview with CBS News correspondent David Pogue in 2022, who asked about the construction of the Titan submersible, which Rush said used some minor parts purchased from consumer retailers like Camping World. "The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA, [and] University of Washington," Rush said...
Kevin Williams, the executive director of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, told ABC News the school and laboratory were also not involved in the "design, engineering or testing" of the Titan submersible. Victor Balta, a UW spokesperson, added that OceanGate and UW's Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million collaborative research agreement, but the two entities "parted ways" after only $650,000 of work was completed. That research only resulted in the development of another OceanGate submersible, the shallow-diving Cyclops I submersible, according to Balta. The steel-hulled Cyclops I is only rated to reach 500 meters, compared to the Titan, which is constructed from carbon fiber and titanium to reach depths of 4,000 meters, the company said...
When asked about the details of those relationships with OceanGate, a Boeing representative told ABC News that the aerospace company was not involved in designing or building the deep-sea submersible. "Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it," a Boeing spokesperson told ABC News in a statement...
In a statement to ABC News, NASA confirmed it consulted on materials and manufacturing for the Titan submersible pursuant to an agreement with OceanGate. "NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate," the statement said.
CNN reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now exploring whether "criminal, federal, or provincial laws may possibly have been broken."
The acoustic detection was one significant piece of information, but the search had to continue to exhaust all possibilities, said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies... The United States has used a network of devices to detect undersea noises for decades. The fact that the Titan's implosion was detected this way isn't surprising, Cancian said. "I would be surprised if they hadn't heard it."
A Las Vegas financier had bought tickets on the ill-fated submarine for himself, plus his 20-year-old son Sean and a friend. The son now tells People that "The whole reason my dad didn't go was because I told him, 'Dude, this submarine cannot survive going that deep in the ocean.'"
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told the financier that their submarine was safer than crossing the street. "He was a good guy, great heart, really believed in what he was doing and saying," the financier tells People. "But he didn't want to hear anything that conflicted with his world view, and he would just dismiss it... He was so passionate about this project, and he was such a believer. He drank his own Kool-Aid, and there was just no talking him out of it." For Sean, the first red flag that alarmed him about Rush was his arrival in Las Vegas, where Sean, Jay and Rush were set to meet. He says they asked why Rush was landing at a North Las Vegas airport rather than the commercial airports like McCarran. "He's like, 'Yeah, I built this plane with my hands, and I'm test-flying it right now.' And we're like, 'What?' That was my first red flag," he explains.
OceanGate's CEO later even tried offering the financier a substantial discount on the three tickets, calling his son "uninformed."
OceanGate had also claimed their submarine was designed and engineered in collaboration with experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington — but now ABC News says the company exaggerated those partnerships: OceanGate's founder and CEO Stockton Rush — who was aboard the missing vessel — made similar statements about his company's partnerships during an interview with CBS News correspondent David Pogue in 2022, who asked about the construction of the Titan submersible, which Rush said used some minor parts purchased from consumer retailers like Camping World. "The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA, [and] University of Washington," Rush said...
Kevin Williams, the executive director of the University of Washington's Applied Physics Laboratory, told ABC News the school and laboratory were also not involved in the "design, engineering or testing" of the Titan submersible. Victor Balta, a UW spokesperson, added that OceanGate and UW's Applied Physics Laboratory initially signed a $5 million collaborative research agreement, but the two entities "parted ways" after only $650,000 of work was completed. That research only resulted in the development of another OceanGate submersible, the shallow-diving Cyclops I submersible, according to Balta. The steel-hulled Cyclops I is only rated to reach 500 meters, compared to the Titan, which is constructed from carbon fiber and titanium to reach depths of 4,000 meters, the company said...
When asked about the details of those relationships with OceanGate, a Boeing representative told ABC News that the aerospace company was not involved in designing or building the deep-sea submersible. "Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it," a Boeing spokesperson told ABC News in a statement...
In a statement to ABC News, NASA confirmed it consulted on materials and manufacturing for the Titan submersible pursuant to an agreement with OceanGate. "NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities, which was done elsewhere by OceanGate," the statement said.
CNN reports that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are now exploring whether "criminal, federal, or provincial laws may possibly have been broken."
Of all the things... (Score:5, Informative)
I realize that in grief, Captain Hindsight comes out, but the whole airport thing really seems to be more of an indicator that Rush had no idea how ot woo clients and investors. Traveling to meet them - yes. Showing up in your homebuilt airplane "... and I'm test flying it right now" -- no.
That he had poor judgment is --at this point-- not really in question, same for how well he took advice, criticism, and ideas on inspections and safety.
