6 ms·

> OceanGate’s submersibles are the only known vessels to use real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring. With this RTM system, we can determine if the hull is compr

by js2 3y ago

> OceanGate’s submersibles are the only known vessels to use real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring. With this RTM system, we can determine if the hull is compromised well before situations become life-threatening, and safely return to the surface. This innovative safety system is not currently covered by any classing agency. Given that Stockton Rush risked and lost his own life, he must have believed these words. He ignored pleas from others in the industry that what he was doing was unsafe. What was he thinking? https://archive.ph/yBrpk https://archive.ph/yBrpk

jacquesm 3y ago
It's an interesting question. (One of very few on this subject that are really interesting.) Those who cause progress to happen to some extent have to have something in them that causes them to ignore conventional wisdom. Because they're swimming against the current. And if they succeed it may well pay off, both in credits and financially. Montgolfier brothers, Lilienthal, the Wright brothers and so on, and that's just a small slice of aviation. Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time. But there is a final arbiter, and those are the real laws of nature, and it's first order derivative: materials science. And this is where it gets much more complex. To design something that can work is an accomplishment in itself, even if it works only once. That one mr. Rush can chalk up as a victory. Where he fails is to take into account the fact that safety knowledge is written in blood and that the difference between 'device safe enough to take passengers on' and 'device safe enough that I, the builder/designer will travel on it' is very, very large. And if all of the industry, including some of your own employees say that you are doing it wrong and you still persist, and risk the lives of others then you are crossing over into irresponsibility, rather than being a pioneer. Whether or not he realized this himself seems a foregone conclusion: he likely thought this was all perfectly safe and those others were needlessly concerned but they were simply more aware of the real risks involved than he was. Fine line between 'god complex' and 'innovator'.
- grog454 3y ago
  This makes me wonder how we went from Wright brothers to commercial flight. Despite being the longest Wikipedia article I've ever seen the Wright Brother's wiki doesn't seem to cover it. Maybe it's a poorly defined question.
  - cco 3y ago
    I believe the answer is war. If there is a class of folks outside of "the inventor" that you can risk on an experimental aircraft, it's soldiers. WW1 happened very quickly after the invention of the plane and there was a huge explosion in quantity and type of airplane in WW1. I'm no historian though, there could be nuances I'm missing.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Florida man [1]. More seriously, you have to remember that this was in a time before there were a million rules, regulations, and lawsuits for everything. The first commercial airline was a man with a plane, likely largely "self built" (whatever that means in a time before aviation industrialization), who started offering flights in Florida across a peninsula. It worked, it was profitable, there was a market - commercial aviation was born. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jannus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jannus
    - defrost 3y ago
      > The first commercial airline was a man with a plane, The Florida Man you linked was the pilot for two other men [1], the first commercial air service was Delag operating Zepplin airships .. followed by Aero Rt in Hungary .. then followed by [1] in Florida. I can't (right now at least) determine if Aero Rt was operating airships or airplanes ... so you may or may not be correct wrt planes at least. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg%E2%80%93Tampa_Airboat_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg%E2%80%93Tampa_A...
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        Yeah, I'm only referring to airplanes, and Florida man was definitely the first there. But zeppelins, hot air balloons, and other methods of air transport obviously came well before airplanes.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  > Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time. This is not true of the Wrights. Their first step was to gather together all the known aeronautical knowledge at the time. They relied on them, too, until they discovered the coefficient of lift was off by a factor of two. Then they built their own wind tunnel to determine the correct value. They also discovered there was no theory of propellers. So they developed their own theory, which turned out to be 90% correct. Their propellers were twice as efficient as their contemporary experimenters were. This means they only needed half the horsepower! A tremendous advantage.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering. So in this regard you're largely agreeing with the post you're ostensibly arguing against. Everybody else says e.g. the coefficient of lift is x, I say it's y - is not just a "discovery", but going against the conventional knowledge of laws of physics of a given time. It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments. Same with this story, or even the 'flat earth guy' who was launching himself in rockets. [1] For those who didn't 'get it', the flat earth stuff was just an overtly transparent schtick for interest/funding. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil)
