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US Coast Guard Report on Titan Submersible
- dwheeler 1y agoThe report has many gems about the tragedy. Basically, there were clear physical causes, which in turn were caused by hubris: PHYSICAL CAUSES "4.2.4.4. American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) Classification Society Background" ... "The ABS Underwater Rules do not permit the use of carbon fiber composites for Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (PVHOs)" "4.2.4.5. Det Norske Veritas and Germanischer Lloyd (DNV GL)" ... 4.2.4.5.3. According to a DNV Surveyor, carbon fiber has not been accepted as suitable material for the construction of submersible PVHOs, especially when subject to external pressure experienced at ocean depths. According to DNV GL, carbon fibers are not considered suitable for significant compressive loading conditions." "5.1. Inadequacy of Structural Engineering Analysis. OceanGate’s TITAN submersible design was a complex, high-risk, deep-sea submersible. The design and testing processes for TITAN did not adequately address many of the fundamental engineering principles that are considered crucial for ensuring safety and reliability for operations in such an inherently hazardous environment..." "5.6 Insufficient Understanding of Carbon Fiber Material Properties for Deep-Sea Application. The TITAN’s pressure hull was constructed using carbon fiber, a material chosen by Mr. Rush for its “impressive” strength-to-weight ratio. [However] the use of carbon fiber in deep-sea environments remains unproven—unlike the materials with established safety records. There are currently no recognized national or international standards that approve of the use of carbon fiber pressure hulls for submersibles. Carbon fiber has demonstrated its effectiveness in other applications where the material is primarily under tension (e.g., aircraft hulls where the pressure inside the passenger compartment is pressing outwards). However, in deep-sea conditions, the pressure hull experiences extreme compressive forces, a scenario for which carbon fiber has no established track record and is generally understood to be less effective." * * * HUMAN DECISIONS The physics is just the physics. There was no law of nature that forced them to take the steps they took. Instead, we have points like these: "5.12. OceanGate’s Toxic Safety Culture. OceanGate’s operational and safety practices were critically flawed, which contributed to the catastrophic implosion of the TITAN submersible. At the core of these failures was a disconnect between the company's stated safety protocols and its actual practices. ... This highlighted systemic issues where submersible safety protocols were either egregiously inadequate or willfully disregarded, leaving critical risks unmitigated. The analysis reveals a disturbing pattern of misrepresentation and reckless disregard for safety in OceanGate's operation of the TITAN submersible, with Mr. Rush seemingly using inflated numbers to bolster the perceived safety and dive count of the final TITAN hull... Examples of OceanGate CEO’s disdain for traditional submersible safety protocols were abundant. For example... This dismissive approach to safety culture was not limited to engineering decisions. OceanGate’s management actively retaliated against employees who raised legitimate compliance related concerns..." This was a tragedy, because people died and this was all completely avoidable. It's the only event like this in many, many decades. I hope others will leran and avoid making similar mistakes.
- QuantumGood 1y agoIt was very clearly very early on that critical risks were known, unmitigated, and misrepresented. I don't think the kind of person(s) that know and misrepresent are the kind to learn and avoid similar mistakes, though publicizing issues like this will increase pressure on them to hide their lies better. They had a messianic CEO dismissing concerns with bluster and bravado
- stavros 1y agoOne thing to keep in mind here is that the CEO didn't hide the flaws to make a profit, otherwise he wouldn't have been on board the submersible. He hid them because he believed they were wrong.
- kermatt 1y agoHe believed they were wrong because they got in his way: https://www.businessinsider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about-obscenely-safe-regulations-2023-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complain...
- stavros 1y agoIn his way towards what?
- kermatt 1y agoBuilding a submersible without concern for the safety of his customers, or himself.
- red-iron-pine 1y agomaking money
- duskwuff 1y agoUltimately, yeah. Rush's goal was to make money by taking paying customers on undersea tours. Calling the Titan a "research vessel" was a farce; what little research it performed, like sampling ocean salinity at different depths, was a fig-leaf at best, not the purpose of its activities. (And, per the report, even that was neglected on some of the vessel's later dives.)
- ortusdux 1y agoThe USCG hearing was fascinating, especially Matthew McCoy's testimony - https://www.newsweek.com/oceangate-employee-resigned-co-founder-buy-congressman-1960467 https://www.newsweek.com/oceangate-employee-resigned-co-foun... https://www.youtube.com/live/AvAw9YFW2i0&t=782 https://www.youtube.com/live/AvAw9YFW2i0&t=782
- kelseyfrog 1y agoThis is the fence that will someday become Chestertonian.
- roywiggins 1y agoevery single expert knew carbon fiber was a bad idea (and why) beforehand. it's not a Chesterton's Fence if it's painted "DO NOT REMOVE" in large scary letters and a followup explanation in short easy-to-read words stapled underneath
- kelseyfrog 1y agoSome day the story of why the fence(regulation) was created will be lost to time and the sign will have fallen off.
- roywiggins 1y agoThere basically isn't regulation for submersibles in the first place, that's why the Titan could be built like this. Nobody's going to forget the structural properties of carbon fiber.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoIt sounds like you think they didn't know it was a deathtrap?
- post_break 1y agoThe thing that I find amazing about this sub, is that the final hull survived all those trips, and then before the final one let everyone know it was toast, and Stockton ignored it. He was careless with peoples lives, but his sub actually did what he set out to do, and if he listened to the instruments, he'd still be alive, he could have made another hull, and he could be taking more trips down there for better of for worse. The porthole design was poor, the carbon fiber had tons of defects, the controller, everything was cobbled together, yet it held up until it didn't.
- lesuorac 1y agoI'm not sure he had the money to make another hull. I think that's the crux of the issue, he didn't have a usable system and he didn't want to give up his ambition.
- shortrounddev2 1y agoOther than the finances of it, he was a total narcissist who refused to believe anyone else knew more about anything than he did. Even when presented with hard data he chose to ignore it and killed himself as a result.
- lupusreal 1y agoMoney was a big part of the problem. The whole point of making it out of carbon fiber was to make it light and therefore cheap to operate. He could have made a long DSV with plenty of room for passengers out of metal, the Aluminaut DSV was such a craft with proven performance, but then he would have needed to buy or rent a more expensive ship to operate it with.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lenerdenator 1y agoAll of this really should have made someone stop and ask if this was the part of the human experience that really needed cost reduction. But it didn't, so... shrugs.
- cogman10 1y ago> Investigators determined the Titan’s real-time monitoring system generated data that should have been analyzed and acted on during the 2022 Titanic expedition. However, OceanGate did not take any action related to the data, conduct any preventative maintenance or properly store the Titan during the extended off season before its 2023 Titanic expedition. So, a bunch of giant red warning flags AND they didn't bother to properly store the casket. I feel bad for the passengers, Stockton got the FAFO award he deserved.
- ItsBob 1y agoThe Netflix documentary was great and the thing that I took away from it most was that in fractions of a second all the passengers literally blinked out of existence: They were here and then within a ms, they literally vanished (I assume... they didn't elaborate on it but I can guess!) The temperature and pressure in that tiny fraction of a second was probably 10s of thousands of degrees and hundreds of jumbo jets smashing into them so fast that their bodies didn't even register the trauma. Blew my mind. Nearly forgot that they heard the explosion on the surface ship, 2 miles above the sub... that kinda screws with my head tbh!
- tantalor 1y agoAll of that was already familiar to people who had seen The Abyss (1989)
- avgDev 1y agoIt is quite interesting. The implosion took about 10 milliseconds. It takes the brain 13 milliseconds to register an image. It takes the brain 100-200 milliseconds to register pain. They could have heard some cracks but most likely had no knowledge of the implosion. Their bodies just turned into mist.
- bapak 1y agoCan you think of a better way to die? The only thing missing here is knowing it beforehand.
- dwheeler 1y agoJames Cameron gave an interview that did a great job explaining the problems. In particular, carbon fiber is great for planes, but a terrible idea for compressive forces like going deep underwater. See: "James Cameron on the OceanGate sub disaster" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwSaZfwBrz8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwSaZfwBrz8
- bouchard 1y agoLooking at interview footage of Stockton Rush, it seems he really wanted to be a disruptor and accomplish something which everyone else (i.e., experts) deemed impossible. He thought he could do what SpaceX did for space, but for underwater exploration.
- avgDev 1y agoRush could be placed in Wikipedia under hubris. His hubris killed people. He ignored experts. He ignored warnings. This outcome was predictable.
- xeromal 1y agoThe problem is that SpaceX was told the same and it succeeded despite the ods. History is harsh to people who fail.
- avgDev 1y agoSpaceX did not send manned missions for a while. If the hull failed without people it would be no big deal. However, Rush was running out of money so he felt rushed and got reckless.
- jjmarr 1y agoThat's every startup founder to an extent. What differentiates a good founder from a bad one is being right.
- nathan_compton 1y agoThis is a weird way to think of it, making it seem as thought its just a matter of chance whether the founder is right or not. The difference, if there is one, is that some founders can pivot when they see their approach won't work or, at least, throw in the towel before people die or too much many is wasted. Maybe that makes them bad startup founders? I don't know. In my opinion "Startup Founder" is a role which should play second to "ethical human being."
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- nodesocket 1y agoI don’t know why he insisted on sticking with Carbon fiber when multiple tests over and over again the strands would snap during tests. There is a reason other deep water submersible use Titanium.
- bathtub365 1y agoThe Netflix documentary says that vessel big enough to have 5 people on board would have been far larger when made out of a more conventional material. This was another business-driven decision as they wanted to charge for rides and more people = more money.
- culebron21 1y agoThe submersible would have been much heavier, hence would have required a much bigger ship, with bigger crane, to haul it, which is times more expensive.
- roywiggins 1y agoMoney, and wanting to be seen as an innovator.