Where he flew into, in my mind, is not as relevant.
P.S.
I've piloted into North Las Vegas (KVGT) and there's nothing wrong with it. The landing fee is $0, it's closer to Summerlin, North Las Vegas, and in/out is minutes.
Mccarran hasn't been the airport's name since February 2021 when it was renamed "Harry Reid Inernational Airport" (still ICAO code KLAS). Its landing fees depends on size/type of aircraft and are not cheap. It's also a long way to go to either a terminal or an FBO, and a long way to go to get out, and then you're stuck hoping to get to the 215 or the 15 and make it through lots of traffic in under 30 minutes.
If you're flying a private aircraft, without celebrities (e.g. Kardashians) on board, and you're not going to be seen on The Strip, there are plenty of other choices. Henderson to the south is known for catering to private jets. North Las Vegas is known for being an easy-in easy-out airport. I've piloted to both.
Re:Of all the things... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Of all the things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Of all the things... (Score:2)
What kind of risk counts as unnecessary? Aside from the obvious things like manned spaceflight, or manned submarine dives 2 miles deep, or trying to sail from Spain to India across what you believe to be a vast ocean.
Re:Of all the things... (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, depends.
One could easily also say "Oh, you're a real adventurer flying your own plane."
Sure, the guy made some bad choices but this particular line stands out to me as "well, that's subjective..."
If you're trying to sell the adventure the test flying your own plane thing works.
If you're trying to convince people that you take safety super seriously... then not so much.
Fortunately for this family the son was more interested in the safety than the adventure.
I do feel sorry for the passengers who got killed. Very few people would have the technical background to realize the sub was insufficient, and those claims about collaborations with very respectable institutions are almost impossible to check.
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I realize that in grief, Captain Hindsight comes out, but the whole airport thing really seems to be more of an indicator that Rush had no idea how ot woo clients and investors. Traveling to meet them - yes. Showing up in your homebuilt airplane "... and I'm test flying it right now" -- no.
On the contrary I think the only reason he was aboard his own ill fated mission was to schmooze with gullible billionaires.
His presence had been a huge selling point (Score:2)
They would care more about safety if he was not aboard...
Re:Of all the things... (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize that in grief, Captain Hindsight comes out, but the whole airport thing really seems to be more of an indicator that Rush had no idea how ot woo clients and investors. Traveling to meet them - yes. Showing up in your homebuilt airplane "... and I'm test flying it right now" -- no.
That he had poor judgment is --at this point-- not really in question, same for how well he took advice, criticism, and ideas on inspections and safety.
Where he flew into, in my mind, is not as relevant.
Rush was the modern entrepenure that has sprung up. Certaintly these types have always existed, but today, in the cynical world where the utterly stupid can challenge time tested experts, there is a crop of them. What is that?
A solipsits who believes they can bend reality by force of will, that they can simply "make it so". And of course, the social concept that if a person is wealthy, they must be right.
So here we have Rush, who is so smart and so sure of himself that he simply knows that "safety is a waste", and that safety rules are destroying exploration, and that his vehicle doesn't need tested or certified.
And in the age of reversed cynicism and weird beliefs like manifestation, where truth is summarily and offhandedly rejected for conspiracy and the idea that the universe rotates around me, Me, ME!. There will be people lined up to believe every word he spouts as if from god's lips to their ears. Witness Elizabeth Holmes, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump among others.
But despite all of that, the basic facts are that you don't fool around with physics. Repeated compression and decompression. wrecks carbon composite structures, with each successive cycle weakening them until they fail. There was enough evidence that this Titan submersible was an accident waiting to happen. One person who wint on a dive in it called it something like suicide. Josh Gates from the show "Expedition Unknown", where a Titanic dive would have been a real spectacle on his show, went on a short trip and declared it unsafe. https://www.today.com/news/tit... [today.com] And he isn't afraid of much.
But modern millionaire savant and smarter than the great unwashed CEO Rush knew better. He put it best ""We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult."
Well, he doesn't have to worry now - the cries were demonstrably not baseless, and he doesn't have to year the naysayers nor get insulted by them any more. So he's got that going for him.
I do feel badly for the people he murdered, except for the young guy who was properly frightened, but obeyed his father, they were just stupid and exercising bad judgement. Poor judgement is not a crime.
But face it Rush taking himself out probably did the world a big favor.
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It's just shocking to see the cowboy attitude compared to everything that was gone through to build and certify "Limiting Factor." The latter is an incredible feat of engineering, actually certified to go to the deepest part of every ocean in the world.
