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Why isn't Titan classed? (2019)
- arcticbull 3y ago> They do not ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea. plane_with_red_dots.jpeg This sounds an awful lot like survivorship bias.
- derbOac 3y agoIt also sounded to me like dodging the question.
- arcticbull 3y agoGiving them the benefit of the doubt, they're saying the biggest problem with submersibles is operator error. Of course it is, when the classing system effectively eliminates the majority of mechanical failures. That doesn't mean the classing system is failing, on the contrary, it means its working.
- lamontcg 3y agoReminds me of some code that I've written which got passed off to other teams who ripped it out because all they saw was the complexity and they didn't recognize what issues it was preventing (Chesterton's Fence).
- quickthrower2 3y agoCode like that needs a 10 ft comment. I have been save by seeing those on otherwise “why the fuck is this needed” code. If they if ignore the comment, well that is hubris.
- lamontcg 3y agoI'm pretty good about doing that. I've gotten compliments before for a massive 10 line code comment above a-single-line-that-shall-not-be-deleted.
- mkonecny 3y agoAnd yet they allowed passengers to control the sub. Theres a video out there where one of the passengers hit the ground with a loud thud while at the controls
- dragonwriter 3y agoIt is exactly survivorship bias: its taking the population produced by a selection filter (to wit, classing/certification) and assuming that the traits of that population are representive of what would exist without the filter.
- jackmott42 3y agoYeah, mechanical failure was not a major problem with subs...until someone started gluing dissimilar materials together to make one!
- tverbeure 3y ago"We don't need to vaccinate against measles because hardly anyone gets measles."
- mr_00ff00 3y agoI have a friend who is a professor of history. He jokes that human history is basically us creating systems to solve problems, then time passes and we remove those systems causes “those types of problems never happen.” Rinse repeat
- caseyohara 3y agoThis seems related to Chesterton's Fence > Chesterton’s Fence is a principle that says change should not be made until the reasoning behind the current state of affairs is understood. It says the rash move, upon coming across a fence, would be to tear it down without understanding why it was put up.
- marcosdumay 3y agoTo be fair, as a general rule, removing the systems makes sense. You don't want to accumulate them forever even after they become useless. But in theory, people are smart, and shouldn't evolve their culture by blind trial and error.
- dpedu 3y agoPatent for their hull monitoring system: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11119071B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US11119071B1/en
- post-it 3y agoHighly innovative! Instead of their sudden death being a complete surprise, they may have had a few awful moments of warning.
- DebtDeflation 3y agoThe engineer who worked on it said it would provide only milliseconds of warning before the hull collapsed. He was promptly fired.
- krasin 3y agoSource? (the story does sound plausible, but having a source would be helpful)
- lamontcg 3y agohttps://www.cbsnews.com/news/missing-titanic-submarine-oceangate-safety-warnings-lawsuits/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/missing-titanic-submarine-ocean...
- Grazester 3y agoRead that also, can't remember where.
- kayodelycaon 3y agohttps://fortune.com/2023/06/21/titan-titanic-missing-sub-david-lochridge-safety-concerns-sacked-oceangate-stockton-rush-hamish-harding/amp/ https://fortune.com/2023/06/21/titan-titanic-missing-sub-dav...
- komadori 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- cbzoiav 3y ago> The vast majority of marine (and aviation) accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure. Could that be because the vast majority of mechanical designs go through processes designed to validate them and catch flaws? They also use SpaceX as an example. SpaceX ran a large number of unmanned launches to prove out the design before putting people on board. Several of those ended in loss of the vehicle and the data from that was used to refine.
- gilney 3y agohttps://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- justrealist 3y agoI think the point is that while SpaceX had a lot of explosions, they fundamentally approached rocket development very responsibly as regards to human risk. It's not about observation bias.
- ajross 3y agoThat's exactly it. If OceanGate had build and dropped a few dozen of these hulls empty, as many times as needed to reach failure, whatever design flaw caused the implosion almost certainly would have been noticed. It's the hubris of diving in what amounts to a prototype that's at issue here, not any fundamental technical mistake.
