Titanic tourist sub missing

[Ziggurat]

I must be really expensive to drill through titanium. They saved a lot of money with only four bolts.

You misunderstand, Greg. They had more than four bolt holes. They just used only four bolts. Not to save money, but to save time.

Yeah, stupid.

 

[jimbob]

You misunderstand, Greg. They had more than four bolt holes. They just used only four bolts. Not to save money, but to save time.

Yeah, stupid.

 

[Myriad]

You misunderstand, Greg. They had more than four bolt holes. They just used only four bolts. Not to save money, but to save time.

Yeah, stupid.

Yeah I should have explained that better. Furthermore, in the fatal dive they did use seventeen bolts out of eighteen holes. No one seems to know why not eighteen bolts. And eighteen is still fewer holes than I would expect to see, compared with other submersibles. ("Well, if it's good enough for a golf course...")

But they had used fewer bolts (possibly as few as two) back in 2021. I wonder if that, and/or the switching back and forth between fewer and more bolts, contributed to fatigue in the coupling ring.

 

[Axxman300]

Okay, gang. First, here's the link to the US Coast Guard's Titan Submersible page, it's is your one-stop for all the relative documents and videos:

https://www.news.uscg.mil/News-by-Region/Headquarters/Titan-Submersible/smdsort35576/title/

Since folks seem to be arguing about where the failure occurred this NTSB Titan Material Analysis has the carbon-fiber stuff covered down to the microscopic level:

https://media.defense.gov/2024/Sep/...NTSB TITAN MATERIAL ANALYSIS.PDF_REDACTED.PDF

This NTSB has all kinds of images of the hull construction, and has a number of wreckage photos that had been unseen before Thursday. Seems the hull split into three layers like an onion, and you can see larger segments of the hull lying further away. The wreckage was spread out over 150 meters.

My personal take on this, being someone with a marine geology background but zero engineering qualifications is that the Titan was designed by some very smart people in an environment where safety was at the bottom of the list, or not a factor at all. Rush was told the Titan would fail and he ignored his own experts. The only person I mourn is Paul-Henri Nargeolet. He should have known better.

One thing I find disturbing are the Rush/Musk/Billionaire Adventure-Capitalist cheerleaders who wave away the lack of safety as being necessary to advance technology. We saw this in person during the hearing when one of Oceangate's people compared Rush to the Wright Brothers, which is a poor analogy. DSV technology is established, even carbon fiber submersibles have been built before. There were no airplanes before Kitty Hawk, and while airplane crashes have killed many people, and will continue to do so I doubt any of these daring billionaire cowboys would willingly board a plane flown by people with zero regard for safety at any level of operation.

Yes, science learns from failure, and science does have a body-count. But science also calculates risk, and this slows progress because technology must evolve to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. That means testing, sometimes years of testing. And it has to be done this way or else you end up as a ground meat and carbon goop at the bottom of the ocean.

 

[smartcooky]

One thing I find disturbing are the Rush/Musk/Billionaire Adventure-Capitalist cheerleaders who wave away the lack of safety as being necessary to advance technology. We saw this in person during the hearing when one of Oceangate's people compared Rush to the Wright Brothers, which is a poor analogy. DSV technology is established, even carbon fiber submersibles have been built before. There were no airplanes before Kitty Hawk, and while airplane crashes have killed many people, and will continue to do so I doubt any of these daring billionaire cowboys would willingly board a plane flown by people with zero regard for safety at any level of operation.

Yes, science learns from failure, and science does have a body-count. But science also calculates risk, and this slows progress because technology must evolve to mitigate risk to an acceptable level. That means testing, sometimes years of testing. And it has to be done this way or else you end up as a ground meat and carbon goop at the bottom of the ocean.

I disagree with your inclusion of Musk in this comparison.

You will struggle to find any space organization or launch company more risk-averse than SpaceX. The company has a reputation for scrubbing flights for the smallest of reasons and in circumstances where the risk is very small. Crew Dragon, for example, was built upon the most stringent and rigorous test regime before it ever flew with people on board. While both Rush and Musk have used the philosophy of "iterate fast and break stuff" to learn, Rush and Oceangate put lives at risk - Musk and SpaceX never did. Booster landings, Cargo and Crew Dragon were built (and Starship is being built) on sound engineering principles with no shortcuts. The same cannot be said for Titan - it always was a poorly designed, shoddily built vessel put together by amateurs using cheap workarounds. It was always a disaster waiting to happen - most everyone in the deep dive community knew it, they tried to tell him, and he refused to listen.