CEO had a death wish (Score:3)
Re: CEO had a death wish (Score:2)
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"relatively safe" is very relative.
Amateur-built and other experimental aircraft were involved in almost 25 percent of U.S. fatal general aviation accidents over the past five years and account for an estimated five percent of total general aviation fleet hours.
https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/g... [faa.gov]
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That 5 times more likely to crash may sound a bit worse than it actually is since amateur-built and other experimental aircraft also tend to be on the much smaller end and small planes are more likely to crash in general.
Re:CEO had a death wish (Score:5, Informative)
Not that unusual. Now, if he'd built his own jet-engined plane, that would be unusual. Doing a quick check, there were 1200 homebuilt airplanes registered in 2019. You do have the odd incident like John Denver's death in a homebuilt airplane with a poorly implemented fuel tank selector, but by and large, a homebuilt airplane is not necessarily unsafe, and certification is required.
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Correct, key point is not homebuilt or experimental, the key point is 'certification is required'.
And the certification if required even it's just you. If you are going to haul passengers for money, then the certification ramps up again.
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Correct, key point is not homebuilt or experimental, the key point is 'certification is required'.
And the certification if required even it's just you. If you are going to haul passengers for money, then the certification ramps up again.
I agree that's how it should be. Problem is in international waters, requiring certification is a different bag.
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Correct, key point is not homebuilt or experimental, the key point is 'certification is required'.
Well the thing is a very strict certification scheme exists for all aircraft. For submarines, less so. Sure there's certification, but for vessels like this they are more of an extrapolation of certification for a completely different type of sub going on a completely different kind of mission. I read an article only yesterday that pointed out that there were only 10 subs in the world capable of going down to the Titanic, and 9 of them were certified, but of those 9, they were certified to 7 different stand
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You massively overestimate how complex it is to build a small plane. Heck 2 guys managed to do it over 100 years ago without the aid of any modern technology, materials, or how-to guides on the internet.
Shit man there's whole magazines / social groups dedicated to building your own planes https://www.kitplanes.com/ [kitplanes.com]
Re: CEO had a death wish (Score:2)
Yup my uncle did this and makes sure to bring it up in random conversation to anyone and everyone.
Hey do you know my Uncle Brian who runs that plant in Illinois, oh you mean the guy who has the plane and wont shut up about it, yeah.
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You massively overestimate how complex it is to build a small plane. Heck 2 guys managed to do it over 100 years ago without the aid of any modern technology, materials, or how-to guides on the internet.
Shit man there's whole magazines / social groups dedicated to building your own planes https://www.kitplanes.com/ [kitplanes.com]
There are just some basic principles, and yeah, it's obvious it can be done well.
You can decide if yourself if you want to take a spin in a homebrew plane put together by someone who was on record saying that safety is pure waste. But the world today is different, and entrepreneurs like Rush are proving the naysayers wrong, and adventuring boldly into a new future, showing they are the ones who know how it all works.
Ohhh - wait.. what?
Darwin Award (Score:3)
Come on, lay off the poor guy. (Score:5, Funny)
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He's under a lot of pressure.
Not anymore.
It all boils down to that game controller (Score:2)
No the sub didn't implode because of a Logitech game controller. But the controller best exemplifies the laissez-faire attitude to safety that extended to other aspects of the submersible. If they cut corners by using an unrated, uncertified and unsuitable controller for such a hostile environment then they cut corners elsewhere.
I bet when Canadian investigators have gone through all the correspondence and technical data regarding this sub and issue their findings it will be damning of Rush. If he weren't d
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But the controller best exemplifies the laissez-faire attitude to safety that extended to other aspects of the submersible
I don't know why you'd think that... military hardware uses game controllers for all kinds of stuff (although generally they use of the shelf xbox controllers). Submarine periscopes (US) Drones (US) Tanks (Isreal) etc etc. They choose this control formfactor because young people in the military are already have years of experience using them, they are easy to replace, and they withstand thousands of hours of abuse without problems. Much better to use a tool like this than to spend millions of dollars bui
Re:It all boils down to that game controller (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes these things so reliable is their simplicity: a bundle of wires + some switches (of well-proven, battle tested design).
First, I've had shit-tons of game controllers fail. Usually before they fail they become flaky, so there is warning, but not always. The fancier they are, the more likely failure becomes.
Second, the controller in question is a Logitech G F710 Wireless Gamepad [vice.com]. This is NOT NOT NOT simply "a bundle of wires + some switches" [fccid.io] and since it's a Logitech, even if they were, they would not be "of well-proven, battle tested design". Logitech is outright known for using cheap switches. I have never had to replace so many microswitches as on my Logitech devices.