- throwanem 3y agoNot even a prototype! More like a structural test article.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoIt had already been down quite a few times. Do you mean 100's of drops? Although, couldn't they just leave it at the bottom for a month and see if it implodes?
- hn_throwaway_99 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. > No other submersible currently utilizes real-time monitoring to monitor hull health during a dive. We want to know why. Classed subs are only required to undergo depth validation every three years, whereas our RTM system validates the integrity of the hull on each and every dive. Completely, completely bizarro in my opinion. I'll take the hull that is proven to actually withstand the pressures it was designed for over some system that gives me a heads up before I get crushed to death. Related question for those more knowledgeable. I always thought the primary benefit of carbon fiber was tensile strength. I don't even understand how it could sufficiently resist the compressive pressures at the bottom of the ocean - it is a fiber after all. Edit: After seeing the comments below about James Cameron, apparently I'm not alone. From James Cameron's Wikipedia page: "He was also critical of the use of carbon-fiber composite in the company’s Titan submersible, stating that the material has “no strength in external compression” when withstanding the pressure in deep sea environments."
- cbzoiav 3y agoThe craft survived several launches - that proved it can do it. Whether it can do it reliably / survive fatigue accross repeated cycles is a different question. Imagine we'll find out as the investigation progresses.
- jfk13 3y agoWe already found out, I think.
- someweirdperson 3y agoMaybe some orcas played with it.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
- lsy 3y agoWhat strikes me is that this all sounds like bluster and prevarication around safety, rather than a situation where the safety has actually been thought through. This blog post also doesn't have any kind of links or references to any more in-depth discussion and ultimately seems even on the surface as though it would fall apart under scrutiny. For instance it's quite obvious that the reason the majority of accidents are the result of operator error is because mechanical failures are rare precisely due to classing and other forms of regulation. It does very little good to have "high-level operational safety" if the vessel you are in catastrophically implodes due to mechanical failure.
- gnfargbl 3y ago> While classing agencies are willing to pursue the certification of new and innovative designs and ideas, they often have a multi-year approval cycle due to a lack of pre-existing standards "...and although that approach is perfectly reasonable from an engineering standpoint, our commercial model can't accommodate it."
- dghlsakjg 3y ago> They [inspections] do not ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea. As a former tall ship captain: No Shit. Ships stopped sinking when we started requiring inspections and design rules around stability and watertight compartments. We largely eliminated a common failure mode, designer error, through inspections and classing, so now we are left with the harder failure modes: operator error. I’m curious if the flag state will get involved here. It’s one thing to push the limits with experimental design (happens all the time in boats, airplanes and cars). It’s a while other thing to use experimental designs in commercial applications. There’s a good reason that the FAA doesn’t allow commercial operators to use experimental registered aircraft…
- lozenge 3y agoTitan didn't have a flag, it only operated in international waters. But the surface support vessel has a Canadian flag, and Canada's launching an investigation.
- notreallyauser 3y agoThe Guardian is reporting the submersible as registered in the Bahamas
- JimtheCoder 3y agoA place known for tight regulations
- smitty1e 3y agoAlbeit perhaps not water-tight.
- JimtheCoder 3y agoDepends one how much pressure is applied...
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoThe truly scandalous thing here is this: > Depth Validating > As an interim step in the path to classification, we are working with a premier classing agency to validate Titan’s dive test plan. A licensed marine surveyor will witness a successful dive to 4000 meters, inspect the vessel before and after the dive, and provide a Statement of Fact attesting to the completion of the dive test plan. They clearly did not do this. Simply lowering the thing to the ocean bottom uncrewed would have found this problem. It would not have prevented them from experimenting with crazy designs. It would not have significantly impacted their ability to iterate and move fast. It wouldn't have cost that much to do in the grand scheme of things. I would argue that doing de-risked testing at depth would have expanded their ability to be more radical in their design and overall could have sped up their design iteration. Look at how SpaceX does this, they move fast and break things but make sure that the risk is levered to the reward. The first Falcon rockets did not have commercial payloads at all, nor did the first falcon heavy, Falcon did not fly humans until it was a well-proven rocket. Starship is "failing" constantly but they are doing it in a way which means the impact is minimal and they are learning lots each time. The really sad part of this is that this probably sets back any innovation in submarine exploration decades. Nobody is going to experiment with carbon composite subs, nobody is going to set out to build a sub with the goal of reducing the per-trip cost by 90% or 99%. Things, overall, could easily have been so different. Very sad.