 

[Axxman300]

For the past week Musk has been whining at the FAA and what he considers to be unnecessary regulations and paperwork.

 

[Gulliver Foyle]

I disagree with your inclusion of Musk in this comparison.

.

Why, the only difference between the twain is that Galaxy Brain has, so far, been luckier.

 

[smartcooky]

For the past week Musk has been whining at the FAA and what he considers to be unnecessary regulations and paperwork.

First of all, its not regulations he considers unnecessary its the delays.

Spoiler because the following is off topic

As he correctly points out, it should not take more time to move paperwork from one desk to the next desk than it takes to build and ready massive rocket for flight. The FAA is simply far too bureaucratically cumbersome to deal with space flight. It was fine when there were maybe five or six launches per year, but this year alone, SpaceX alone have launched 94 times out of a target of 144 for 2024. The FAA is not equipped to cope with this level of activity, and it will be even more under the pump when Rocketlab's facility at Wallops comes fully online and starts launching their new "Neutron" reusable rocket with a planned cadence of 20 to 50+ launches per year, and Blue Origin starts launching "New Glenn" over a 10 times a year.

Meanwhile, while SpaceX efforts in the US are marking time waiting for the FAA to get of their bureaucratic backsides, China is forging ahead, and have already surpassed where SpaceX was over the same time period....

https://spaceanddefense.io/china-advances-reusable-space-technology/

LandSpace’s WeChat account documented the short flight from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China. The engine shut down 113 seconds into the flight, after which the rocket cruised to its peak altitude of 10,002 metres. On the descent, after about 40 seconds of unpowered gliding and at an altitude of 4,640 metres, the engine restarted for deceleration purposes, and the rocket landed less than two metres from the landing pad’s centre.​

The US needs to carve off the FAA's Space Division to a regulatory body that specializes in the rocket launch industry, in order to get things done much, much quicker

But to relate this back to deep submersibles, the US has regulations, but since Oceangate operated in international waters, it was outside US jurisdiction. There were NO regulations governing what Rush could or could not do. What the authorities can do about that, I don't know. Perhaps some sort of country of registration should be mandatory for submersibles, but there would need to be a lot of loophole-closing to stop the type of regulation work-arounds that oil shipping companies use to do by registering their tankers in Liberia.

Why, the only difference between the twain is that Galaxy Brain has, so far, been luckier.

You are simply clueless. You have absolutely no ******* idea what you are talking about.

 

[Darat]

I disagree with your inclusion of Musk in this comparison.

You will struggle to find any space organization or launch company more risk-averse than SpaceX. ...snip...

That is a terrifying thought.

 

[3point14]

That is a terrifying thought.

Much as I think Musk is a ******* lunatic who's deeply drunk on his own electric cool-aid, the number of deaths attributable to SpaceX is zero.

It's likely that this is not due to Elon but due to the really smart people working for him, but SpaceX's record for deaths during human spaceflight is perfect. I'm not sure there's any other programme that can claim that (Gemini?).

 

[theprestige]

First of all, its not regulations he considers unnecessary its the delays.

Spoiler because the following is off topic

As he correctly points out, it should not take more time to move paperwork from one desk to the next desk than it takes to build and ready massive rocket for flight. The FAA is simply far too bureaucratically cumbersome to deal with space flight. It was fine when there were maybe five or six launches per year, but this year alone, SpaceX alone have launched 94 times out of a target of 144 for 2024. The FAA is not equipped to cope with this level of activity, and it will be even more under the pump when Rocketlab's facility at Wallops comes fully online and starts launching their new "Neutron" reusable rocket with a planned cadence of 20 to 50+ launches per year, and Blue Origin starts launching "New Glenn" over a 10 times a year.

