Posted on 06/21/2023 6:41:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A submersible carrying tourists to look at the remains of the Titanic went missing on Sunday, and the odds of anyone onboard surviving grow lower by the day. It’s also been reported that the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the excursion, is onboard. And the more information that comes out, the less surprising it is that we’ve ended up in this situation.
Metro reports that last year, when asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, said, “You know, there’s a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
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According to the report, OceanGate fired David Lochridge when he questioned how safe the Titan was and later sued him after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, claiming he violated the terms of his contract. Lochridge then countersued, claiming he was wrongfully terminated. In the suit, he said he pushed back against launching the Titan without doing “non-destructive testing to prove its integrity.”
“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible,” Lochridge said in his suit.
From the CBS story:
The Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters. Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.
He also said that even though the Titan was made out of carbon fiber, no carbon fiber sub had ever gone that deep before.
If these claims are true, they paint a pretty clear picture of a CEO who didn’t care about safety and was happy to risk other people’s lives to make a little money.
“SubBrief aka “Jive Turkey” was his original youtube channel.”
That doesn’t help.
The Shuttles had been burning through O-rings prior to Challenger. They were plenty aware of the problem. The only reason it hadn’t bit them prior to that is that the burn through had never impinged on the LOX tank.
OceanGate’s own promotional video demonstrates otherwise on how the the thing was laid up.
There’s also the matter of the fact that the contractor who made the titanium end cap and viewport assembly would only certify it to 1300 meters...
“OceanGate’s own promotional video demonstrates otherwise on how the the thing was laid up.”
How long was that video and how many layers did it show ...
“From some earlier reporting and discussion on FR, I am increasing curious about the dissimilar materials used—carbon fiber, titanium, glues, which as was noted, expand and contract differently as circumstances change. And mix that with it never apparently being tested to see real world results, not just engineering modeling, and considering fatigue over time, this increasingly sounds like an accident just waiting to happen.”
utterly insane design: GLUING titanium end rings onto a 5” thick carbon fiber tube to act as attachment points for the titanium end domes ... two utterly dissimilar materials with massively different deformation behavior at their junctions when under extreme pressure ...
REAL engineers would have started with computer simulations of the stresses at those junctions and then, assuming that THAT showed it might work, would have proceeded to pressure test the vessel at its maximum depth with dozens of attached telemetric stress gauges ... assuming THAT testing didn’t fail, then they would have proceeded to cycle the vessel between maximum pressure depth and atmospheric pressure until the vessel failed (or not).
of course, Stockton proudly hired only neophyte children for his engineers, instead of experienced submarine engineers, eschewing experienced sub engineers as fuddy duddy “old white men” ... after all, he said, fuddy duddys engineers wouldn’t “appreciate” (approve) of his “revolutionary designs” [where have we heard that before? oh yeah, from Elizabeth Holmes, who just started an eleven years Federal prison sentence related to her “revolutionary” medical testing scam ...]
and no doubt, sociopath Stockton Rush did none of the above standard materials engineering in his wannabe rush to join the ranks of true revolutionaries, Musk and Bezos ... instead, Stockton Rush joined the Elizabeth Holmes category: he killed customers with a bogus submarine, while she killed customers with bogus medical tests ...
“https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac“
I prefer to go with source documents rather than a third party with no expertise in carbon fiber manufacturing who has only a photo or short video to go on.
Why not watch the video for yourself? They posted it themselves, quite proudly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi4J1LDS504
That’s for the Cyclops, but they stated that all their hulls were constructed the same way with only the thickness differing.
Yep, and they problem claimed somewhere that they were applying Agile and Scrum techniques. Trial and Error techniques that like just cost five people their lives.
Why does the article mention that 1500 meters test in conjunction with the actual 4,000 meters dive?
Was the hull registered and formally tested for a 12,000+ foot dive?
Where and when?
2 1/2 times doesn’t seem to me to be safe enough for what they were trying to do. I’m not a material scientist, but I would want a greater parameter for something that is certain death if it fails. At least 5 times the margin.
“Why not watch the video for yourself? They posted it themselves, quite proudly.”
A few seconds long and only shows three layers. I stick with the manufactures detailed written description.
“It is said there is a fine line between guts and stupidity.”
But is that really true? I think folks that risk their lives by going into space have guts and the risk/reward factor plays heavily there. The reward being knowledge that could some day benefit mankind. But going down to the bottom of the ocean in a mini-sub to view an infamous sunken ship? I see no real reward there and nothing but risk. It doesn’t compute.
“That’s for the Cyclops, “
Titan IS Cyclops 2.
“Yep, and they problem claimed somewhere that they were applying Agile and Scrum techniques.”
The problem?
“I see no real reward there and nothing but risk. It doesn’t compute.”
These same people pay to be taken up into space. Different people, different strokes.
“These same people pay to be taken up into space. Different people, different strokes.”
Right. But one thing is consistent. Seems like the more money some folks have, the less common sense they end up with. (ooops...there I go again...being “harsh”...lol)
Sorry autocorrect. I meant to say, “They probably claimed somewhere that they were applying Agile and Scrum techniques.”
Yes, but I’m stating that the video says it is the Cyclops 2 under construction. I realize there was a name change, but I was carefully stating only what was in the video.
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