Grabbing an off-the-shelf game controller to steer the craft: defendable design choice.
Absolutely not. It is frankly a garbage idea on all levels, and using THIS particular gamepad is an even more garbage idea.
I have a Thrustmaster F22 Pro. It is as professional as a game controller gets. The grip is made in the same molds as the one actually used in the F/A-18 (which makes the name a bit silly, but anyway.) I would not in a million years trust it as the input device for a submarine. Like the F710 it has a circuit board in it with a microcontroller on it. It also has return springs known to break. Despite the high price and fancy control board none of the inputs are optical. If I'm using an off the shelf controller for this purpose it must absolutely have no awkward failure modes, but if I have to use a complex one for some reason, I absolutely want all optical inputs so that I do not have to worry about mechanical failure.
People keep saying "oh the military does it so it's smart" but they ABSOLUTELY NEVER use an off the shelf controller AS THE ONLY INPUT METHOD. Even when it comes to the periscope on a sub they have an alternate way to control it.
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The question here is what would you use as the controller?
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Find a manufacturer who makes sensors and controllers for maritime use and you buy something from them. It'll cost more but it will be certified and fit for purpose. Same for everything else in the sub. The controller just exemplifies this shortcut taking mentality.
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I have my doubts there. Commercial game controllers may be cheap and mass-produced, but they are usually very, very extensively tested. You seem to be suggesting a custom one-off. Sure, from engineers who work in the field, but what you end up with will still basically be a prototype that you're testing while you're at the bottom of the ocean. I'm not sure I would have as much confidence in such a controller as you do. The mass-market controllers are made to be handled by children and survive while keeping
Re: (Score:2)
Also, in the end, where does the manufacturer that makes sensors and controllers for maritime use get their parts? Is their controller going to contain the exact same switches, etc. as the mass market controller, just with a custom board?
Even if they're using the same parts, they can be doing more QA and using superior designs. There are considerations which simply don't apply to consumer game controllers, where if you die you can just reload or at worst start again. Maybe you lose some prize money in the very worst case.
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Game controllers are not extensively tested in 100% humidity or other harsh conditions. Just google "ip67 joystick" (or ip65, ip66) and you will find numerous examples of controls that ARE. They made for industrial & maritime control and would be fit for purpose and the IP rating refers to its protection against dust and water resistance. Some controllers also use contactless hall effect sensors and feature redundancy for added safety,
So no it's not the same stuff as a mass market controller. And again
Re: (Score:2)
It's a good question, and I don't have a good answer. A glib answer is that I would sooner use an Xbox 360 controller than the Logitech one, though. The 360 controller is, IMO, peak crap (mass market) controller, for three reasons. 1, it's pretty reliable IME. 2, you can use a 2xAA carrier and use NiMH, alkaline, lithium, or whatever else you can stick back there — and also rapidly remove it for the purposes of cold booting, battery swapping, whatever. Also, it has audio, and the nifty keyboard. Whic
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I get it. The controller definitely would not be make or break for me though. I would worry more about the pressure hull and the window(s) and how failsafe the mechanism for dropping ballast in an emergency. Beyond that, the reliability of the oxygen supply and CO2 scrubbing as well as backup life support. If that involves oxygen candles, I would also be concerned about whether they're contaminated in any way (potentially turning them into small bombs). I would probably also be concerned about propulsion sy
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You're barking up the wrong tree. If all you need is some directional controls, I've got some Atari style joysticks here that would be 100% up to the job. Manufactured in the '80's, built like a tank, seen plenty of action, all still work fine.
Same here, original 1980s vintage, literally thousands of hours on them and they were still working perfectly when I put them in a box for storage years ago.
There was almost nothing to fail- they had decent cables, good connectors, and quality switches. Like I said, literally thousands and thousands of hours on them and they still worked perfectly.
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Your joystick wasn't designed to work in 100% humidity where the consequence of failure (e.g. a short) could be death. It's not intrinsically safe and nor is some off the shelf Logitech controller.
A proper marine controller will be a sealed device with a rubber skirt to prevent ingress of moisture and conformal coatings on all of the circuitry. Like I said, I mentioned the controller not because it failed, but because it exemplifies a company that cut corners to save money / time.
