Titanic tourist sub missing

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#3093146 21-Jun-2023 19:12

[s]i presume when you build a ship to go beyond what the American navy is capable of (or would be comfortable with)[according to CBS], you'd have done a test run and collected data?

or is this the maiden voyage[/s]

edit: watched another video where a journalist has been on the same ship, so not a maiden. he says there are 7 ways the sub will return to surface even if everyone has been incapacitated

Jase2985

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#3093148 21-Jun-2023 19:17

Batman:

i presume when you build a ship to go beyond what the American navy is capable of (or would be comfortable with), you'd have done a test run and collected data?

or is this the maiden voyage

its not its first voyage, its been operating for 2 years or so. unsure how many times its been to the titanic

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#3093260 21-Jun-2023 21:28

This article is quite interesting. It states that the porthole in the sub is only rated for 1,300m. It would make sense that after doing multiple expeditions it finally gave out. This company also seems so incredibly dodgy.

tstone

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#3093301 22-Jun-2023 07:40

solaybro:

This article is quite interesting. It states that the porthole in the sub is only rated for 1,300m. It would make sense that after doing multiple expeditions it finally gave out. This company also seems so incredibly dodgy.

Warning, requires subscription to read the link.

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#3093314 22-Jun-2023 08:32

solaybro:

This article is quite interesting. It states that the porthole in the sub is only rated for 1,300m. It would make sense that after doing multiple expeditions it finally gave out. This company also seems so incredibly dodgy.

Isn't the Titanic at a depth of ~3,800 metres?

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#3093318 22-Jun-2023 08:55

Senecio:

solaybro:

This article is quite interesting. It states that the porthole in the sub is only rated for 1,300m. It would make sense that after doing multiple expeditions it finally gave out. This company also seems so incredibly dodgy.

Isn't the Titanic at a depth of ~3,800 metres?

Yup - there's a few red flags regarding the sub and its ability to continue to operate at those depths.
The portholes could have been more suited to the use case, but they would have been far more expensive.

There's a few bits and pieces that have been reported to be not fit for purpose, too...

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Batman

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#3093369 22-Jun-2023 11:17

tstone:

solaybro:

This article is quite interesting. It states that the porthole in the sub is only rated for 1,300m. It would make sense that after doing multiple expeditions it finally gave out. This company also seems so incredibly dodgy.

Warning, requires subscription to read the link.

another article https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65977432

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#3093370 22-Jun-2023 12:07

If the tapping noises are real then the hull or porthole couldn't have failed. That would be immediate end.

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#3093372 22-Jun-2023 12:24

I don't think those "tapping" noises are from the sub

cddt

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#3093373 22-Jun-2023 12:32

Just like the tapping noises from the Kursk which were reported for several days after it disappeared. Whatever they were, there's no chance they came from the crew.

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#3093375 22-Jun-2023 12:38

Warning the New York Times requires subscription to read the link.

You're right.

On a completely unrelated subject, I was thinking about disabling Javascript for certain sites, not the New York Times of course.

I'd do it by searching for "javascript" in my browser's settings.

Oh well, I guess I'll never know.

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#3093376 22-Jun-2023 12:40

Batman:

[s]i presume when you build a ship to go beyond what the American navy is capable of (or would be comfortable with)[according to CBS], you'd have done a test run and collected data?

or is this the maiden voyage[/s]

edit: watched another video where a journalist has been on the same ship, so not a maiden. he says there are 7 ways the sub will return to surface even if everyone has been incapacitated

The journalist only went down about 40m. I believe this was only the second time down to the Titanic.

The CEO of the company is one of the people in the submersible.

Lochridge was safety manager, and as such would have been responsible if things went wrong. He claims he raised concerns about the submersible, particularly the issue of fatigue over several dives, and wanted the hull tested for imperfections in manufacture. He was commissioned to do a safety report, for which he claims he was denied information, especially about the viewport. The CEO told him there was no way to non-destructively test that thickness of hull. When he went to a meeting of bosses to give his report, the HR director was present (I'd say this means they already planned to fire him), as was the CEO, and his contract was terminated. The company subsequently sued him for release of confidential information (presumably he published his concerns), and he counter-sued for wrongful dismissal.

I'm guessing the court cases won't go anywhere. The CEO is likely dead, the company owes millions for the key asset that they lost, and even if it's not lost is likely to go out of business as demand for at least this part of their business plummets. I'd say it's also going to be a tight time for other high-dollar high-risk activities like space tourism.

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#3093381 22-Jun-2023 13:06

cddt:
Just like the tapping noises from the Kursk which were reported for several days after it disappeared. Whatever they were, there's no chance they came from the crew.

I was under the impression, from a book I read about the Kursk, that some of the sailors died of carbon dioxide poisoning - suggesting that they still could have been alive after the initial incident in an uncompromised section of the vessel.

Not suggesting that is the case here - one gone, all gone.

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#3093386 22-Jun-2023 13:22

ezbee:

The waver form did say this was experimental and high risk of death if anything went wrong.

I think the "experimental" thing is a bit of a red herring. I don't know about "experimental" in submersibles, but I do in aircraft. In the USA, "experimental" means it is not certified by the FAA. To get an aircraft certified costs millions of dollars and years of effort, and includes checking out the design, the manufacturing facilities, etc, etc. So all homebuilt aircraft are "experimental" (or microlight), just because the CAA hasn't certified them. That doesn't mean that the builder has altered the design, or that the designer is trying it out to see if it'll fly without a tail, or anything like that. There are many thousands of "experimental" aircraft flying, ranging from actual experimental aircraft where they're trying out some new thing to one-off aircraft like the Stratolaunch that lifts air-launch-to-orbit rockets to aerobatic aircraft to homebuilts of all sizes and descriptions.

So, in one sense this submersible was "experimental" in that it hadn't been certified by somebody. Certifying it would be a practical impossibility. The only people who know about carbon fibre deep water submersibles work for OceanGate. Obviously OceanGate shouldn't be allowed to certify it themselves. The only way it could be certified would be to train up some engineers in this particular domain and give them OceanGate's proprietary information to assess. That's going to take years, expose the company to competition, and likely come up with an answer of "We don't have enough data", so here's an onerous testing program to cover the certifier's arse. So in another sense it really is, or was, experimental, in that they were trying it out to see if it would work, and really didn't know, for example, how many dives it could do before it failed. And they were accepting that risk themselves.

Likewise the viewport being certified for 1300m. That's what I guess the viewport manufacturer guaranteed it could stand, and probably there was a huge safety margin in that to cover their arses and avoid lawsuits, and I assume OceanGate's engineers calculated the pressures and stresses and figured out that the viewport could in fact manage 4,000m, albeit with a smaller safety margin. (This is similar to aircraft, where a manufacturer will calculate a "ultimate load" of (say) 10G at which the wings will fall off, and design other structures around that. They'll then state that it's good for 6G, giving themselves a margin. The FAA may then certify that aircraft for 4.5G, giving themselves a safety margin. A wise pilot will then only fly it to 4G, whereas a bold pilot might (illegally) go to 6G).

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#3093456 22-Jun-2023 14:22

As a non-expert, implosion is the only thing that makes sense to me. If they made it to the wreck and gotten snagged, you wouldn't expect communications to have stopped. And I'd hope that at least some of the emergency surfacing failsafes weren't reliant on the electrical system or crew interaction.

Unfortunately I think it would be a minor miracle if the submersible is ever found.

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