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I'm curious why Stockton Rush thought carbon fibre would be enough? I'm trying to find out how it would be sufficient. I'm sure we'll find out more later why it

I'm curious why Stockton Rush thought carbon fibre would be enough? I'm trying to find out how it would be sufficient. I'm sure we'll find out more later why it failed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanGate#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OceanGate#Design_and_construct...

rich_sasha 3y ago
Doesn't directly answer your question, but somewhere I read that by using carbon fibre, the craft was positively buoyant on its own (then weighed down with ballast). Otherwise it would need expensive pressure-resistant floatation devices.
phire 3y ago
"Titan is equipped with a real-time acoustic monitoring system, which OceanGate claims can detect the onset of buckling in the carbon fiber hull prior to catastrophic failure." I see a number of potential flaws with that plan. You are assuming it will fail in a way that produces a warning and then stays intact enough to resurface. You are also relying on an electronic device to not fail. And audio processing algorithms... how many of these carbon fibre pressure vessels did they test to destruction to get test data? Zero? "Rush holds a patent on the system." Ok.... I guess that explains it. I'm getting an impression of real "I'll just invent a magic device that makes it safe" energy here.
- salawat 3y ago
  I concur. I find that the odds of an at-scale, full production version of such a system being implemented with what was shown to be available in the vessel is highly dubious. Besides which, it's entirely possible as well that adhesive was progressively chemically compromised, with no attempts to measure it... I can think of myriad directions to investigate Then again, I don't have access to schemata either.... So I should really just stop. It just kills me though, because this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it.
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    > this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it. Yes, this is precisely it. None of this had to happen, it's a combination of greed and hubris.
tedivm 3y ago
Apparently another sub was made with carbon fiber and it worked fine, however that one only had a single dive because they knew that it would lose strength after each dive. It may be feasible if they had replaced it more often (I don't think they ever replaced it, and there were former staff who claim to have brought up concerns about its condition).

rich_sasha 3y ago

Doesn't directly answer your question, but somewhere I read that by using carbon fibre, the craft was positively buoyant on its own (then weighed down with ballast). Otherwise it would need expensive pressure-resistant floatation devices.

phire 3y ago

"Titan is equipped with a real-time acoustic monitoring system, which OceanGate claims can detect the onset of buckling in the carbon fiber hull prior to catastrophic failure." I see a number of potential flaws with that plan. You are assuming it will fail in a way that produces a warning and then stays intact enough to resurface. You are also relying on an electronic device to not fail. And audio processing algorithms... how many of these carbon fibre pressure vessels did they test to destruction to get test data? Zero? "Rush holds a patent on the system." Ok.... I guess that explains it. I'm getting an impression of real "I'll just invent a magic device that makes it safe" energy here.

salawat 3y ago
I concur. I find that the odds of an at-scale, full production version of such a system being implemented with what was shown to be available in the vessel is highly dubious. Besides which, it's entirely possible as well that adhesive was progressively chemically compromised, with no attempts to measure it... I can think of myriad directions to investigate Then again, I don't have access to schemata either.... So I should really just stop. It just kills me though, because this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  > this entire event has 'preventable but I didn't want to bother' written all over it. Yes, this is precisely it. None of this had to happen, it's a combination of greed and hubris.

tedivm 3y ago

Apparently another sub was made with carbon fiber and it worked fine, however that one only had a single dive because they knew that it would lose strength after each dive. It may be feasible if they had replaced it more often (I don't think they ever replaced it, and there were former staff who claim to have brought up concerns about its condition).