- mjb 3y agoThey did: http://web.archive.org/web/20200814020351/https://www.oceangate.com/our-subs/titan/titan-4000m-validation-dive.html http://web.archive.org/web/20200814020351/https://www.oceang...
- kristjansson 3y ago> Simply lowering the thing to the ocean bottom uncrewed would have found this problem It had made several trips to Titanic depth already. A more serious testing and classification probably would have prevented disaster but let’s not pretend this is trivial
- stefan_ 3y agoFound what problem? You realize they literally took this thing to the Titanic and back multiple times?
- JohnMakin 3y agoThis is such a clear fallacy right from the get go. "This thing doesn't completely solve the problem, therefore, we will not do it." So many people fall for this or talk in such terms like it's perfectly reasonable and it always baffles me. You see it in political discussion a lot.
- RajT88 3y ago> You see it in political discussion a lot. In political discussions, it's because that's what people do when they don't want to plainly state their real reasons for opposition.
- LeftHandPath 3y agoSee the nirvana fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy It happens a lot. I think it's one of the big reasons that hyped-up video games and movies always disappoint.
- anyfoo 3y agoIt's even worse. The "thing that doesn't completely solve the problem" might have actually solved the biggest problem for classed vessels, that's why they don't see it as a problem in the first place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- post-it 3y ago> However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, A typo laden with prophecy.
- warkdarrior 3y agoI do not think it was a typo.
- adamredwoods 3y agoI'm sure Ocean Gate is scrambling to NDA all employees, but at some point someone will speak up, and we'll get a better picture if the Titan was indeed routinely inspected for safety.
- distrill 3y agoi'm going to wager not
- TazeTSchnitzel 3y agoIt's not classed because nobody would have signed off on it with the level of testing they had done. Carbon fibre reinforced polymers don't have a defined fatigue limit, so stress cycle failure can't be ruled out, and it's difficult to estimate how much a design based around that material can endure. To get certified, OceanGate would have had to do destructive endurance testing on a replica hull, but they only proved it could survive a single dive! Their more serious competitors wouldn't dare take that risk.
- quickthrower2 3y agoHaving read enough plain crash stories, first thing I though of was material fatigue. Like in the early days fan blades snapping off jet engines causing catastrophic failure after so many takeoffs. Now they have to inspect these closely in manufacturing and during maintenance cycles. Wouldn’t surprise me if they use ML now as it seemed a difficult human observation task. The stress/unstress cycle of a vessel going that deep must be immense.
- paulddraper 3y agoI recall first learning of "material fatigue" though the fictional movie No Highway in the Sky (1951) [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway_in_the_Sky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Highway_in_the_Sky
- advael 3y agoWhat a profoundly stupid take by a profoundly irresponsible company. This is a great example of why you should consider anything a company says about itself to be marketing, and treat it with commensurate skepticism. "We're so innovative we don't have time for safety regulations" - An idiot, destined to harm someone unless pure dumb luck causes their company to fail first
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoRather: for every customer who slightly informs himself, it should be insanely obvious that signing up might be quite dangerous (with a risk that is likely very hard to actually measure - this is a huge red flag for any risk-averse person). So if you neverthess sign up, you are very aware that things might go insanely wrong (and there is actually a very realistic probability of dying). So you really know what you are up to.
- advael 3y agoThe linked article is very clearly an attempt to persuade its reader that the lack of classing (IE verification of safety by an external auditor) is less of an issue than they might otherwise think. Your advice to a reader of this article is rational here, but I think it's worth also pointing out that the article is meant to persuade said reader to not think that way
- aleph_minus_one 3y agoPerhaps this might be a cultural issue (I am not a US-American citizen), but to me your quote > "We're so innovative we don't have time for safety regulations" reads like "to offer an innovative service which would otherwise not possible, we exchanged known risks (what safety regulations are for to capture and mitigate) for much more unknown risks". As I wrote: "risks that are likely very hard to actually measure are a huge red flag for any risk-averse person" (and most people are risk-averse), so every customer should be perfectly aware for what he signs up. This is like a financial adviser who offers a highly innovative finance product with a risk profile that is hard to measure because of its novelty, which the advisor clearly tells. There do exist customers for which such a product is a good choice (say risk-affine, novelty-seeking ones), but such customers are perfectly aware what they are up to.
- blamazon 3y agoRelated reading - "Vigor's Black Box Theory" [1] [1]: https://www.usps.org/durham/Bullhorns/vigor.htm https://www.usps.org/durham/Bullhorns/vigor.htm
- rossjudson 3y agoInteresting. I'd say that for systems, defense-in-depth usually relies on various forms of maintenance, and consistent effort to maintain functional parity in redundancies. In other words, just having a redundancy or secondary system is not enough. There's a lot of care and feeding when a secondary uses a different method of achieving the same ends as the primary. That requires effort -- which is all too often skipped or falls out of common knowledge.
- jonathankoren 3y ago"[F]or example, in the case of many of OceanGate’s innovations, such as carbon fiber pressure vessels" This ain't the innovative win they thought it was. In fact, it's a self-own. I recently saw a material scientist that specializes in carbon say there wasn't enough money in the world to get her to ride inside a carbon fiber submarine. Why? Carbon fiber has a very high tensile (i.e. stretching) strength. However, it's quite weak when under compression. Guess which strength is important when operating in a high pressure environment? Submarines, including deep submersibles, are kind of a solved problem. That doesn't mean there aren't risks involved, but when was the last time a submarine imploded above it's intended operating depth? The 1950s?
- emeraldd 3y agoThis has to be one of my favorite sentences in the whole page: > However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, but it does mean that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm. in particular: > ... this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply ...
- fredgrott 3y agoOne should note that carbon composites are not for external pressure situations since they delaminate...in shorts words they were playing a dice rolling game and lost on damn stupidity. The whole reason they were not classed is that carbon composites would not pass any class certifications due to the limits indicated above.
- rossjudson 3y agoI'm still trying to understand why they wanted to use carbon composites. Cost to manufacture? Low mass? I read somewhere that the carbon pressure vessel was about five inches thick. I'm not sure how thick a comparable titanium vessel would be, or how much that would cost.
- meghan_rain 3y agolmao of course it was due to costs. greed killed those people.
- ikiris 3y agoFor the same reason we are the only nation that builds water-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors with a positive void coefficient. (beat) It's ''cheaper''. — Valery Legasov
- leot 3y ago(According to GPT4) Using the hydrostatic pressure formula: Pressure = Density of water × Acceleration due to gravity × Depth Assuming the same density of water (1,000 kg/m³) and acceleration due to gravity (9.8 m/s²): Pressure = 1,000 kg/m³ × 9.8 m/s² × 4,000 m Pressure = 39,200,000 Pascal (Pa) Converting to atmospheres: Pressure in atmospheres = 39,200,000 Pa / 101,325 Pa/atm Pressure in atmospheres ≈ 387 atm Considering a safety factor of 2, as before, we can calculate the required thickness: Required thickness = Pressure / (Tensile strength × Safety factor) Required thickness = 387 atm × 101,325 Pa/atm / (434 MPa × 2) Converting units: Required thickness ≈ 39,200,000 Pa / (434 × 10^6 Pa × 2) Required thickness ≈ 0.045 meters or 1.48 inches Therefore, at a depth of 4,000 meters, the titanium walls of the submersible sphere with a 10 ft diameter would need to be approximately 1.48 inches thick to resist implosion, assuming a safety factor of 2. Again, please note that this estimation may vary based on the design, shape, and structural considerations of the submersible sphere. Consulting with experts is essential for accurate calculations and safety assessments. As for amount of titanium required: First, let's convert the wall thickness to meters. Since 1 inch is approximately 0.0254 meters, the wall thickness of 1.5 inches would be approximately 0.0381 meters. Now, let's calculate the internal volume of the sphere by subtracting the volume of the inner sphere (10 ft diameter minus 2 times the wall thickness) from the volume of the outer sphere (10 ft diameter): Inner radius = Radius of the sphere - Wall thickness Inner radius = 1.524 meters - 0.0381 meters Inner radius = 1.4869 meters Inner volume = (4/3) * π * (Inner radius)^3 Inner volume ≈ 14.012 cubic meters Outer