6 ms·

If it did implode in multiple pieces it means the experts were right; many said that carbon fiber was a poor choice because while it's light, it breaks like gla

by bambax 3y ago

If it did implode in multiple pieces it means the experts were right; many said that carbon fiber was a poor choice because while it's light, it breaks like glass, contrary to steel which tends to "open" slowly.

typeofhuman 3y ago
It's a shame they openly did not hire SMEs.
- kyleblarson 3y ago
  This quote shines light on his hiring philosophy: “When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a resurfaced interview. “I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, uh, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” said Rush.
  - kyleblarson 3y ago
    Upon rereading the quote I noticed the use of "in a resurfaced interview". I wonder if that was an intentional jab.
  - bambax 3y ago
    It's doubtful he'll still inspire anyone where he's now.
  - PUSH_AX 3y ago
    What on Earth did I just read? It sounds like startup nonsense applied to a super high stakes domain. Foolishness.
  - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
    Ah, I see he's got the 'Elon Musk school of thought' in regards to cutting corners in vehicles carrying people's lives and seeing safety regulations as a nuisance hindering his "visionary progress" that these pesky gray-beard engineers just can't grasp. Fucking idiot CEO, took 4 innocent people with him. Aero, naval, automotive, all have a a history written in blood, and all those rules and regulations aren't to hinder innovation but to save lives based on what we've learned from all the people who lost their lives in the past.
    - gcgfromhell 3y ago
      "Ah, I see he's got the 'Elon Musk school of thought' in regards to cutting corners in vehicles carrying people's lives and seeing safety regulations as a nuisance hindering his "visionary progress" that these pesky gray-beard engineers just can't grasp. Fucking idiot CEO, took 4 innocent people with him. Aero, naval, automotive, all have a a history written in blood, and all those rules and regulations aren't to hinder innovation but to save lives based on what we've learned from all the people who lost their lives in the past." I agree, except maybe on the notion of "innocent billionaire". They too usually have a history of blood. Except maybe the 16yo tho. Maybe.
    - nannal 3y ago
      They'll stop doing it when it stops being profitable.
      - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
        It's the government's job to regulate people not being allowed to pay for trips to the bottom of the ocean in submarines that look like they were built on Linus Tech Tips.
        bell-cot 3y ago
        > It's the government's job to regulate... Arguable...but which government? They were operating in international waters, and it's not like the UN runs an Ocean Engineering Safety Police Dept.
  - bilbo0s 3y ago
    Translation: "50 year old white guys have a lot of experience but would cost a fuck ton of money. I prefer to exploit, er, um, employ, 25 year old white guys and gals because they are about 1/4 the cost." When you take all the BS justifications out of it, that's really what the guy was saying. Elon Musk school of capitalism. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
  - x3874 3y ago
    Wow, could be a Musk quote. Same vibes of 'break things fast'. EDIT: "Hide yo kids, hide yo wife; the karma snatching Tesla fanbois are rife"
    - x3874 3y ago
      [dead]
NotYourLawyer 3y ago
Carbon fiber seems like a weird choice for this application anyway because its big advantage is in its tensile strength compared to its weight. Here, it’s in compression, not tension. And its light weight doesn’t matter.
- bambax 3y ago
  I don't know and I'm not an SME, but it would seem weight always matter? For carrying, for bubbling up, etc.?
  - qayxc 3y ago
    The main problem with steel is that it can only withstand such pressures if it's of spherical shape (i.e. a bathysphere). This usually only leaves enough room for two to three people (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin). So it seems it's more a matter of cost and passenger space than just weight alone.
- cpleppert 3y ago
  Carbon fiber is a lot easier to work with than metal in this case because welding metal creates failure points. I don't think they could afford building a titanium pressure vessel. Weight is a factor too, carbon fiber is lighter so you can make the pressure vessel thicker and still have enough buoyancy to reach the surface(probably a good thing). From their perspective it kinda made sense even though its not safe at all.
  - NamTaf 3y ago
    No, it’s not easier to work with, unless you consider your work done completely once it’s manufactured without a thought to the ongoing testing and inspection regime required. And even then, laying CF is more niche than welding metal. Carbon fibre is a ply. Plies are much harder to nondestructively inspect for flaws. That is an immediate, obvious risk in a use case involving cyclic pressure of hundreds of atmospheres. It is also brittle, so strain deformation does not occur nearly as much before fracture. Welds are a vastly more well-understood feature that is possible to easily design around and - more critically - inspect afterwards. Metals also stretch before snapping, which is why you can go and measure the spacing of links on your bike chain and know when it’s time to replace it. All of this makes through-life maintenance and inspection much easier. Carbon fibre was an incredibly poor design choice, selected to prioritise cost over safe operation.
accrual 3y ago
I felt it was kind of telling that they found the two titanium end caps in the debris field, presumably intact, but only pieces of the pressure hull.
- saberdancer 3y ago
  I'm curious if the window remained intact. This seemed like a logical failure point.
  - 0x0203 3y ago
    My guess would be that the window wasn't the failure point, assuming that pressure hull was indeed found in many pieces. If the window did go first, the pressure delta on the rest of the hull immediately begins to equalize, so the amount of force the hull is under immediately goes down, making failure of the hull instantly less likely. The inertia of all the water rapidly entering the vessel might do some damage, but that inertia would have to overcome both the pressure of the ocean pressing in on the outside of the hull, and the tensile strength of the carbon fiber, which is stronger in tension than compression. So my guess would be that if the window failed, it would result in mostly just the titanium end caps being blown off rather than a complete destruction of the hull. If the hull itself failed, however, given the way carbon fiber fails, finding the hull in many pieces seems to be the expected result.
    - trollied 3y ago
      https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/titan-could-have-vulnerabilities-due-to-large-window-materials-former-sub-commander-1.6451582 https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/titan-could-have-vulnerabilitie... > the submersible was designed to reach depths of 4,000 metres, but Lochridge said the passenger viewpoint (window) was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 metres
      - xvector 3y ago
        The window had worked fine for dozens of past dives - just because something isn't "certified" doesn't mean it won't work reliably. The carbon fiber hull was a much bigger concern.

by bambax 3y ago

typeofhuman 3y ago

It's a shame they openly did not hire SMEs.

kyleblarson 3y ago
This quote shines light on his hiring philosophy: “When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a resurfaced interview. “I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, uh, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” said Rush.
- kyleblarson 3y ago
  Upon rereading the quote I noticed the use of "in a resurfaced interview". I wonder if that was an intentional jab.
- bambax 3y ago
  It's doubtful he'll still inspire anyone where he's now.
- PUSH_AX 3y ago
  What on Earth did I just read? It sounds like startup nonsense applied to a super high stakes domain. Foolishness.
- ChuckNorris89 3y ago
  Ah, I see he's got the 'Elon Musk school of thought' in regards to cutting corners in vehicles carrying people's lives and seeing safety regulations as a nuisance hindering his "visionary progress" that these pesky gray-beard engineers just can't grasp. Fucking idiot CEO, took 4 innocent people with him. Aero, naval, automotive, all have a a history written in blood, and all those rules and regulations aren't to hinder innovation but to save lives based on what we've learned from all the people who lost their lives in the past.
  - gcgfromhell 3y ago
    "Ah, I see he's got the 'Elon Musk school of thought' in regards to cutting corners in vehicles carrying people's lives and seeing safety regulations as a nuisance hindering his "visionary progress" that these pesky gray-beard engineers just can't grasp. Fucking idiot CEO, took 4 innocent people with him. Aero, naval, automotive, all have a a history written in blood, and all those rules and regulations aren't to hinder innovation but to save lives based on what we've learned from all the people who lost their lives in the past." I agree, except maybe on the notion of "innocent billionaire". They too usually have a history of blood. Except maybe the 16yo tho. Maybe.
  - nannal 3y ago
    They'll stop doing it when it stops being profitable.
    - ChuckNorris89 3y ago
      It's the government's job to regulate people not being allowed to pay for trips to the bottom of the ocean in submarines that look like they were built on Linus Tech Tips.
      - bell-cot 3y ago
        > It's the government's job to regulate... Arguable...but which government? They were operating in international waters, and it's not like the UN runs an Ocean Engineering Safety Police Dept.
- bilbo0s 3y ago
  Translation: "50 year old white guys have a lot of experience but would cost a fuck ton of money. I prefer to exploit, er, um, employ, 25 year old white guys and gals because they are about 1/4 the cost." When you take all the BS justifications out of it, that's really what the guy was saying. Elon Musk school of capitalism. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- x3874 3y ago
  Wow, could be a Musk quote. Same vibes of 'break things fast'. EDIT: "Hide yo kids, hide yo wife; the karma snatching Tesla fanbois are rife"
  - x3874 3y ago
    [dead]

