Submarine missing

[DWalt]

On Fox Business News this AM, they were interviewing a lawyer about signed liability release forms, i.e., liability waivers. He said they were essentially invalid in cases involving clear negligence on the part of the tour provider. I believe that is the situation here. And it is certain there will be legal action taken. Whether there are any company assets available for judgment satisfaction is unknown.

 

[venomballistics]

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.

each layer is a chance to lose when you get down to it.
a ding can cause a flaw between layers as well. Once it gains a foothold the layer separation cannot be easily stopped. Particularly in a role like this where you cannot drill to the void and inject resin without causing a bigger problem.

 

[Chuck24]

Growing up in the historic triangle of Virginia, I remember going to Jamestown and seeing the replicas of the ships the settlers came over on and thinking they must have been nuts. This was a whole new level.

 

[Walter Rego]

I took a flight on the Collings Foundation B-24 Liberator in 2000 and on their B-17 Flying Fortress in 2003. In both cases I had to sign a waiver and I remember the form said that both aircraft were considered to be "experimental" according to some legal definition.

The B-17 is the one that crashed in 2019 with seven of the passengers killed and six more seriously injured. It was attributed to pilot error. But I well remember sitting on the radio operator's jump seat and looking at the control cables and hydraulic lines and thinking I was in a 60 year old aircraft that was never intended to have a long service life like a modern commercial airliner for example. But both flights sure were fun !

I saw the interview with Dr. Ballard and James Cameron this morning and they both said they pretty much knew the sub had a catastrophic failure as soon as it was reported that communication was lost but didn't want to say anything publicly out of respect for the victim's families until it was confirmed.

 

[biku324]

Soon enough there'll be a tragedy on Virgin Galactic and/or SpaceEx tourist flights. We'll all have to care about the bored, dead wealthy space dilettantes.

 

[GaryS]

The guy who was in charge should be put to death. Ohhh.

Do you know what a class action law suit is?

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.

 

[bgrafsr]

In our local newspaper, an article stated that USCG or the Navy, or perhaps another company would attempt to bring up the remains of the five people on board the sub. If there was an implosion, would not the victims be totally lost?

 

[1BadSmith]

This was over before it began, lots of dumb going on for a group of billionaires!! Two hours after the implosion happened, it was pretty obvious and confirmed by the Navy. If a certain someone didn't need daddy to cover for his dumb, this wouldn't have been the top headline for days. And now another batch of dumb, we are taking advice from a movie director who made a film once about the titanic, really!!?? And now we get months and years of investigations...who pays for this?? It's working though, cuz it sure keeps headlines off a certain someone, oh wait I can't remember who I er ah mean? Where am I?

 

[Rustyt1953]

And now another batch of dumb, we are taking advice from a movie director who made a film once about the titanic, really!!??

You should carefully re-read post #156.

 

[wood714]

Soon enough there'll be a tragedy on Virgin Galactic and/or SpaceEx tourist flights. We'll all have to care about the bored, dead wealthy space dilettantes.

A four page thread with at this time 170 posts. Three of which are yours. Seems a lot of people are interested in this tragic event.

You don't have to care, or read about it if you don't choose to.

I rich man dies the same as a poor man.

 

[biku324]

But news organizations care more about dead wealthy celebrities.

 

[hsguy]

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.

Well said! I spent 35+ years full time in the Fire Service and EMS and was apparently negligent in my duties by not triaging patients based upon their wealth or social status but rather by their need for assistance, shame on me. I do find some of the comments here profoundly disturbing and have no idea if the comment is made because of wealth or social envy or just sheer callousness for a fellow human, quite sad actually.

 

[steelslaver]

As far as not letting the world know the Navy detected the implosion in short order because it would display our technical abilities. That is kind of mute in face of the fact that we told the world about it a couple days afterwards.

I have spend a bunch of time on boats and some time underwater diving. Got my diving certs on Okinawa in 1971. Water transmits sound way better and faster than air. I find it hard to believe the mother ship didn't have any kind to ability to hear such an implosion that close to its hull. It had to be a significant "POP"

They knew it had imploded before they ever let out a call for help

As far as help goes. My opinion isn't all based on wealth. But, if you look at the world from a triage point of view, it was far from using resources to their best advantage. A fire fighter does not go after the people on the 30th floor before getting the people on the ground floor out. With the money that was blown on this a lot of other lives could have actually been saved. Lot of life saving medical procedures do not get preformed around the world for lack of money and other resources.

We know that every year climbers on Everest are going to get in serious trouble. Why don't we make "heroic efforts" to save them from their own near impossible situations?? A very few do get saved when others stumble across them, but not from actual rescue missions. More than one climber in distress has simply been abandon. Why is no big and expensive effort made even though the summit of Everest is easier to get to than the Titanic??