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering. They set up experiments to prove the existing theory was wrong. That is completely counter to what you write. Nobody else did that. > It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments. That's pretty much what the Wright's contemporaries were doing. Trying random things in a disorganized manner with eyeballed designs. It's very, very different from the Wrights who: 1. researched all available material 2. identified the fundamental problems that must be solved 3. developed prototypes to solve each problem 4. put the results into a new design that worked Nobody else was doing that. And that's why the Wrights succeeded, and the others failed miserably. Later, when the Wrights took their Flyer to Europe, they astonished the European aviators by literally flying circles around them. (European designs could not turn.)
devit 3y ago
People act based on their beliefs, and their beliefs are not necessarily related to reality; in fact, they usually aren't.
xvector 3y ago
In an interview with James Cameron, he mentions[1] that he and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked and that they did in fact have warning, as they had dropped the weights (which were found far away from the debris field) and were attempting to resurface before the implosion: [1]: "This Oceangate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack [...] they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate. [...] It's our belief - as we understand from inside the community - that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up trying to manage an emergency." https://youtu.be/rThZLhNF_xg?t=472 https://youtu.be/rThZLhNF_xg?t=472
- carabiner 3y ago
  Just fucking insane. In aerospace everyone knows that when a crack starts, IT'S OVER. Crack propagation is extremely rapid after that once nucleation has occurred. Your only hope is to prevent nucleation sites in the first place. Except it's extremely hard to characterize fatigue limits without tons of testing and even for metals there is wide variation for identical parts, not even getting into composites. Which of course we all know they did not do.
  - elromulous 3y ago
    Tell that to Boeing[0] [0]https://leehamnews.com/2019/09/30/boeings-737-in-another-pickle/ https://leehamnews.com/2019/09/30/boeings-737-in-another-pic...
  - lsh123 3y ago
    Not quite true. Stop drilling is commonly used on airplanes: http://o-si-sec.com/2018/10/11/5-facts-to-know-about-stop-drilling-to-treat-cracks-in-aircraft-structures/ http://o-si-sec.com/2018/10/11/5-facts-to-know-about-stop-dr...
    - kelthan 3y ago
      Air pressure decreases as you go up at a far lower rate than water pressure increases as you go down. Air pressure at 30K feet is ~0.3 Bar compared to 1.0 Bar at sea level. Water pressure increases by 1 Bar every 32ft (10m) of depth. To see the equivalent change in pressure in water (0.6 bar) as you see going up to 30K in the air, you only have to go down ~20ft (6m). The pressure on the submersible at 9000ft (2750m) is 276 Bar. F16s and other planes with composite body panels will sometimes lose a panel due to water buildup between layers of the composite. The water freezes between the layers popping the panel loose from the frame or retainers holding it in place. That is usually not a life-threatening problem (though not desirable). A crack in a submersible pressure vessel at more than a couple hundred feet is usually fatal. The description of the Byford Dolphin accident in ~300ft (~90m) of water or 9 Bar pressure, is illustrative: https://www.iflscience.com/byford-dolphin-accident-how-living-under-intense-pressure-led-to-one-of-the-most-gruesome-accidents-in-history-59230 https://www.iflscience.com/byford-dolphin-accident-how-livin... The pressure on the Titan would have been ~30 times greater than what occurred on the Dolphin.
WalterBright 3y ago
Consider Charles Lindbergh. A lot of people thought he was crazy: 1. trying to fly the Atlantic 2. flying without a relief pilot 3. flying with only one engine 4. flying without a radio I don't recall if he had a life raft. Previous attempts had resulted in disappearing forever, and being incinerated in a fireball on takeoff. BTW, during WW2 the air crews ferried their own B-17s across the Atlantic. Quite a few left Newfoundland and were never seen again. There was no rescue if they went down. Navigation was still primitive. My dad (navigator) was immensely pleased that they hit Ireland within a mile of their goal.
- lsh123 3y ago
  In addition, weather models weren’t nowhere near as good as they are now (thus hard to estimate wind correction over long flight). And radio beacons / stations were off due to the war as well. However, given enough fuel, it’s pretty hard to miss England if you go roughly in the right direction.
interestica 3y ago
It’s possible the hull wasn’t the first point of failure. Maybe they needed a window monitor too.