volume = (4/3) * π * (1.524 meters)^3 Outer volume ≈ 14.137 cubic meters Now, we can calculate the volume of the titanium walls by subtracting the inner volume from the outer volume: Titanium wall volume = Outer volume - Inner volume Titanium wall volume ≈ 14.137 cubic meters - 14.012 cubic meters Titanium wall volume ≈ 0.125 cubic meters Finally, we can calculate the mass of titanium using the density of titanium (4,506 kg/m³): Mass of titanium = Titanium wall volume * Density of titanium Mass of titanium ≈ 0.125 cubic meters * 4,506 kg/m³ Mass of titanium ≈ 563.25 kg Therefore, with a wall thickness of 1.5 inches, the approximate amount of titanium required for the walls of the submersible sphere with a 10 ft diameter would be approximately 563.25 kilograms. Titanium is currently around $6/kg, so ~$3.4k for just the titanium that made up the wall.
- aaronscott 3y ago> Another simple risk mitigation step we take, that we believe to be unique to OceanGate is that we draw a small vacuum on the inside of the sub at the start of each dive. This step verifies the integrity of the low-pressure O-ring seal and eliminates the risk of leaks I wonder what that low-pressure o-ring is sealing. I assume the vacuum would only simulate a one atmosphere differential, so that o-ring must not be sealing something exposed to the external pressures at the depths they go down to.
- noduerme 3y agoOne thing I'm curious about, as someone who knows nothing about the engineering of these things... why wouldn't anyone building something like this choose to over-pressure the sub once people were inside it and it began descending? Wouldn't 2 atmospheres inside represent a 50% reduction in the pressure differential on the hull at depth?
- quickthrower2 3y agoNot an expert so guessing but that would give you 299 atmospheres differential instead of 300. Also might be uncomfortable for the passengers?
- zippothrowaway 3y agoOutside pressure is 300 x atmosphere so a difference of 299 atmospheres. Increasing to 2 internally makes a difference of...298 atmospheres.
- icegreentea2 3y agoSeparate from the comments about pressure differential - even 2 atmospheres is probably enough to risk decompression sickness if they just popped the hatch at the end of the dive. So you'd need some way to reduce the pressure gradually. That either needs a way to vent gas out (which means adding a hole in the hull, which you'd really rather avoid having to deal with), or having a compressor inside the hull, or do the entire hatch popping in another pressure vessel. All of those options seem to odds with the 'go cheap and fast' approach.
- cobaltoxide 3y agoDid they take their website offline? Or did it, uh... collapse under load?
- rossjudson 3y agoprobably too soon for that one
- cobaltoxide 3y agoSerious question though. Doesn't look very good if they intentionally took the website offline.
- AHOHA 3y agoIt probably had a lot promises and news agencies will be “highlighting” those for the next decade, so better just take it down in the meantime.
- qwertox 3y agoOceanGate vs Lochridge [0] is an interesting lawsuit which may interest some of the readers here. It doesn't matter into which page you scroll, all things you get to read are related to concerns of the security of the sub. Ok, it basically starts at page 9, all before it is legalese bootstrapping. > Defendant David Lochridge has extensive background as a submarine pilot and training of the same [...] Underwater Inspector, and trained to recognize flaw and points out failure in subsea equipment > May 2015 [...] began working with OceanGate as an independent contractor > As a part of his job duties, Lochridge was the Director of Marine Operations and was tasked with "ensuring the safety of all crew and clients during submesible and surface operations." > Issues of quality control with the new submersible Titan were raised, as there were evident flaws throughout the build process [...] > Lochridge worked on his report and requested paperword [...] was met with hostility and denial of access to the necessary documentation. > Lochridge first expressed verbal concerns over the safety and quality control issues regarding the Titan to OceanGate executive management. These verbal communications were ignored. And so on. [0] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23854184-oceangate-v-david-lochridge https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23854184-oceangate-v...