- dragonwriter 1y agoTitanium was proven and well-known and established for the use. You can't be a disruptive innovator challenging the dogmatic establishment and trailblaze a new way to make money by being boring and doing what is well-known and established for the domain you are working in. You have to defy all the voices telling you are wrong and its going to fail. (Of course, most of the time those voices are right, so if it is something with lives on the line, you also should be making sure you have the resources to test it thoroughly so even if it isn't well-establlished and known before you start on it, it is well-established and known through your team's work before you start putting it in the position to kill people.)
- nathan_compton 1y agoThank god things can be both funny and horrible, because this story delighted and horrified me. Put "Moved Fast and Broke Stuff" on Rush's tombstone.
- lupusreal 1y ago*cenotaph
- Luker88 1y agoI don't know how anything works at sea. Assume I have the money to go on a trip, am I supposed to do background checks on people and technology by myself? From this report I gather that either the sea industry is completely unregulated, or this guy ignored all rules and nobody did a check even after something like 80 dives. Both options sound kinda insane to be honest. Can anyone more knowledgeable elaborate?
- nemomarx 1y agoTraditionally deep sea exploration has been under regulated and gotten by because everyone involved is very cautious and spending a ton of money on over engineering. Rush wanted to change that in order to make it an accessible tourist industry thing, so we might see safety regulations now.
- csb6 1y agoTypically ships need to be certified by a classification society (an organization that inspects ships and makes sure they meet technical safety standards) in order to operate commercially. The Oceangate sub was not certified by any of these authorities because certification was viewed as “red tape” in the way of their “innovations”, and they would have almost certainly failed to be certified (a bad look if you are trying to convince people it is safe). I think the rules/laws around commercial deep sea sub companies were unclear because most deep sea subs are research vessels or private projects (e.g. James Cameron’s sub), not tourist operations.
- ethan_smith 1y agoMaritime regulation exists in layers (flag states, classification societies, port authorities), but OceanGate deliberately operated in regulatory gaps by classifying Titan as an "experimental" vessel and launching from international waters to bypass oversight.
- throwawayoldie 1y agoAnd there were no "passengers", legally speaking, just "mission specialists".
- ridgeguy 1y agoFiber-reinforced composites are basically analogous to spaghetti dispersed in glue. Really strong in tension, when the (in this case, carbon) fibers are taking nearly all of the load. In compression, the fibers have nearly zero resistance to flexure, and the load is mainly being taken up by the glue (the matrix, in composite-speak). When the fiber/matrix interface fails due to fiber flex-induced shear force, you're done. I just can't imagine why a submersible structural designer would select composites for this application. IMHO, this project was doomed from the moment of that design decision, even setting aside all the other idiocy.
- bell-cot 1y ago> I can't imagine why ... "Cheap, cheap, cheap" ain't just a thing that birdies say.
- throwawayoldie 1y ago> I just can't imagine why a submersible structural designer would select composites for this application Maybe it's easier to imagine if you consider the designer in question not as a submersible structural designer per se, but rather a nepo baby cosplaying as one.
- jjk166 1y agoWell the "glue" in this case is actually a very good material for the application. Epoxy has compressive strength comparable to structural steel, and more importantly its density is almost the same as water. This means you can make incredibly thick walls for a small internal volume while remaining buoyant. It also resists biofouling and corrosion, which is why it's popular in other marine applications. Submarines of this size should be using composites, once sufficient data is gathered on their behavior to develop proper factors of safety. The issue was all the idiocy that came after. This team was going to kill people no matter no matter what they made the sub out of.
- danjl 1y agoDeath by business model. The company was based on the concept that existing regulations and design constraints were overly conservative, and their customers paid the price.
- TheCleric 1y agoThis seems like the logical conclusion of move fast and break things + regulation is evil culture. Most regulation is there for a reason and most safety rules are written in blood. You don’t get to pretend that’s not true because they would slow you down. You’re not built different.
- mikewarot 1y agoIt seems insane to me that anyone would ever consider relying on carbon fiber strands in a structure subject to massive compression. Pushing on rope, is after all, the canonical example of futility. It really was, in essence, an epoxy tube with titanium end caps. Yikes
- jalapenos 1y agoI mean at least all involved willingly went on this suicide mission? So simple thinking could view this as some wreckless narcissist CEO defrauding some naive customers, and hence a "tragedy". But alternatively, since the CEO's attitude and the safety record was publicly known, you could instead interpret it as an elaborate suicide pact.
- chriswalz 1y agoYou know one of the people who died (a child) was extremely concerned about the safety of the sub, right? The CEO mislead and lied. To blame the victims here is disrespectful to say the least.
- jalapenos 1y agoThis position is grotesquely immoral. The attitude that you have no responsibility at all for confirming the safety yourself, simply because a salesman says it's safe, despite clear existing public evidence they could have easily discovered that it's not, is collaboration in evil. It's always easy and comfortable to falsely deal in absolutes, black and white, that one guy is the bad one and the other voluntary participants were the "victims". 100% vs 0%. But doing so is what lets people get away with aiding and abetting wrongdoing. That "child" was a 19 year old university student, which is beyond draft age. He made his choice. Not that that exculpates the role of his mother in his death. This position is disrespectful of everyone who doesn't make such reckless, and mostly showing off driven, risks.