Meanwhile, while SpaceX efforts in the US are marking time waiting for the FAA to get of their bureaucratic backsides, China is forging ahead, and have already surpassed where SpaceX was over the same time period....

https://spaceanddefense.io/china-advances-reusable-space-technology/

LandSpace’s WeChat account documented the short flight from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in northern China. The engine shut down 113 seconds into the flight, after which the rocket cruised to its peak altitude of 10,002 metres. On the descent, after about 40 seconds of unpowered gliding and at an altitude of 4,640 metres, the engine restarted for deceleration purposes, and the rocket landed less than two metres from the landing pad’s centre.​

The US needs to carve off the FAA's Space Division to a regulatory body that specializes in the rocket launch industry, in order to get things done much, much quicker

But to relate this back to deep submersibles, the US has regulations, but since Oceangate operated in international waters, it was outside US jurisdiction. There were NO regulations governing what Rush could or could not do. What the authorities can do about that, I don't know. Perhaps some sort of country of registration should be mandatory for submersibles, but there would need to be a lot of loophole-closing to stop the type of regulation work-arounds that oil shipping companies use to do by registering their tankers in Liberia.



You are simply clueless. You have absolutely no ******* idea what you are talking about.

I don't the problem. People wanting to sail out to international waters and drown themselves in expensive ways, why does anyone else need to care?

 

[3point14]

I don't the problem. People wanting to sail out to international waters and drown themselves in expensive ways, why does anyone else need to care?

It can be quite expensive in terms of rescue and recovery attempts.

I assume that's a taxpayer expense? Or does the US Coastguard (or whoever) get to bill that back to the estate?

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't the problem. People wanting to sail out to international waters and drown themselves in expensive ways, why does anyone else need to care?

Because Oceangate ended up drowning other people who were not fully informed of the risks involved, the shortcuts taken, the warnings ignored. So they didn't just drown themselves, they drowned other people as well. That's why we should care.

 

[Ziggurat]

BTW, maybe we should be calling this whole thing Oceangate-gate.

 

[Roboramma]

I disagree with your inclusion of Musk in this comparison.

You will struggle to find any space organization or launch company more risk-averse than SpaceX. The company has a reputation for scrubbing flights for the smallest of reasons and in circumstances where the risk is very small. Crew Dragon, for example, was built upon the most stringent and rigorous test regime before it ever flew with people on board. While both Rush and Musk have used the philosophy of "iterate fast and break stuff" to learn, Rush and Oceangate put lives at risk - Musk and SpaceX never did. Booster landings, Cargo and Crew Dragon were built (and Starship is being built) on sound engineering principles with no shortcuts. The same cannot be said for Titan - it always was a poorly designed, shoddily built vessel put together by amateurs using cheap workarounds. It was always a disaster waiting to happen - most everyone in the deep dive community knew it, they tried to tell him, and he refused to listen.

For the past week Musk has been whining at the FAA and what he considers to be unnecessary regulations and paperwork.

There is nothing contradictory between what smartcookie said and your reply. I'm not really seeing how your statement is a reply to him at all. Do you think that all regulation improves safety? Whether or not Musk's criticisms of the FAA are valid, they aren't related to putting anyone's life at risk.

 

[Roboramma]

That is a terrifying thought.

Why?

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Because Oceangate ended up drowning other people who were not fully informed of the risks involved, the shortcuts taken, the warnings ignored. So they didn't just drown themselves, they drowned other people as well. That's why we should care.

Several Oceangate people died but at least no passengers got hurt. Everyone was a trained mission specialist something something handwave, so they weren't passengers.

 

[Ziggurat]

Several Oceangate people died but at least no passengers got hurt. Everyone was a trained mission specialist something something handwave, so they weren't passengers.

Even had they been actual employees rather than passengers masquerading as participants, if they weren't fully aware of the risks, that still wouldn't be OK. But yeah, the farce of "mission specialist" is shameful.

 

[theprestige]

I have no objection to families of the deceased suing for fraud or negligence in the accused's home jurisdiction, for launching a dangerous expedition under false pretenses.

I just don't think there needs to be yet another enforcement agency to regulate what jackasses get up to in international waters.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Even had they been actual employees rather than passengers masquerading as participants, if they weren't fully aware of the risks, that still wouldn't be OK. But yeah, the farce of "mission specialist" is shameful.

And the fact that Rush required the signing of these documents meant he knew there were potential problems with the submersible. It was a way to hide his responsibility to provide a safe environment.