ping to article of interest
Everything I have read and heard makes me agree with the idea that the (former) OceanGate CEO was a dangerous and narcissistic nutjob.
Independent of whether carbon fibre was the best choice of materials for this application, and whether layup of layers is the best construction method for this, evidence of delamination demonstrates after only a few cycles suggests poor cleanliness and quality control during layup.
OceanGate was coined The Macgyver submersible afterthefact by engineers who really only gave it a quick glance. More to follow I reckon.
Delamination at depth or at speed (Aloha Flight 243) can have disastrous outcomes.
Yeh tht's it...just like the astronauts that got blown up...they wanted to be really, really famous. s/
If the dead CEO inherited family wealth, maybe a wrongful death lawsuit could tap into the CEO's estate.
It was merciful that the implosion occurred in one thousandth of one second. The occupants of the death trap were killed instantly and did not know what happened. Stay tuned for huge lawsuits; the lawyers will find the deep pockets.
Is Lockridge white, and 50-something? Obviously, he wasn’t qualified to be working for OceanGate. I mean, c’mon man!
I watched them attaching the ends to the carbon tube. It looked like they thew a painting party to help spread the adhesive. Nothing that I saw showed concern about quality control. Looked like 5 people without experience spreading bondo.
You would think that the noises they reportedly heard that sounded like small arms fire (fibers breaking?) would have been a clue that failure was imminent.
Oh, Ok.
So, just curious:
Which governing body did he take his concerns immediately after he was fired to in order to preserve life?
- carbon-fiber hull having “very visible signs of delamination and porosity”
- glue for ballast bags coming off [how and where, is not clear in the DW article]
- sealing faces with errant plunge holes [where, is not clear in the DW article]
- O-ring grooves whose design was not standard [where, is not clear in the DW article]
To clarify some things, from the New Yorker article (referred to by the Daily Wire article):
EXCERPT:
"[Rob] McCallum, who was leading an expedition in Papua New Guinea at the time [of the OceanGate Cyclops II "TITAN" loss], knew the outcome almost instantly. 'The report that I got immediately after the event - long before they were overdue - was that the sub was approaching thirty-five hundred metres,' he told me, while the oxygen clock was still ticking. 'It dropped weights” - meaning that the team had aborted the dive - 'then it lost comms, and lost tracking, and an implosion was heard.'"
A little later in the article, Rob McCallum talks about the former "Lula" that Stockton Rush acquired and converted into being the OceanGate "Cyclops I" - and that submersible, is what Rob McCallum describes:
EXCERPTS:
- ["Lula"] had a pressure hull that was the shape of a capsule pill and made of steel, with a large acrylic viewport on one end. (See: https://media.newyorker.com/photos/649df3835ed3eaedd260c30e/master/w_1280,c_limit/Taub-OceanGate-2.jpg)
- designed to go no deeper than five hundred metres
- during the refit ["Lula" > "Cyclops I"], engineers at the University of Washington rigged the Cyclops I to run from a single [Sony] PlayStation 3 controller
- As [OceanGate] planned Cyclops II, [Stockton] Rush reached out to [Rob] McCallum for help.
- [Rob McCallum] eventually visited the [OceanGate] workshop, outside Seattle, where [Rob McCallum] examined the Cyclops I [the former "Lula"]. . . [re the Sony PlayStation 3, Rob McCallum said,] "now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub’s thrusters. . ." The system ran on Bluetooth, according to [Stockton] Rush.
Rob McCallum bowed out of participation at OceanGate, after the former "Lula" converted to being "Cyclops I" got stuck on a harbor bottom during a test dive from a marina, with him and David Lochridge aboard . . . followed by Stockton Rush resisting marine-class certification for the Cyclops I. Rob McCallum did not examine the OceanGate Cyclops II "TITAN."
Returning to David Lochridge observations that are in the New Yorker article - two descriptions in particular, are not made clear by the article author(s):
- "both sealing faces had errant plunge holes and O-ring grooves that deviated from standard design parameters"
That description is not clear about, to what, and where, the description applies.
You can see one of the ballast bags in the CBS News video, wherein David Pogue gets a tour of the OceanGate Cyclops II "TITAN" Redundant Systems during an interview with OceanGate Expedition Manager, Kyle Bingham, at 5:39 into 10:01:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TowaxZDUnY
One or more of the sinews, landyards, cinches of, and to / from the ballast bag, are supposed to be materials that dissolve over time in salt water. The purpose of these materials, is to effectively drop weights after a predetermined time, on the probability that some technical failure has caused the submersible to be stuck at depth. "Sealing faces [with] errant plunge holes and O-ring grooves" do not appear to apply.
“Engineers” in their late teens and early 20’s.....
Buys expired carbon fiber that Boeing did not want.
Fires the real engineer who said the design was unsafe.