5 ms·
Seems like a pretty stupid design if you ask me
by jliptzin 3y ago
Seems like a pretty stupid design if you ask me
- gmiller123456 3y agoThat's what Gus Grissom said.
- justrealist 3y agoLot of people probably won't get the subtext on this one. (although he was recently-probably-exonerated in that case).
- jonathankoren 3y agoI think it’s more the Apollo 1 door opening to the inside and secured by nonexplosive bolts, rather than the spuriously blown door on Liberty Bell 7. FWIW, while NASA may had thrown him under the bus, his comrades in the astronaut corps believed him. Wally Schirra on Sigma 7, refused to blow the door until the capsule was on the Kearsarge. When he climbed out, he showed the bruise on his hand — the same bruise every one got when they pushed the escape button. The same bruise Grissom did not have. https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019254674/gus-grissom-liberty-bell-mercury-the-right-stuff https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019254674/gus-grissom-libert...
- sclarisse 3y agoIt’s pretty bad, but when the door accessible from the inside implodes from the insane pressure of the water around it, that’s even worse.
- fergbrain 3y agoThe door can still be designed to open outward and also able to be unlatched from the inside: those aren’t mutually exclusive properties.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stickfigure 3y agoIt needs to remain perfectly watertight at over 5000psi or everyone dies. That design constraint probably eliminates most clever latch designs.
- numpad0 3y agoI was imagining a round door in the middle of the hull, like a submarine hatch, but it looks like the entire front dome comes off and that’s the “hatch”. If so, can’t they just make the front a giant screw and add handles to both sides?
- wnkrshm 3y agoThe dome shape is a structural necessity to withstand the pressure, like in a soda can. Else you would need more material, more material means more weight, more weight means more bouyancy required which again means more weight etc. It's like designing a spacecraft but with different constraints.
- jacquesm 3y agoIt's pretty much the exact opposite of designing a spacecraft.
- wnkrshm 3y agoThen let me amend what I wrote: It's as difficult as designing a spacecraft, because you reach the limits of what materials that can be used can offer.
- jacquesm 3y agoWell, once you are in space the forces are pretty tame until you get hit by something. But the ocean never rests from trying to kill you, even the smallest material defect can cause an implosion. Personally I think designing for a delta of 400 atmospheres in compression is much, much harder than for 1 atmosphere in tension.
- christoph 3y agoI think in that situation there is absolutely no good outcome and you’ll take whatever ends it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Doesn’t seem like a good trade off against bobbing around the surface and slowly dying sealed inside a capsule to me.
- varjag 3y agoIt's traditional in deep submersibles design, dating back to bathysphere. You probably weren't hanging around when they were designing them
- bagels 3y agoTradition itself is probably the worst rationale for an engineering solution. Maybe it's the right way for other reasons?
- jhugo 3y agoI didn't interpret "traditional" as the rationale, but rather just pointing out that they're always done that way — I assume/hope for good reasons other than tradition.
- jojobas 3y agoTraditions emerge from "other reasons". There is probably not enough excess buoyancy to open the hatch without flooding, so without external support you're dead anyway.
- bandyaboot 3y agoI could see that as being the simplest/least failure prone way to design a closing mechanism that doesn’t need to resist the immense pressure to maintain integrity, but rather is held more forcefully to the hull as the pressure increases. Certainly you could design something like that that bolts from the inside instead, but perhaps the problem with that is that they cant exactly carry along with them various tools and equipment they might need in the event that there is difficulty reopening it.
- varjag 3y agoIf you pass out, how do they get you out?
- gizmo 3y agoTwo hatches? One opens from the inside one opens from the outside? I'm sure there are other solutions. But as somebody else already pointed out: even if you get out in the middle of the ocean you're in real trouble, which makes the hatch issue kind of moot.