3 ms·
It seems they felt this was one of the novel innovations that enabled this design - that the monitoring system was so good, they'd never be at risk in the press
by mustacheemperor 3y ago
It seems they felt this was one of the novel innovations that enabled this design - that the monitoring system was so good, they'd never be at risk in the pressure hull at depth.
James Cameron said it looks like they had dropped their emergency ascent ballast before the implosion, so they may have gotten enough warning to take action. But I would guess that system was never tested to failure in real life.
It will be interesting to see which of the novel innovations supposedly enabling this unconventional design failed, if it can be determined. Rush also lampshaded the fact that his company had "successfully" bonded the titanium endcaps to carbon fiber despite that being contradictory to conventional materials science wisdom, reading the patent for the monitoring system it looks like it may have been intended to provide warning about those bonds failing too.
- _yb2s 3y agoIt seems like it would be trivial to test how much early warning such a system gives by bringing smaller/cheaper test hulls to failure, either in the ocean, or in a pressure testing chamber. I wonder if they did that?
- dm319 3y agoDo you know in what way it was 'acoustic'? I.e. was it listening for sounds, or was it more like sonar?
- mustacheemperor 3y agoI looked over the patent yesterday, I think someone linked it in this thread. It would “listen” for the sounds of impending structural failure, by comparing the sounds in the hull to a dataset of previous test dives. One of the passengers on Titan’s 2nd dive said it made cracking and popping noises as it got deeper but the patent intended to detect a change in acoustics (in conjunction with stress sensors) far enough in advance for corrective action.