Tourist submersible visting the Titanic is missing 101

[dik]

On a positive note, Stockton Rush will likely win the Darwin Award this year.

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So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[TugboatEng]

good quality marine electronics

I believe you have made an oxymoron.

 

[TigerGuy]

So not only are there more airplanes in the ocean than submarines in the sky, the same applies to the pilots of each craft?

 

[Tomfh]

It's also worrying that someone could connect the wires incorrectly without that getting picked up as part of the maintenance procedures (another area where aviation tends to double check everything before signing off on the work).

Yes it's not great, but had the sub not failed we'd have never heard about that. Embarassing stuff happens all the time on every project. We all know that. I know from first hand experience that aviation isn't snow white in this regard either.

 

[SWComposites]

Re: someone who was an aerospace engineer, I don't consider him to be an engineer; yes, he got an engineering degree, but that alone does not make one an engineer, especially in aerospace; not even close. He seemed like the type who thinks they know everything and wants to be a VP in 3 years and a CEO in 5 years; I've run into these types before, and every single one was worse than useless as an engineer (and almost every one was male). And its telling that he soon after went for an MBA degree which negates the whole engineering degree and if not already there makes one near useless as an engineer (there is probably exceptions to this, but experience in the industry says it is rare).

 

[IRstuff]

One of the things that really puzzles me for someone who was an aerospace engineer and an aviator, is the backwards or mismatched controls on one of the dives. It's absolutely standard in aviation to verify free and correct operation of the control surfaces in the pre-flight inspection; why was there not some sort of controls check before each dive? It's also worrying that someone could connect the wires incorrectly without that getting picked up as part of the maintenance procedures (another area where aviation tends to double check everything before signing off on the work).

NASA's $300+ million Mars Climate Orbiter faceplanted into Mars because of a unit conversion error (more correctly, an incorrectly used unit), which was missed in the interface control document (ICD), initial design, system integration, and multiple erroneous mid-course corrections.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[waross]

I am disappointed but not surprised with how little information is available concerning the Titan.
What is out there hardly seems enough for even a decent brochure.
I guess that from Stockton's point of view, the less information is out there, the less potential for criticism.
And you don't have to be an engineer to connect a thruster properly.
Any decent third year electrician's apprentice knows to check the rotation of a motor when you hook it up.
And any decent third years electrician's apprentice will be working for a lot more than $15 per hour.

--------------------
Ohm's law
Not just a good idea;
It's the LAW!

 

[Just Some Nerd]

He seemed like the type who thinks they know everything and wants to be a VP in 3 years and a CEO in 5 years;

He strikes me as the type that would have tried to ride his supposed birthright all the way to the moon - by his own words the reason he didn't hitch a ride up to space is because he wouldn't be the one in charge. He seemed to have the inclination for tinkering around in the backyard, but not the wits or sense for doing real thing.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why yes, I do in fact have no idea what I'm talking about

 

[Tomfh]

He was cavalier and sailed too close to the wind, and exposed people to unacceptable risk, but he seemed like a fairly smart guy. The thing worked 40 or so times, so wasn't a completely failed program. It's about the same failure rate as the space shuttle.

I'll be very interested to see what actually failed. If the pressure vessel itself simply failed, despite Rush having specified a certain performance criteria to Spencer composites, is it still all his fault?

 

[GregLocock]

I keep seeing 'syntactic foam' being mentioned as a way of providing buoyancy for metal subs. That's a very posh word for a soup of polyurethane and glass microballoons. The more you pay for the microballoons the fewer broken ones you get.

https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/microspheres-fillers-filled-with-possibilities

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[Murph 9000]

I'll be very interested to see what actually failed. If the pressure vessel itself simply failed, despite Rush having specified a certain performance criteria to Spencer composites, is it still all his fault?

It's not clear to me if the hull that failed was made by Spencer or another company. They made the first hull, but that was replaced due to concerns about its strength.

What is clear is that many people raised reasonable concerns with Rush about it, and he didn't respond well. It was his decision to not perform non-destructive testing, to rely on an unproven monitoring system to provide critical safety, to use a window well beyond its specification, and to proceed without class certification.