- nakedneuron 3y agoEverybody seems to be concerned with technical failure. Can we rule out the human factor? What if somebody fired a bullet from the inside? Would it withstand?
- Mizoguchi 3y agoIf their $30 joystick wasn't a red flag their RTM system should had been.
- yreg 3y agoWhat's bad about a $30 Logitech controller? It should be more reliable than what they can build on their own.
- AHOHA 3y agoAbsolutely nothing wrong! We use similar joysticks in more missions critical jobs, but people are ignorant sometimes, joystick is bad but a fuse or transistor or other component costing $0.3 is completely fine.
- Mizoguchi 3y agoNothing is wrong with a consumer grade, wireless, AA battery operated, gaming controller as a steering control interface for a submersible taking you down 10K ft under the ocean to maneuver around a 10 story high entangled mess of steel in pitch darkness with a flash light. And there's absolutely nothing wrong either with the decision making process of the engineers thinking that was a good (and fun) idea.
- deeviant 3y agoIt seems likely the Real-Time Hull Monitoring didn't turn out to be very useful.
- ineedasername 3y agoStrange that they use SpaceX as an example. Titan used manned missions as they “tested” their designs commercially. Had SpaceX done the same they would have killed a lot of people.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- quickthrower2 3y agoWow you could almost paste that verbatim into a wikipedia bias article.
- nprateem 3y agoAnyone else wondering what was causing the banging every 30m the media seems to have forgotten about? There were reports saying nothing in nature could cause that...
- micromacrofoot 3y agoit's the ocean, could have been anything really... someone just desperately read too much into this one
- AHOHA 3y agoDo we know yet exactly what was the problem?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcv 3y agoTLDR: "The entire shipping industry is doing it wrong, so we're doing it differently." Also: > 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. So I guess that system didn't work? All the accounts I've heard suggest that the hull collapsed instantly.
- teeray 3y agoIt’s possible that it did work flawlessly, but the signal that the hull was compromised failed to change the pixel color on a monitor before the monitor was destroyed by the imploding hull.
- mcv 3y agoYeah, but that's not "well before". Detecting a problem when it's too late to do anything about it is not quite as useful.
- renewiltord 3y agoIt sounds like a reasonable explanation. I'm glad other people are willing to make these experiments and I think it is quite reasonable that they would put all these things out in public so we know what their stance is. It sounds like informed consent was quite available in this situation. It's also worthwhile to be able to experiment with breaking the rules. All said, as someone who jumps from bridges and rides his motorcycle, I support the right of people to take risks and die in the process. Even Russian roulette! Do as you will with your life. You are a pure free agent. Things will happen as a consequence, but that is for you to account for. It takes all kinds to make this world, and just as we learned from the guys who shoved their head in particle beams, and who over-reflected the demon core, and who mishandled FOOF, and from Carrion's disease, we will learn from this - yep Chesterton's fence was there for a reason. And on the other side we've got cardiac catheterization, a cure for h. pylori, neurotrophic electrodes. People tried in all cases to tell people not to do things and they keep doing them! I love it. Personally, I, as my part in the human composite organism do all sorts of dangerous things, and it's just part of the process of humanity learning and growing.
- dfaslkvjalkj 3y ago[flagged]
- dfaslkvjalkj 3y ago[flagged]
- Photogrammaton 3y agoThis is the Tragedy of Delamination all over again. I coined the phrase half in jest, modeled on a TV-ad phrase (the tragedy of psoriasis, as I recall), after it turned out that a commercial airline flight went down near JFK Airport two months after 9/11 because a carbon-fiber failure allowed its tail to snap off. Now it looks as if a carbon-fiber failure allowed Titan’s pressure hull to implode. Admittedly, we don’t know yet. But a lot of effort will go into finding out, because (as in that plane crash) lives were lost.
- theoldlove 3y agoMaybe https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587, though the Wikipedia page dismisses concerns about the composite’s strength.
- scarnie 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.” That is going to come back and bite them.