by js2 3y ago

jacquesm 3y ago

It's an interesting question. (One of very few on this subject that are really interesting.) Those who cause progress to happen to some extent have to have something in them that causes them to ignore conventional wisdom. Because they're swimming against the current. And if they succeed it may well pay off, both in credits and financially. Montgolfier brothers, Lilienthal, the Wright brothers and so on, and that's just a small slice of aviation. Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time. But there is a final arbiter, and those are the real laws of nature, and it's first order derivative: materials science. And this is where it gets much more complex. To design something that can work is an accomplishment in itself, even if it works only once. That one mr. Rush can chalk up as a victory. Where he fails is to take into account the fact that safety knowledge is written in blood and that the difference between 'device safe enough to take passengers on' and 'device safe enough that I, the builder/designer will travel on it' is very, very large. And if all of the industry, including some of your own employees say that you are doing it wrong and you still persist, and risk the lives of others then you are crossing over into irresponsibility, rather than being a pioneer. Whether or not he realized this himself seems a foregone conclusion: he likely thought this was all perfectly safe and those others were needlessly concerned but they were simply more aware of the real risks involved than he was. Fine line between 'god complex' and 'innovator'.

grog454 3y ago
This makes me wonder how we went from Wright brothers to commercial flight. Despite being the longest Wikipedia article I've ever seen the Wright Brother's wiki doesn't seem to cover it. Maybe it's a poorly defined question.
- cco 3y ago
  I believe the answer is war. If there is a class of folks outside of "the inventor" that you can risk on an experimental aircraft, it's soldiers. WW1 happened very quickly after the invention of the plane and there was a huge explosion in quantity and type of airplane in WW1. I'm no historian though, there could be nuances I'm missing.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Florida man [1]. More seriously, you have to remember that this was in a time before there were a million rules, regulations, and lawsuits for everything. The first commercial airline was a man with a plane, likely largely "self built" (whatever that means in a time before aviation industrialization), who started offering flights in Florida across a peninsula. It worked, it was profitable, there was a market - commercial aviation was born. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jannus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Jannus
  - defrost 3y ago
    > The first commercial airline was a man with a plane, The Florida Man you linked was the pilot for two other men [1], the first commercial air service was Delag operating Zepplin airships .. followed by Aero Rt in Hungary .. then followed by [1] in Florida. I can't (right now at least) determine if Aero Rt was operating airships or airplanes ... so you may or may not be correct wrt planes at least. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg%E2%80%93Tampa_Airboat_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Petersburg%E2%80%93Tampa_A...
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm only referring to airplanes, and Florida man was definitely the first there. But zeppelins, hot air balloons, and other methods of air transport obviously came well before airplanes.
WalterBright 3y ago
> Every one of them went against conventional wisdom and the laws of physics as they were known or suspected to be at the time. This is not true of the Wrights. Their first step was to gather together all the known aeronautical knowledge at the time. They relied on them, too, until they discovered the coefficient of lift was off by a factor of two. Then they built their own wind tunnel to determine the correct value. They also discovered there was no theory of propellers. So they developed their own theory, which turned out to be 90% correct. Their propellers were twice as efficient as their contemporary experimenters were. This means they only needed half the horsepower! A tremendous advantage.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering. So in this regard you're largely agreeing with the post you're ostensibly arguing against. Everybody else says e.g. the coefficient of lift is x, I say it's y - is not just a "discovery", but going against the conventional knowledge of laws of physics of a given time. It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments. Same with this story, or even the 'flat earth guy' who was launching himself in rockets. [1] For those who didn't 'get it', the flat earth stuff was just an overtly transparent schtick for interest/funding. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Hughes_(daredevil)
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > Correcting knowing knowledge always comes with the chance that what you're observing may be invalid for reasons you aren't considering. They set up experiments to prove the existing theory was wrong. That is completely counter to what you write. Nobody else did that. > It's not like the aviation enthusiasts prior to the Wright Bros were just strapping aluminum sheeting to their backs and jumping off cliffs. Well I mean maybe somebody somewhere at some time did do that, but for the most part people always try to start from a basis of what's known, and work their way up from toy experiments. That's pretty much what the Wright's contemporaries were doing. Trying random things in a disorganized manner with eyeballed designs. It's very, very different from the Wrights who: 1. researched all available material 2. identified the fundamental problems that must be solved 3. developed prototypes to solve each problem 4. put the results into a new design that worked Nobody else was doing that. And that's why the Wrights succeeded, and the others failed miserably. Later, when the Wrights took their Flyer to Europe, they astonished the European aviators by literally flying circles around them. (European designs could not turn.)