It could be that there are others who should share some of the fault, but there are many decisions which appear to be down to him alone.

 

[3DDave]

I had to look it up. I'd heard of it, but never had a specific need to use it. "syntactic" essentially means "assembled" in this case to distinguish it from other, more typical self-generating foams such as soap suds and dispersals of gas bubbles in plastics.

It's a general term that describes the technique to create the material rather than the precise composition of the material. I think the submersible guys get away with it as the other forms, such as cementitious and metal matrix versions, are too dense and can be ignored for their niche.

 

[1503-44]

"The thing worked 40 or so times, so wasn't a completely failed program. It's about the same failure rate as the space shuttle."

Success is not determined by any specific failure rate of a component (one being the aggregate safety, inspection and testing programs). All components will eventually fail. Its knowing the dynamic failure envelop of each and every component and not operating any one of them outside the most critical failure envelop. Success then becomes more about knowing when to stop. Its also hard to claim mission success when technically it was still in the testing-experimental phase.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[LittleInch]

We don't actually know how many dives any of the individual items actually did as there are rumours that some were "repaired" and others built new again by a different vendor.

The real issue for a lot of this for me is that once the first dive happened and a lot of cracking noises, they had no idea how that actually impacted their supposed FoS of 2.5 or 2.25. on critical components or areas did that reduce it to nearly 1? or did each dive end up concentrating at those points and then it went 2.0, 1.8, 1.65, 1.5 .....

They had no idea. only one crack might mean that it was all in one place.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[Tomfh]

Its also hard to claim mission success

I’m not claiming it was successful on the whole. Obviously it wasn’t. I’m just questioning the idea that Rush was a total dunce and that every aspect of his vehicle was a complete disaster, which to me is an oversimplistic assessment.

 

[1503-44]

We will only know now by how much was or can still be learned from the incident.

--Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[debodine]

SWComposites:

I liked your quote, "...And its telling that he soon after went for an MBA degree which negates the whole engineering degree..."

I worked for Bendix (CEO was William Agee) when the "hostile takeover" became the new way to grow companies, and thus I was around when the "Get an MBA" phase began for American business. I have often told my friends (only partially joking) that one easy way to get a company to lose focus on their core business was to put an MBA in charge.

I know it is not fair to lump all persons with an MBA into one group. In my anecdotal (not researched) observation, that just seemed to be the trend. I realize there may be statistical data studies that negate my view.

 

[IRstuff]

to rely on an unproven monitoring system to provide critical safety

Proven, schmoven, he got a patent for it, so it must have been good ;-)

they had no idea how that actually impacted their supposed FoS of 2.5 or 2.25. on critical components or areas did that reduce it to nearly 1?

I think it was worse than that; FoS of 2.5 implies that you understand the material extremely well, and know that the variance of the material is sufficiently small, and that any incidental construction or assembly errors aren't going to kill you, and that the materials don't age poorly with repeated usage. He seemed to not understand, and blew off, the notion that every crack and pop, heard and unheard, reduced his supposed "safe" FoS by some unknown factor. He chose a grossly reduced FoS from that of metals that are well-behaved, well-used, well-understood, and historically safe materials, pooh-poohing the conservatism that has resulted in no deaths from vessel collapse and created his own universe where an untried material with zero safety and usage record in that environment could be designed with low FoS.

While I don't necessarily subscribe to the notion that MBA negates his BSAE; he either didn't understand or learn his engineering curriculum, nor, for that matter, his MBA curriculum, or his was either stupid rich (or vice-versa) or he spent all his time in school partying hard.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
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[dik]

Murph...

sums it up, and you forgot to include that he fired anyone that didn't agree with him. 'De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est' (don't speak ill of the dead) is not applicable... the guy was a POS and killed four others.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[dik]

Suspended operations...

"OceanGate says it has suspended all its exploration and commercial operations following the implosion of its Titan submersible, killing five people.

The company posted a brief statement on its website but did not provide further details.

'A preoccupation with failure': Why the Titan submersible was doomed from the start
Both U.S. and Canadian officials are investigating what caused the submersible to implode on its way to tour the Titanic wreckage late last month."

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/oceang...al-operations-after-titan-implosion-1.6469598

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik