Submarine missing

[F4phantom]

the

Somewhere I read that the CEO wanted young innovative types in his business designing the sub. He refused to listen or heed the advice of 50 year old ex sub designers and experienced pressure vessel engineers. He paid the price. Some old people of pretty smart and know what they are doing. Experience counts (at least in this instance).

 

[BB57]

Realistically, practically, we're talking about literal milliseconds - mercifully likely quicker than the mind could process the beginning of a thought, much less to formulate the conclusion that there was a problem and the realization of the implications of that.

Catastrophic failure of the carbon fiber pressure chamber would have been "instantaneous". And it was an implosion, not an explosion, and the implications for human bodies at those depths and those pressures are such that should in the unlikely event any remains could be recovered, you would be talking about nothing more than tissue samples.

No good aspect for the victims except to say they never knew it when it happened.

In aviation, by regulation after a certain number of flight hours, air frames are required to be x-rayed for microscopic stress fractures then fluxed if needed or scrapped/decertified if not possible. Using carbon fiber materials, which are strong for the weight but can be called 'brittle', one has to wonder if previous trips stressed the materials that resulted in the company pushing their luck one time too many. Given there was no accepted safety standards ever certified for the vessel there are hard questions to be answered and liabilities explored.

Somewhere I read that the CEO wanted young innovative types in his business designing the sub. He refused to listen or heed the advice of 50 year old ex sub designers and experienced pressure vessel engineers. He paid the price. Some old people of pretty smart and know what they are doing. Experience counts (at least in this instance).

There’s a difference between the “young and bold” types (who like to claim the old guys don’t understand new technologies and suppress innovation) and the “old and bold” types.

The old and bold types have a lot more accumulated wisdom, and a much better understanding of both the known unknowns and more importantly the existence of unknown unknowns.

In short, the young / new guys in any high risk activity don’t even know how much they don’t know.

I see that contrast between young and old, experienced and inexperienced in cave diving, where the young and or inexperienced “zero to hero” types go too far too fast and either kill themselves doing something stupid or scare themselves when they almost kill themselves and quit. The end result is the average cave diver is middle aged or older and has been in the sport for a decade or more. Most cave divers won’t consider anyone with less than 5 years experience as really being a serious cave diver yet, and certainly not one you’d trust.

I see similar trends in aerial application where young pilots will allow themselves to get into very sketchy situations partly through lack of knowledge, partly through the belief young people have that they are bullet proof, and partly through trying to impress employers. Employers who excuse crashes as “just how pilots learn” exacerbate and perpetuate the problem.

 

[BB57]

Two things coming, imo, lawsuits and some type of govt regulation.

Lawsuits are inevitable. The waivers that were signed are going to be useless based on what is arguably gross negligence in the design. In addition, unless you are a engineer and have full access to the design and test data, you really can’t make an informed decision about the safety of the vehicle, and a waiver is meaningless if it is not signed based on informed consent of the risks. That goes beyond just reading “this is dangerous and you might die”.

—-

The only regulation that is needed is to prohibit the carriage of paying passengers on an experimental craft.

The FAA has had a similar prohibition in place for experimental category aircraft for decades and it works.

However, given that this happened in international waters, admiralty law applies, which will both limit liability, and also makes any US federal regulation questionable in its applicability.

 

[BSA1]

Two things coming, imo, lawsuits and some type of govt regulation.

Not necessarily from the United States. While I read the company operated in International waters to avoid regulations the mother ship would have to be flagged in some country. Seems I read it is Canada.

Are any of the victims U.S. citizens?

 

[BB57]

If the sub imploded on it's initial descent, what were the tapping/banging sounds that were reported a day or two ago? The news said tapping sounds were heard on thirty minute intervals? I haven't heard the news address this. Does anybody know?

It’s clear (and not unexpected) that the US Navy heard the implosion and no doubt triangulated it to that location, using its current/modern iteration of SOSUS.

But what are they supposed to do about it?

- It’s a bad idea operationally as it discloses technical capability.

- If they announce it and don’t search the families, public etc, will be outraged as there is no positive confirmation that it happened until the wreckage has been found.

- The USN and or USCG then has to at least make an effort to locate the wreckage and call it a “rescue” when everyone involved knows it’s a “recovery”.

We have public safety divers on “Dive Rescue” teams all over the country and the safety rules and response times are such that if an actual, rescue is ever made it’s by someone who broke the safety protocols.

They are in effect “Dive Recovery” teams, but very few are called that as it’s less exciting and less likely to justify the funds spent.

- Even if the submersible had not imploded, and was still on the bottom with a live crew, there was absolutely no capability to recover it from the bottom in time to save the crew. Implosion or not, this was always a recovery operation.