NotYourLawyer 3y ago

Carbon fiber seems like a weird choice for this application anyway because its big advantage is in its tensile strength compared to its weight. Here, it’s in compression, not tension. And its light weight doesn’t matter.

bambax 3y ago
I don't know and I'm not an SME, but it would seem weight always matter? For carrying, for bubbling up, etc.?
- qayxc 3y ago
  The main problem with steel is that it can only withstand such pressures if it's of spherical shape (i.e. a bathysphere). This usually only leaves enough room for two to three people (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin). So it seems it's more a matter of cost and passenger space than just weight alone.
cpleppert 3y ago
Carbon fiber is a lot easier to work with than metal in this case because welding metal creates failure points. I don't think they could afford building a titanium pressure vessel. Weight is a factor too, carbon fiber is lighter so you can make the pressure vessel thicker and still have enough buoyancy to reach the surface(probably a good thing). From their perspective it kinda made sense even though its not safe at all.
- NamTaf 3y ago
  No, it’s not easier to work with, unless you consider your work done completely once it’s manufactured without a thought to the ongoing testing and inspection regime required. And even then, laying CF is more niche than welding metal. Carbon fibre is a ply. Plies are much harder to nondestructively inspect for flaws. That is an immediate, obvious risk in a use case involving cyclic pressure of hundreds of atmospheres. It is also brittle, so strain deformation does not occur nearly as much before fracture. Welds are a vastly more well-understood feature that is possible to easily design around and - more critically - inspect afterwards. Metals also stretch before snapping, which is why you can go and measure the spacing of links on your bike chain and know when it’s time to replace it. All of this makes through-life maintenance and inspection much easier. Carbon fibre was an incredibly poor design choice, selected to prioritise cost over safe operation.

accrual 3y ago

I felt it was kind of telling that they found the two titanium end caps in the debris field, presumably intact, but only pieces of the pressure hull.

saberdancer 3y ago
I'm curious if the window remained intact. This seemed like a logical failure point.
- 0x0203 3y ago
  My guess would be that the window wasn't the failure point, assuming that pressure hull was indeed found in many pieces. If the window did go first, the pressure delta on the rest of the hull immediately begins to equalize, so the amount of force the hull is under immediately goes down, making failure of the hull instantly less likely. The inertia of all the water rapidly entering the vessel might do some damage, but that inertia would have to overcome both the pressure of the ocean pressing in on the outside of the hull, and the tensile strength of the carbon fiber, which is stronger in tension than compression. So my guess would be that if the window failed, it would result in mostly just the titanium end caps being blown off rather than a complete destruction of the hull. If the hull itself failed, however, given the way carbon fiber fails, finding the hull in many pieces seems to be the expected result.
  - trollied 3y ago
    https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/titan-could-have-vulnerabilities-due-to-large-window-materials-former-sub-commander-1.6451582 https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/titan-could-have-vulnerabilitie... > the submersible was designed to reach depths of 4,000 metres, but Lochridge said the passenger viewpoint (window) was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 metres
    - xvector 3y ago
      The window had worked fine for dozens of past dives - just because something isn't "certified" doesn't mean it won't work reliably. The carbon fiber hull was a much bigger concern.