devit 3y ago

People act based on their beliefs, and their beliefs are not necessarily related to reality; in fact, they usually aren't.

xvector 3y ago

In an interview with James Cameron, he mentions[1] that he and other submersible industry experts believe that the system worked and that they did in fact have warning, as they had dropped the weights (which were found far away from the debris field) and were attempting to resurface before the implosion: [1]: "This Oceangate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack [...] they probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate. [...] It's our belief - as we understand from inside the community - that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up trying to manage an emergency." https://youtu.be/rThZLhNF_xg?t=472 https://youtu.be/rThZLhNF_xg?t=472

carabiner 3y ago
Just fucking insane. In aerospace everyone knows that when a crack starts, IT'S OVER. Crack propagation is extremely rapid after that once nucleation has occurred. Your only hope is to prevent nucleation sites in the first place. Except it's extremely hard to characterize fatigue limits without tons of testing and even for metals there is wide variation for identical parts, not even getting into composites. Which of course we all know they did not do.
- elromulous 3y ago
  Tell that to Boeing[0] [0]https://leehamnews.com/2019/09/30/boeings-737-in-another-pickle/ https://leehamnews.com/2019/09/30/boeings-737-in-another-pic...
- lsh123 3y ago
  Not quite true. Stop drilling is commonly used on airplanes: http://o-si-sec.com/2018/10/11/5-facts-to-know-about-stop-drilling-to-treat-cracks-in-aircraft-structures/ http://o-si-sec.com/2018/10/11/5-facts-to-know-about-stop-dr...
  - kelthan 3y ago
    Air pressure decreases as you go up at a far lower rate than water pressure increases as you go down. Air pressure at 30K feet is ~0.3 Bar compared to 1.0 Bar at sea level. Water pressure increases by 1 Bar every 32ft (10m) of depth. To see the equivalent change in pressure in water (0.6 bar) as you see going up to 30K in the air, you only have to go down ~20ft (6m). The pressure on the submersible at 9000ft (2750m) is 276 Bar. F16s and other planes with composite body panels will sometimes lose a panel due to water buildup between layers of the composite. The water freezes between the layers popping the panel loose from the frame or retainers holding it in place. That is usually not a life-threatening problem (though not desirable). A crack in a submersible pressure vessel at more than a couple hundred feet is usually fatal. The description of the Byford Dolphin accident in ~300ft (~90m) of water or 9 Bar pressure, is illustrative: https://www.iflscience.com/byford-dolphin-accident-how-living-under-intense-pressure-led-to-one-of-the-most-gruesome-accidents-in-history-59230 https://www.iflscience.com/byford-dolphin-accident-how-livin... The pressure on the Titan would have been ~30 times greater than what occurred on the Dolphin.

WalterBright 3y ago

Consider Charles Lindbergh. A lot of people thought he was crazy: 1. trying to fly the Atlantic 2. flying without a relief pilot 3. flying with only one engine 4. flying without a radio I don't recall if he had a life raft. Previous attempts had resulted in disappearing forever, and being incinerated in a fireball on takeoff. BTW, during WW2 the air crews ferried their own B-17s across the Atlantic. Quite a few left Newfoundland and were never seen again. There was no rescue if they went down. Navigation was still primitive. My dad (navigator) was immensely pleased that they hit Ireland within a mile of their goal.

lsh123 3y ago
In addition, weather models weren’t nowhere near as good as they are now (thus hard to estimate wind correction over long flight). And radio beacons / stations were off due to the war as well. However, given enough fuel, it’s pretty hard to miss England if you go roughly in the right direction.

interestica 3y ago

It’s possible the hull wasn’t the first point of failure. Maybe they needed a window monitor too.