Going forward the wreckage, or key pieces of it will be recovered as I’m addition to being a “screw around and find out” amateur engineering disaster, it’s also a useful learning laboratory to find out exactly what failed.

The USN spent millions developing carbon fiber pressure hull technology but dropped it as composites were not predictable in performance over a number of pressure cycles and when exposed to salt water. This civilian effort was an unsurprising failure but there’s still things that can be learned from it that justify the funds that will be spent on a limited and targeted recovery effort, much like the NTSB investigation of an airline accident.

—-


The source of the tapping noises heard by Canadian anti submarine aircraft and the sonobuoys it dropped? Who knows. There are lots of things that make tapping and clicking sounds in the ocean. I suspect the conclusions were both premature, and leaked.

 

[BB57]

My deal is that in this case, which is even worse than those people who get in trouble on top of Everest, the chance of rescue is very very close to zero. Those people put themselves in a situation where they should have well understood that rescue was extremely unlikely. A fire in a residential area is a whole different issue. For one thing the fire department was setup and funded for for those exact issue. Not a nickle of the money spend on this was allocated for such rescues.

There were millions of dollars spend trying to save 5 people who paid to put themselves in a situation where any chance of rescue was nil and everyone authorizing those expenditures knew they were throwing that money away. Once they knew it was missing would have had better odds of winning the lottery as saving anyone. Even if they had located the the sub intact on the bottom they still had near zero chance of saving those inside.

I will even bet it comes out that the parent vessel highly suspected an implosion in some manner. I would think any kind of listening device in close proximity would have heard it.

Plus, I don't care how much some billionaire in India paid in taxes there.

You can call me heartless if you want. But, the facts are what they are. I wasn't all that big on saving the nit wit woman basketball player, from herself, either.

If nothing else it’s a useful training exercise. It also gets people, armed services and agencies thinking about the challenges involved in deep ocean rescue and that thought and this experience may bear fruit in the future.

I agree with you about the nit wit, with the exception that idiot or not she was a US citizen and there were probable national policy issues involved with Putin and company using her as a hostage.

 

[BB57]

It's interesting that this sort of comment is usually heard only when wealthy people get in trouble and need to be rescued.

I spent 30 years as a firefighter working in poor inner-city neighborhoods. The population I served were largely dependent upon the government, to varying degrees, for housing, food, and medical care. Those who worked didn't earn much money, and consequently paid little, if anything, in taxes.

The fires I responded to were rarely non-preventable. They were caused by people falling asleep while smoking or cooking (often while intoxicated); arson; careless handling of flammable materials; negligence with electrical appliances; illegal electrical or natural gas hookups, etc., etc. Many (not all, but many) of our emergency medical calls were, similarly, the result of some dangerous or risky personal behavior, such as smoking, drinking, drug use, or criminal activity. (The vast majority of the shooting victims I encountered were drug dealers, shot by their peers.)

Yet, despite many of our victims being largely responsible for their own predicaments, society almost universally viewed them as victims of poverty or circumstance. They were accorded only sympathy and compassion, and no ever suggested it was inappropriate to spend taxpayer funds to save their lives or property.

(Let me hasten to add that we never, ever, viewed the citizens we served as unworthy or undeserving of our efforts. We willingly busted our butts, and risked our lives and health, for anyone who needed us, without regard to that person's station in life.)

The five men aboard the Titan were entrepreneurs, people who created jobs, undoubtedly paid a king's ransom in taxes, and contributed to society. I don't in the slightest begrudge them the taxpayer dollars that were spent to try to save them.

As noted in a prior post, there are benefits to be gained from this recovery operation. I also have no doubt the USN and USCG personnel involved knew it was a recovery and not a rescue from the start, and were not going to put personnel on this operation at undue risk.

As for fire services, while some one living down the hall in an apartment building or next door in a house may have started a fire through a careless or irresponsible act, I still appreciate the fire department putting out the blaze before the negative consequences of his act results in serious negative consequences for me.

That’s a big part of what having a fire department in the first place is about.

 

[BB57]

The memes have even alarmed me, and I have a dark sense of humor.
I also did my homework. As I understand it, this was a bi material composite hull of titanium and carbon fiber.
As I understand these things, that is an engraved invitation to de-lamination. I imagine it sounded like a peel of thunder from a nearby lightning strike, then it was over.
I'm glad that's how it happened. The protracted option was going to be unpleasant on so many levels and in so many ways I could only begin to imagine. I'm not really sure how to express the reality without somehow adding to the pile.

It was a 5” thick carbon fiber cylinder with titanium hemispherical end caps.

The issues are not delamination like you’d see in a carbon fiber wrapped aluminum tank. They are instead:

- the potential for undecided voids in the wrap when it was made;

- the potential for salt water intrusion through the outer resin and into the wrap itself which will cause delamination of the layers of wraps and create voids; and

- the interface between any inserts for things like bolts to hold the titanium front and rear sections to the tube, as well as any through hull fittings.

 

[BKLooney]

The Titanic added 5 more to her passenger list, she wants to be left alone...

 

[ImprovedModel56Fan]

You can call me heartless if you want. But, the facts are what they are. I wasn't all that big on saving the nit wit woman basketball player, from herself, either.

I wouldn't call you heartless, but I might have something much worse to say about the person (or his puppeteers) who saved that nitwit while pointedly ignoring a United States Marine who was in the grasp of the same enemy country for performing his duty.

 

[Rudi]

The media had several reasons to go wall to wall with this story. A distraction.

 

[Onomea]

I have not read through this thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned before: The Titanic was originally found as part of a secret mission to find and examine the wrecks of the Thresher and the Scorpion:

https://wapo.st/3XlHUuu

There's a link in there to a National Geographic article with a bit more info on the finding of the subs.

 

[cmdrcody]

I have not read through this through this thread, so apologies if this has been mentioned before: The Titanic was originally found as part of a secret mission to find and examine the wrecks of the Thresher and the Scorpion:

https://wapo.st/3XlHUuu

There's a link in there to a National Geographic article with a bit more info on the finding of the subs.

I believe Dr Ballard used the technique’s he learned from finding Scorpion and other wrecks, but the US Navy support gave him time following the Thresher and Scorpion wreck site detailed surveys to search for Titanic on the way back to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

 

[Bald1]

According to Fox Business the cries for regulation of the industry and lawsuits have already started. Less than 24hrs. It’s a shame that it happened. But everyone on that sub knew the risk. As far as compensation goes, let’s talk about cost of search efforts.

 

[Bald1]

And why is everyone asking James Cameron what he thinks? He directed a movie about the Titanic. When did he become an expert on submarines and ocean exploration? I’m glad it’s Friday. I need a drink.

 

[Muss Muggins]

James Cameron has completed 33 dives to the Titanic. He further has completed a dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest known place in the sea. I guess he's as good as anyone to ask about this . . .

And why is everyone asking James Cameron what he thinks? He directed a movie about the Titanic. When did he become an expert on submarines and ocean exploration? I’m glad it’s Friday. I need a drink.

 

[RetCapt]

Beemerguy53 - post #113

Stated with class and compassion. I was 30+ years an LEO, including SAR ops. After I retired I put in 16+ years as a volunteer firefighter/EMT. This also included SAR ops.

In both endeavors our core mission was to protect and save lives. It did not matter the social, economic, political or legal circumstances of our victims. It was never even mentioned. The only thing that counted was the mission. When we saved a life, we celebrated, because we won, regardless of who the victims were. If we failed to save a life, which happened all to often given what we were facing, despite the magnitude of the tragedy, we still had to go on to the next call, and come back to work the next shift. I saw how this wore on people, sometimes with debilitating consequences. As a commander the welfare of my troops was my responsibility. I was where the buck stopped.

Mutual aid is a key element in public safety. When we would respond to another jurisdiction, or allied agencies would respond to ours, the host agency knew all those often unknown responders were there to assist and support the mission with the same level of commitment. That single minded dedication brings out the very best in people.

I knew when I went into LE that I would never be rich. It did not matter as I was compelled to do what I did. So I have never regretted that decision. Nor did my peers.

I have no incisive comments in this tragic case. All I can do is mourn the victims.

Thank you for your post.

 

[Protocall_Design]

Somewhere I read that the CEO wanted young innovative types in his business designing the sub. He refused to listen or heed the advice of 50 year old ex sub designers and experienced pressure vessel engineers. He paid the price. Some old people of pretty smart and know what they are doing. Experience counts (at least in this instance).

In most cases, experience is what you get right after you need it.

 

[walkin jack]

Disclaimers not withstanding, it is my opinion that there is no defense against negligence in cases where people were seriously injured or killed.

If people died or were seriously injured because you didn't adequately, design, build, test or use proper materias, you are liable. I'm talking CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE. I would to sit on the jury in a huge class action law suit.

 

[venomballistics]

If the sub imploded on it's initial descent, what were the tapping/banging sounds that were reported a day or two ago? The news said tapping sounds were heard on thirty minute intervals? I haven't heard the news address this. Does anybody know?

practically anything. The sea is not a silent world.
As far as the news goes ... they are sleazy enough to give used car salesmen a shot at sainthood. I'm STILL getting news in my feed holding out false hope as click bait. Anything to milk another couple advert bucks out of it.