Re: (Score:3)
A submersible is alternately hot / cold and incredibly humid with lots of salt water, sweat moisture getting into electronics. They could short out, corrode or otherwise fail in a way that you do not want. As such you do NOT use off the shelf parts unless you are fantastically reckless. Even if this company took their controller apart, sprayed conformal coating all over the PCB and reassembled it, it would still NOT be fit for purpose or certified for marine use. And no your Atari joystick is no better eith
McGyvered (Score:2)
"The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered
On occasion I would have a conversation with someone I used to work with where our talk would veer toward words and phrases and objects which the youngins (we're both about the same age) wouldn't understand. How to use a rotary phone for example, or where the phrase, "Don't drink the koolaid" came from. McGyvered falls into that category. Without looking it up, it's a certainty there is a large portion of the population which doesn't know what that word means.
Re:McGyvered (Score:4, Insightful)
well, those who don't know should make some effort...
There are three options:
1. continue using such phrases, not caring about those who might not understand
2. provide a reference, just for convenience
3. stupidize the writing, i.e., avoid anything beyond anyone's knowledge
PLEASE, everyone, avoid the #3 option!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Doesn't know what the word means" and "doesn't know where the expression came from" are two very different things.
Most people don't know where the majority of the idioms they use came from, or even think very hard about what they mean.
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It deserves to be said again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
It has already been said to death, but it deserves to be said again. A ship/boat just two weeks before this event was lost with hundreds of people. Those people and their story only received a fraction of the attention those 5 rich people did. Those people were no less human beings than those 5 billionaires.
Those people weren't on a suicide mission however. They weren't blindly following a person who despised safety and ignored a lot of calls to abandon his suicide craft.
Therein lies the difference, other ships lost were a tragedy. This was a tragey for the stupid people who believed him, and the adage of "Fuck around and find out for the hubris addled Stockton Rush.
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https://www.foxnews.com/media/... [foxnews.com]
Re:It deserves to be said again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, it's been said to death, so stop. All of the human smuggling boats that went down last week were in different jurisdictions, not attended by either the American or Canadian coast guards. There's been lots of stuff about them in the international and regional news where they happened, if you cared to look.
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In contrast its pretty clear what happened to the ship near Greece. What isn't clear is how to approach the problem. How to keep desperate peop
It's one thing hearing noise (Score:2)
Haven't read Hunt for Red October? (Score:5, Insightful)
C'mon, man! It's common knowledge that the US Navy has the North Atlantic "wired for sound."
Here's how this went down.
The Navy right away knew that the sub imploded, but announcing that the people on board are all dead and calling off the search based on a signal-processed acoustic signature wouldn't go over well.
This announcement set off a plan to get an ROV to where the sound came from to get a visual of the wrecked sub, which together with the acoustic evidence would be conclusive with respect to stopping the search for survivors.
In the mean time, both the US and Canada sent out patrol planes, just on the off chance that the Navy signal was something else, however remote the possibility because the US Navy makes it their business to know what a sinking sub sounds like. Given the automatic ballast release system on the sub, if the sub hadn't imploded, it is most likely bobbing around on the surface, pushed along by winds and ocean currents, hence the search of a large area. Even if they were on the surface, rescuers had to get to them to unbolt the craft to let them out before their oxygen supply ran out.
There was some urgency getting the ROV out to the site before the oxygen supply deadline on the off chance that the lost sub was stuck in the Titanic wreck or some such thing, although the chances of the ROV getting them free was especially remote. But soon in the search using the ROV, a "debris field" was sighted and the rescue operation was officially over.
OK, this is hindsight, but remember the Coast Guard admiral's slight hesitation on answering a reporter's question on whether this was a "rescue" or a "recovery" operation and his carefully worded response that "this is definitely a search-and-rescue operation"? I think the navies of US and Canada and the US Coast Guard were doing everything they were supposed to do.
Re: (Score:2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.csp.navy.mil/nopfd... [navy.mil]
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Hearing noise is one thing. Figuring out that it is from an imploding submarine is another. The people hearing it, at what point did they hear that a submarine was going missing, and figured out this could be related to the noise?
The noise was heard at the right time - the suicide sub lost contact at that point, it was heard at the right depth, and the implosion was easily figured out - the wreckage of the suicide sub was directly below the location of the sub when it imploded.
So it didn't take to long to figure out the source of the kaboom.
Different rules for composites (Score:5, Informative)
On a televised interview, James Cameron seemed to provide the best, most coherent engineering explanation of why the submarine would fail: the use of a continuous composite fiber hull in compression puts the majority of the load on the composite matrix and not the fibers ( which are designed to have the majority of their strength in tension ). This means that the advantages of the carbon fiber are not realized in the design.
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On a televised interview, James Cameron seemed to provide the best, most coherent engineering explanation of why the submarine would fail: the use of a continuous composite fiber hull in compression puts the majority of the load on the composite matrix and not the fibers ( which are designed to have the majority of their strength in tension ). This means that the advantages of the carbon fiber are not realized in the design.
And no question that James Cameron would be a damn good authority on such things. I've worked with carbon fiber, but no expert. Excellent and light stuff for many applications. But not so much for pressure vessels.
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Pressure from the inside, yes. Pressure from the outside, hell no. Carbon fiber has high tensile strength, but little compressive strength (that is, lots of mundane materials have a lot more.) That's why they use CF external reinforcement for many pressure tanks, including for hydrogen storage.
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Pressure from the outside, hell no.
Don't be so sure. There's enough published peer review literature that says you very much can use carbon composites to build submarines. It's a question of design and geometry though, and not just build a round tube roughly yay-big and hope for the best. That said it's still very much a subject under research.
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Pressure from the inside, yes. Pressure from the outside, hell no.
That's it in a nutshell.
They often wrap various kinds of tubes with carbon fiber to create one hell of a strong pressure vessel, but that's pressure from the inside, not the outside. Tensile strength vs compressive strength is exactly the issue here.
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Cameron may know more than most people, but that doesn't make his commentary any less peanut gallery. Actual proper material science has and is looking at the use of composites for building submarines and have found them perfectly viable both theoretically and under practical test.
This is however an area of emerging research, which is the real alarm bells. There was a study published only 4 months ago talking about the viability for carbon fibre for deep sea diving and they found that with the correct geome
Why carbon? (Score:3)
I can see the point of carbon composites in aerospace, where you need lightness, but why use it for a sub when you need to add weights to make it sink?
Re: (Score:2)
1. Lighter submersible means a smaller support vessel to lift it out of the sea.
2. Smaller support vessels cost less to buy and operate.
3. Profit increases.
Re:Why carbon? (Score:4, Informative)
1. Lighter submersible means a smaller support vessel to lift it out of the sea. 2. Smaller support vessels cost less to buy and operate. 3. Profit increases.
One thing about Titan that was good. It was deployed and retrieved on a floating and submergible sled.
This made it deployable in heavier seas.
But there was no really good reason to use CC for a pressure vessel. Weakens with each compression - decompression cycle, which tends to delaminate outer layers, and a possible big problem is that the fiber to joint locations were a potential failure point, as the carbon vessle changes in size, while the metal doesn't.
A really horrible choice.
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He got a deal on the carbon fiber because it was expired and couldn’t be used for aircraft anymore. Not even joking. https://www.insider.com/oceang... [insider.com]
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Apparently metal hulled submersibles are not buoyant when you dive deeper than a couple kilometres. I suspect that's because the density of the water doesn't really increase but the amount of metal required to enclose a given volume of 1 atm air does.
So deep-diving submersibles require buoyancy aids. That's tricky too, because the material has to be something that can withstand the pressure. Syntactic foam is apparently the stuff they use, and it's expensive.
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It was also to increase the interior volume of the submersible. There's a very good reason why every deep submergence vehicle, from the Trieste to Alvin to the Russian Mir subs to Limiting Factor are based around spherical pressure vessels that are limited to 3, maybe 4 personnel.
Why Non-Job-Related Education Matters (Score:3)
This is where non-job-related education, or the lack of it, comes in.
You can have $250,000 to spend for a seat on a tour.
That doesn't mean you know what is out there to see and appreciate.
Perhaps reading a book by one of the great thinkers would have meant as much or more to the lives of one of those 5 deceased billionaires. Maybe a trip to even a more impressive spot that you wouldn't need some arrogant rick fuck's defective tin can to see. Maybe taking a trip for a few months to a remote area to help people would have filled their lives with meaningful experiences.
There are many more possibilities too that they those billionaires might not have known about because they considered things that are not money, STEM, business, or conspicuous consumption to be a waste of their time.
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Going down to the Titanic was on their bucket list. They did it. Winners. They may have forgotten to add to their bucket list going back up.
Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told the financier that their submarine was safer than crossing the street. "He was a good guy, great heart, really believed in what he was doing and saying," the financier tells People.
Yup, and all that doesn't mean jack fuckin' shit to the ocean. It doesn't care what you believe or how great a guy you were.
Physics rules the day from subatomic particles on up, and woe to those who ignore that simple fact.
acoustic sensors (Score:2)
Stupid military should not be bragging about this. Gives away info on location and sensitivity of sensors.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Convict the CEO (Score:2)
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Why didn't they send a let the surface vessel know something was wrong? I assume for comms to go, they would have had the implosion .. unless they got unlucky and comms went out independently some time before the implosion.
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According to several reports (one linked below), Stockton Rush had the sub-to-surface comms removed from the Titan because he found them distracting on earlier dives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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According to OceanQuest's own website, the Titan had a network of sensors embedded in the hull to warn of damage or deformation. They may well have known that the hull was compromised, but unfortunately the surface was at least an hour away so not much hope of reaching it before the inevitable occurred.
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It made me think of Heaven's Gate [wikipedia.org]
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I was thinking about that. Is it deterministic naming? Or is this going to be known as OceanGategate? OceanGate^2?
Re:Beating a dead horse (Score:4)
No he didn't, he's got two kids.
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Darwin honorable mention.
even with kids... (Score:3)
From the Darwin Awards rules:
The existence of offspring, though potentially deleterious to the gene pool, does not disqualify a nominee.
(https://darwinawards.com/rules/rules1.html)
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I go by the original rules of offing yourself before procreation.
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Great twitter thread about the Navy's underwater acoustic capabilities with reference to this incident from a person who was "qualified on the the BQQ-5G sonar system, and spent time underway as a sonar operator with the USS Augusta (SSN-710). I was also a pilot of SH-60B and P-3C sub-hunting aircraft" https://nitter.net/BrynnTanneh... [nitter.net] (using nitter.net, you can replace with twitter.com).
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Because hearing a thump in the ocean isn't a good enough reason to announce a submarine implosion?
As for the rest of your annoying non-sequitur, read it over with the assumption that he's lying about who he's sitting next to. That's FAR more plausible, and perfectly obvious.
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Who cares who owns the laptop? I said not one word about that. You poured your own story into that void. And I can absolutely believe you don't understand why the length of a day matters. That tracks. But you win. I don't card enough to continue arguing.
For the record, the only thing you can infer from my post is that yes, it's best not to pay attention who inject the laptop into unrelated matters. I do believe them to be twits.
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Stop watching TV shows, bad for you. The IRS "whistleblowers" alleged? Hell, they can allege anything they like. And I woudln't paper my cat's litter box with a rag like the Washington Examiner.
Re:Why was the Navy's detection revealed on Thursd (Score:5, Informative)
The detection revelation exposed the Navy's sound detection capabilities. So why did it happen on Thursday and not earlier or not at all? Could it be to mask another story that the Biden administration didn't want being on the front page?
1) It did not expose anything, these capabilities hopefully exist in US as they do in other countries for at least 55 years that I could find about.
2) A release of information after a few days is particularly quick. The sounds comes from very far away and there are plenty of sounds coming from the sea, such as incoming vessels of all kinds, the tide flowing, or naval construction works. It takes days of work to isolate some sounds and determine if they could come from a submarine implosion and, if so, in which sector of the sea.
3) The sound sensors are at bay, and while they could have some of them in the ocean, they don't have the ocean entirely gridded. They also don't have people listening to every sound from the sea 24/7 and shouting "OMG and implosion!!! must be that idiot nobody knows about, who announced weeks ago he would someday dive with coupled bored billionaires". Though they do have "golden ears" aboard attack submarines that listen constantly listen and identify enemy vessels by the sounds of their propellers or sonar (see also movie The Wolf's Call https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] , 2019, directed by Antonin Baudry).
For history: submarine Minerve (French Navy S647) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] imploded in the Mediterranean sea on January 27, 1968. The implosion was recorded by French Navy's sensors. Submarine was not discovered until 2019, after thorough analysis of the acoustic archive from that day, and 3D reconstruction of sound propagation using recent sea bottom mappings and supercomputers. The reconstruction enabled to pinpoint the location of the sub, so they could launch a deep-submersible and confirm visually.
The message appears to imply that Joe Biden knew
Stop already with the fantasy "the president knows". The administration and the agencies are huge, there are wars and economical problems. I damn hope your officials don't waste the time of your President with private traffic incidents.
Simply Hubris (Score:3)
When the Titan was reported missing, the navy pulled up the report. The ti
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Part of how the system works is comparing noises to previously heard noises. The collapse would probably have been clearly recognizable as a collapse, but the noises that preceded it if any might not have been a good match for other noises heard preceding collapses because the pressure vessel was unusual. But as has been pointed out elsewhere, the classified nature of the elements of the system that is used to detect these noises would have added time onto the process.
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Could it be to mask another story that the Biden administration didn't want being on the front page?
Your conspiracy theory is powerful weaksauce.
You know what they say - "So many MAGAs, so few Titan submersibles!"
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I, for one, think aliens sank the submersible because they thought it might discover the secret earthbase they built inside the Titanic's wreck.