Because everyone knows it is a waste of time, effort and hazardous.

 

[venomballistics]

But news organizations care more about dead wealthy celebrities.

If we had to address all of it, we'd be here a while.
Chicago, Detroit, Most of California's metro areas .... Columbia was always good for inhumanity, likely still is. Venezuela, Cuba .... where do you want to begin ... or perhaps more importantly, end?

 

[BB57]

I find it hard to believe the mother ship didn't have any kind to ability to hear such an implosion that close to its hull. It had to be a significant "POP"

They knew it had imploded before they ever let out a call for help.

Oceangate announced yesterday that the crew on the support vessel had heard a loud “bang” on their hydrophone.

As far as help goes. My opinion isn't all based on wealth. But, if you look at the world from a triage point of view, it was far from using resources to their best advantage. A fire fighter does not go after the people on the 30th floor before getting the people on the ground floor out. With the money that was blown on this a lot of other lives could have actually been saved. Lot of life saving medical procedures do not get preformed around the world for lack of money and other resources.

We know that every year climbers on Everest are going to get in serious trouble. Why don't we make "heroic efforts" to save them from their own near impossible situations?? A very few do get saved when others stumble across them, but not from actual rescue missions. More than one climber in distress has simply been abandon. Why is no big and expensive effort made even though the summit of Everest is easier to get to than the Titanic??

Because everyone knows it is a waste of time, effort and hazardous.

I don’t buy the argument that lots of lives could have saved with the money spent here. That’s not how budgets work and the USN and USCG are not leaving people to die due to budget shortfalls.

—-

There have been helicopter rescues, and the highest has been from 23,000 ft in Nepal. That’s insanely high by helicopter landing standards.

As for rescuing other climbers, it’s often a mater of avoiding other fatalities.

My wife and I cave dive and we do some pretty advanced stuff involving closed circuit side mount rebreathers, mixed gasses, dive propulsion vehicles, complex navigation, small passages, zero visibility, deep depths and long penetration distances, and a time or two going to places where more people have gone to the moon.

If we dive with other people on the team we scale the difficulty of the dive way back as we simply do not trust them.

We put a great deal of time, money and effort into training, equipment, redundancy, planning, work up dives, and then stick to the plan because we know that the only resources we will have to solve a problem as the resources we brought with us. We also know that small mistakes can kill.

We also came to an agreement a long time ago that if we screwed up and we got in a situation where we only had the resources to get one of us out, one of us was going to get out. All other things being equal, she will be the one getting out.

I don’t imagine mountain climbing at those altitudes is any different. All those inspirational rescue stories aside, they are the exception. In any extreme environment if you want to prevent a single fatality event from becoming a multiple fatality event, you have to be willing to cut your losses.

 

[Puller]

More often than not, technology and science learns more from failure than success. US Space Shuttle disasters for example.

 

[steelslaver]

Oceangate announced yesterday that the crew on the support vessel had heard a loud “bang” on their hydrophone.




I don’t buy the argument that lots of lives could have saved with the money spent here. That’s not how budgets work and the USN and USCG are not leaving people to die due to budget shortfalls.

So you believe that our government services should spend our tax dollars with no regard to effectiveness. That is a good way to end up 30 trillion in debt.

 

[CAJUNLAWYER]

Have not bothered to read everything and this might have been said before but Carbon fiber is STRONG. It is can withstand tremendous force. BUt it is fragile and brittle. And when it fails there is no warning. Based on my experience with carbon fiber in sailboat racing, I can tell you that it is great for sails. It doesn't stretch and remains rock solid unlike the old dacron, canvas etc used. The old sails stretched into pretty much useless before that shredded and were replaced long before then. Carbon fiber on the other hand stays perfect until one day it shreds catastrophically. And there is no way of knowing when it is gonna go. Same thing with spars. Incredibly strong in compression, but one nick or breach of the protective surface and it can snap like a twig with no warning. Which is acceptable when racing on the surface where you can wait for rescue but no so OK when you are a couple of thousand feet under water. When I found out that this thing was made of carbon fiber, I told my wife that it would happen if not now than soon.
Not a good use for Carbon Fiber-submersables. BUt is you want a STRONG, LIGHT throw away composit for sailboats then go for it. but not for deep sea exploration

 

[Doug M.]

Take a look at the money we spend on USN subs. Sure, some that is inefficient, etc., but crew safety is critical because the sub is useless without a functioning crew. Consider the technology about which we know. Then think about achieving the same level of safety for a vessel that is going several times farther down than even our best subs are known to be able to go. The pressures are staggering.

Think about all this, and consider how likely it was to fail. The good news, from my understanding, is that this would have been a very rapid death. It is not likely that there will be anything to recover.

 

[Chuck24]

But news organizations care more about dead wealthy celebrities.

Because their viewers care more about dead, wealthy celebrities