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I'm hesitant to speculate but just sharing -- an earlier version of this submersible was scrapped: "OceanGate will take advantage of lessons learned during the
by carbine 3y ago
I'm hesitant to speculate but just sharing -- an earlier version of this submersible was scrapped:
"OceanGate will take advantage of lessons learned during the construction of its carbon-hulled Titan submersible, which was originally built for Titanic journeys. Rush said tests that were conducted at the Deep Ocean Test Facility in Annapolis, Md., revealed that the Titan’s hull “showed signs of cyclic fatigue.” As a result, the hull’s depth rating was reduced to 3,000 meters.
“Not enough to get to the Titanic,” Rush said."
Source: https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-bigger-submersible-fleet-get-set-titanic-trips/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-big...
- wnevets 3y agounfortunately this sounds like "move fast and break things" in the worst possible way.
- homieg33 3y ago[flagged]
- fhub 3y agoAs someone with a surname that is easily made fun of, I urge you to just leave off irrelevant quips.
- NyxWulf 3y agoMy maternal grandfather changed his last name when he turned 18, from the German Uhren to Uhrey. If your last name bothers you, fix it.
- Lacerda69 3y agoUhren sounds fine to me, now if it was Huren i would understand
- triyambakam 3y agoIt was probably frequently pronounced like "urine"
- jacquesm 3y agoWhat's wrong with renting?
- Lacerda69 3y agoIts a slur for prostitutes in German ;-)
- throwaway202351 3y agoBut updating all your github commits to your new name is a pain. :(
- codersfocus 3y agoNomen est omen is a saying since the Roman times, and there are scientific studies that show names do have an effect on professions (eg there are more people named Art working with Art than youd statistically expect)
- bigmattystyles 3y agoIn that case, poor Bickus Dickus
- bandrami 3y agoThe US government's global anti-corruption envoy is named Rich Nephew. That still kills me every time he's in the news.
- hanche 3y agoI don’t suppose he has an uncle named Bob?
- ta93754829 3y agonominative determinism. I did a whole lot of research into this because my surname is Opmomfucker and yeh it checks out.
- codersfocus 3y agoI don’t think it works for legally changed names. Though I can see why you’d do it, Cumguzzler is rather crude in the modern age
- aaron695 3y agoIt gets boring hearing people who can't program or manage blurt out 'move fast and break things' whenever they hear of failure. Learn to code. Or if you're not smart enough learn project management. Alternatively stop using sayings in other peoples fields. Do something dumb like journalism.
- myself248 3y agoI think it's tiring when an industry that has no physical things to break, adopts a saying that flippantly implies that other industries are slow simply because they're not irresponsible enough. I've had quite enough broken things, thank you very much.
- rkagerer 3y agoHeck, I've suffered enough broken software
- wnevets 3y agoIts amusing that you think that I don't program. Ultimately hacker news is a tech focused hub and home to a lot of devs where that phrase resonates.
- anaganisk 3y agoLearning to code is smart? Astronauts, doctors, lawyers, bankers and other gazillion jobs be damned. Coding is the dumbest job in my opinion compared to PM, or journalism. Could you survive the Ukraine war coding?
- beowulfey 3y agoIs this a bot? What a strange thing to say in a thread about submersibles.
- omniglottal 3y agoThis comment is rude. Please revisit site guidelines.
- spatialaustin 3y agoDavid Pogue, who traveled to the Titanic with OceanGate last summer, has said that he was on the control ship when a previous sub was "lost for about 5 hours". Source: https://twitter.com/Pogue/status/1670835763536183297 https://twitter.com/Pogue/status/1670835763536183297
- wnevets 3y ago> and they shut off the ship’s internet to prevent us from tweeting. Some how that makes it even worse.
- hombre_fatal 3y agoSeems obvious how that makes it worse.
- carbine 3y agoI try to have a generous read of everyone's intentions, but that anecdote is alarming.
- Jarmsy 3y agoAnd the author is revealing this only now!? That's not a great look, being witness to massive safety violations and keeping quiet about it until after it goes wrong.
- jonathankoren 3y agoJesus. This sounds like this group is just taking billionaires' money while running a death trap. How the hell do you lose your sub for five hours? This should have stopped all trips until they fixed this problem through a combination of technical and procedural changes.
- spaceguillotine 3y agowhen you put it like that i'm suddenly pro death trap
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoIf your design breaks at less than the target then you really have to question the logic of continuing with that design. Making it slightly bigger won't fix the inherent issue with the materials. They're potentially opening themselves up to charges for killing these people. They knowingly or recklessly put them on a boat when it isn't capable of reaching the depth safely and now they are dead.
- londons_explore 3y agoThe fact they took it to some testing facility to test for cyclic fatigue shows that they understood that it was an unknown in the design, decided to test it at a facility designed for exactly that, it failed so they redesigned presumably with a design to mitigate the failures of design one. They probably took design two through the same testing process, and presumably it passed or they wouldn't have paying guests in it. This sounds like the engineering process going right.
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoAgreed. The only issue would be if they never re-tested the redesign, but that would be quite unreasonable and they would deserve the lawsuits.
- carabiner 3y agoNo coincidence the company is in Everett. LinkedIn shows lots of people overlap with Boeing. Also the CEO built his own composite airplane while an undergrad at Princeton.
- JKCalhoun 3y agoCarbon seems to be the go-to material these days. It often seems to fail catastrophically in ways that, for example, steel does not. I wonder if future engineers will look back at these carbon decades and shake their heads.
- ra 3y agoI'm no expert, but I do know there's anything fundamentally flawed about polymer composites (including carbon fibre composites) in place of metals. Composite properties can be fairly accurately measured and tested, just like any other material including plate steel or aluminium. If a structural failure has occurred, it's related to a design, manufacture or maintenance issue. For example, not enough layers, or a weakness around a joint or fitting.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Composite properties can be fairly accurately measured and tested, just like any other material including plate steel or aluminium Metals are uniform and broadly predictable. Composites vary cure to cure. We simply don’t have the deep engineering tables that let you know how a material will behave without destructive testing.
- californical 3y agoThen there’s also the issue of minor failures cascading. I’m by no means a structural engineer, but with bike parts — in steel or aluminum, if you get a tiny 1mm chip in the material, you can more-or-less just treat it as if the steel is 1mm thinner. With engineering tolerances it is irrelevant. But in a carbon fiber, that 1mm chip could be totally unnoticed for months, while slowly causing an invisible hairline crack, until the entire component suddenly explodes with no warning. Maybe someone can verify if that is possible at a larger scale, but I feel like it must be to some extent.. especially if there is an invisible manufacturing imperfection due to the higher precision required in carbon fiber
- 3y ago
- opwieurposiu 3y agoThe hatch is bolted shut from the outside. When you make it back to the surface, there is no way to get out without external support. If the mother ship can not find the sub the occupants could be trapped bobbing just below the surface until their air runs out.
- paulpauper 3y agoit should be findable by simple radio/celular contact?
- accurrent 3y agoThis is under water. Radio/Cell do not penetrate beyond a few centimeters. Communicating underwater is usually done via acoustics.
- paulpauper 3y agobut the op said "If the mother ship can not find the sub the occupants could be trapped bobbing just below the surface until their air runs out." just beneath the surface
- bob778 3y agoIn submersible tech, just beneath the surface is 0-30m depth basically (for salt water). Cellphones signals are about 2m max while higher frequencies (eg 2.4GHz) drop off exponentially so are <1m
- omniglottal 3y agoAntennea can trivially extend over 30m, and can float on the surface. As a wire attached to an inflatable float, for either bidirectional communication or as a GPS beacon, or both, the complete solution could exist for less than $10k and less than 10 kilograms to solve this. Why doesn't this exist for this craft that can only be openned from the outside?? There exists the ability to communicate from directly above, so why can't it also communicate (further) through open air while bobbing near the surface?
- gymbeaux 3y agoI’m getting Virgin Galactic vibes. They’ve cut a lot of corners over there and they’re starting commercial flights this summer despite not having I’m convinced the most-safe aircraft. They’re out of money and they’re out of time. That’s what it always seems to come down to, not so much “time vs money” but “safety vs money”.
- jhugo 3y agoIt's always safety vs. money. A risk-free submersible or spacecraft does not exist. It's always possible to spend more money to further reduce the risks, but naturally with diminishing returns. At some point, you have to decide to accept (very small) risks in order to avoid (very large) additional costs.
- Retric 3y agoPeople are perfectly happy to accept some risk. However you can’t expect normal people to take on extreme risk and expect a profitable long term business. If the actual risk are close to BASE jumping then you’ve failed.
- jhugo 3y ago> If the actual risk are close to BASE jumping then you’ve failed. The myriad BASE jumping businesses would probably like a word. Risk tolerance varies.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]