The aliens were the 5 beings in the submersible who left the planet via a portal located at the bottom of the sea. There is no debris. The sound detected was the opening and closing of the portal. Both the evidence and the alien's motives are clear to anyone who is paying attention.
Re:idiot Vegas son (Score:5, Insightful)
Now I am not aware of the studies/hobbies this son may have to lean on to make his assessment. The summary suggests he trusted his gut about the state of of the vehicle that was supposed to bring him to the Titanic shipwreck.
Personally, carbon fiber is not a material I trust much, with regards to it handling pressure or it's tensile strength over any given period. True, it is rather strong given it's weight, when it is 'freshly baked'. Once you have put stress on it, it becomes unreliable. Sure, you can enforce it, but that makes it heavier. And it remains brittle, regardless.
Metal alloys in the form of a sphere are known to be capable of handling pressure. Which is knowledge that was earned the hard way. Innovation would have been to build bigger and/or more useful spheres with lighter/cheaper materials. Tube-like shapes are very strong and capable of handling immense pressure...when their shape is perfect. The slightest dent or fissure makes a tube-shaped vessel immediately very weak.
There is an episode of the TV-show Mythbusters, where they try to crunch a tube-shaped tank car that is used with trains to transport gases/liquids under pressure, with just the outside air pressure. They had a lot of trouble getting it to implode. Until they made a dent in the hull. After that, it took not that much outside air pressure to make it implode like a beer can. And that happened without any warning, they just created a vacuum inside the tank and they were getting bored of waiting before the balance between vacuum, outside air pressure and material strength made the train car 'pop'. No warning of any kind.
Laws of physics are what they are. You can tell yourself that you are innovating by using relative cheap materials that have not been properly tested for the purposes you have planned those materials to be used in. I'll admit that a sphere is not ideal for passenger comforts. But those comforts have a very low priority, when the vessel needs to deal with significant water pressure reliably.
The founder/CEO was unreasonable and overconfident. Personally, I would not be amazed if family of his customers sue the pants of his company and/or surviving family members from the CEO, if involved. One could even say that, in a sense, his overconfidence killed a number of people which pushes the CEO into serial-killer territory.
Being killed by a vessel of your own making, might gain the CEO some kudos from a few people, as he did not shy away from "eating his own dogfood". He and his plans were 'charming' enough that he lured customers with this fatal trip. So, even the CEO's death doesn't absolve him from criminal charges to his person, his company and any others that may be involved in designing and/or building this vessel. Hardware engineers/architects are job titles that come with serious responsibilities. The CEO and his company have similar responsibilities, which were disregarded by the overconfidence of the CEO. Criminal negligence, if you would ask me. And I know, you didn't .
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Not just comfort but as one makes them bigger they get weaker. [youtu.be]
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I do hope the engineers in Boeing and Airbus allowed for that. The Boeing 787 and the Airbus's A350 XWB both are largely carbon fibre. Both undergo repeated compressions and decompressions (presumably 10's of thousands over their lifetime), and both go through large temperature changes. In fact, if you look a videos of the 787 being constructed [youtube.com], it looks superficially similar to the video of Oceangate submarine being made. It's likely where he got t
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When there's positive pressure on the _outside_ that is not so: any imbalance is amplified and the thing cruhes like a beer can.
Should we trust Boeing after the 737-MAX clusterfuck? Maybe not 100%. But more so than
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Re: idiot Vegas son (Score:2)
The sun DID make repeated trips down to the Titanic. There are reports that OceanGate was aware of cyclical fatigue occurring in the carbon fibre (basically, the compression / decompression was causing it to delaminate), but they ignored that info.
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Charismatic leaders convince people to give money for the pied piper's pipe dreams. Deaths and name changes ensue. If the pied piper is a delusional True Believer, they are more likely to go down with the ship.
Yup, you are correct. It's a foreign concept to me. Whereas if I was going to take a trip to the titanic, I'd research the hell out of it.
I've seen enough bullshit in this world to know that having money does not make a person smart, or clever. More to the point, it enables them to think that they are always right, even when wrong. And that money amplifies their idiosyncrasies. Yet today, it seems that critical thinking is considered a bad trait.
So people line up to support people like Rush, Holmes, Mu
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There's also a bias toward believing people who sound sincere and confident.
This reminds me of another story from last week, which was a challenge by Robert F. Kennedy to Dr. Peter Hotez to debate vaccines on Joe Rogan's podcast. Real experts come across badly in these kind of public circuses because they have complicated, hard-to-understand positions that they come across as not being completely certain about. Experts hedge their words and are perceived as *insincere*, which is the kiss of death when an a
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