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If I picture myself in this CEO's shoes (wanting to innovate in the materials/approach to DSVs), I imagine instructing my team to design a system that can perfo

If I picture myself in this CEO's shoes (wanting to innovate in the materials/approach to DSVs), I imagine instructing my team to design a system that can perform test dives autonomously and then use that to gather data over many duty cycles. Of course, I have no idea what I am talking about, so maybe that is simply impossible or impossibly expensive. It does seem cheaper than just YOLOing it and getting yourself and four other people killed though.

maweki 3y ago
> so maybe that is simply impossible or impossibly expensive Sorry for swearing, but I too can't believe that there's a problem in setting this thing to auto-dive 3 or 4 kilometers and then pulling it up via an f-ing tether. I understand why you wouldn't tether the sub when floating into the titanic wreck. But test-diving? come on...
marcosdumay 3y ago
How much market is there for unmanned trips? The amount of equipment you could fit inside this sub is incredible. Probably unparalleled. I can't believe there isn't enough market to be profitable while you test the experimental hull.
- amanj41 3y ago
  What exactly would they bring though? Anything inside the sub could not be dropped off anywhere. Maybe they could have collected research data to sell to certain scientific institutes, but that doesn't sound like it would recoup much of the costs
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    Probably, lights and a good camera. The goal is just to run on the blue, so that they are not pressured to finish their testing earlier. I can't imagine there isn't enough to film at that depth so that they can't find people willing to pay for the operational costs.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > Probably unparalleled. I believe the Aluminaut had a larger internal volume; at least it could carry more people. Up to 7 vs 5 in the Titan. It had a deeper test depth too, and like the Titan, didn't need syntactic foam for bouyancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminaut I only learned about this DSV a few days ago but it was really neat. It seems like the design OceanGate should have used.
  - Wojtkie 3y ago
    [dead]
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    Of course, Aluminaut was also built by Electric Boat, a major military contractor specializing in submarines.
rtkwe 3y ago
Or building the inspection equipment that could determine if my new hull material was breaking down with every dive towards an inevitable disaster I've been warned about by many different people.
- avgDev 3y ago
  I suggest watching this doc on a sub build for "challenger deep". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5j9oeZCm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5j9oeZCm0 The hull was pressure tested in Russia. The amount of engineering was just immense compared to Titan.
  - rtkwe 3y ago
    It's incredible seeing the late CEO talking so much about how this and other super deep subs were built by amateurs as the reason he could conceivably safely build the Titan. Completely ignoring testing like this or that the Chinese sub was built by a government design bureau. They were projects headed by excited amateurs for sure but they were going to exceptionally traditional engineers to implement their ideas.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
Compare it to SpaceX where they’ll fly it unmanned until it explodes and then figure out the failure points for future models. There’s no excuse with this. There’s no fuel or disposable parts so they could have run it a hundred times a day until it popped.
smileysteve 3y ago
But the other cost of pressure tests is stress to the hull of the pressure hull; To know its failure point, you have to see it fail, in which case you have to build a second one.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Yes, and that's cheap compared to loss of life. You may even want to destroy several of them to get a better statistical base. Essentially they are a consumable in this design.

maweki 3y ago

> so maybe that is simply impossible or impossibly expensive Sorry for swearing, but I too can't believe that there's a problem in setting this thing to auto-dive 3 or 4 kilometers and then pulling it up via an f-ing tether. I understand why you wouldn't tether the sub when floating into the titanic wreck. But test-diving? come on...

marcosdumay 3y ago

How much market is there for unmanned trips? The amount of equipment you could fit inside this sub is incredible. Probably unparalleled. I can't believe there isn't enough market to be profitable while you test the experimental hull.

amanj41 3y ago
What exactly would they bring though? Anything inside the sub could not be dropped off anywhere. Maybe they could have collected research data to sell to certain scientific institutes, but that doesn't sound like it would recoup much of the costs
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  Probably, lights and a good camera. The goal is just to run on the blue, so that they are not pressured to finish their testing earlier. I can't imagine there isn't enough to film at that depth so that they can't find people willing to pay for the operational costs.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> Probably unparalleled. I believe the Aluminaut had a larger internal volume; at least it could carry more people. Up to 7 vs 5 in the Titan. It had a deeper test depth too, and like the Titan, didn't need syntactic foam for bouyancy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminaut https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminaut I only learned about this DSV a few days ago but it was really neat. It seems like the design OceanGate should have used.
- Wojtkie 3y ago
  [dead]
- meepmorp 3y ago
  Of course, Aluminaut was also built by Electric Boat, a major military contractor specializing in submarines.

rtkwe 3y ago

Or building the inspection equipment that could determine if my new hull material was breaking down with every dive towards an inevitable disaster I've been warned about by many different people.

avgDev 3y ago
I suggest watching this doc on a sub build for "challenger deep". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5j9oeZCm0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb5j9oeZCm0 The hull was pressure tested in Russia. The amount of engineering was just immense compared to Titan.
- rtkwe 3y ago
  It's incredible seeing the late CEO talking so much about how this and other super deep subs were built by amateurs as the reason he could conceivably safely build the Titan. Completely ignoring testing like this or that the Chinese sub was built by a government design bureau. They were projects headed by excited amateurs for sure but they were going to exceptionally traditional engineers to implement their ideas.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

Compare it to SpaceX where they’ll fly it unmanned until it explodes and then figure out the failure points for future models. There’s no excuse with this. There’s no fuel or disposable parts so they could have run it a hundred times a day until it popped.

smileysteve 3y ago

But the other cost of pressure tests is stress to the hull of the pressure hull; To know its failure point, you have to see it fail, in which case you have to build a second one.

jacquesm 3y ago
Yes, and that's cheap compared to loss of life. You may even want to destroy several of them to get a better statistical base. Essentially they are a consumable in this design.