Titan Terminated at Titanic

[IvanV]

I just don't understand why there wasn't some kind of locator beacon on it. On the outside, with its own battery to make it independent of the electrical systems.

It is supposed to have something that gives a sonar ping every 15 mins on it. But it isn't working. And it also stopped working in the earlier incident where they lost it for 5 hours.

So they failed to make reliable an essential safety feature known to be unreliable.

Reading the thread pishwish links, it doesn't have a cable attachment point. So attaching it to a cable to pull it up is far from straightforward. Seems they thought there was no point to that. Maybe they thought there is little survival possibility once you get to the point of needing to lift it up with a cable.

But, from the same source, it has several ways of losing ballast, to make itself lighter than water, and hence getting itself up to the surface. That seems to be the main escape method. So the big risk is getting stuck on something. Or some failure where any kind of operation from inside is lost, losing all methods of jettisoning ballast.

If it has jettisoned ballast and come up to, or near to, the surface, it really ought to be reasonably straightforward to find it with a few sonobuoys.

[TopBadger]

So the big risk is getting stuck on something. Or some failure where any kind of operation from inside is lost, losing all methods of jettisoning ballast.

I thought I'd read somewhere that some of the ballast is secured with dissolving ties... i.e. even if the controls are lost the ballast is jettisoned after 48-36 hours. Of course if snared on something then losing ballast may not help and indeed losing ballast in an uncontrolled way might make things worse.

If it has jettisoned ballast and come up to, or near to, the surface, it really ought to be reasonably straightforward to find it with a few sonobuoys.

Hence I think the working assumption is it's stuck down there...

What with the apparently lax safety approach and the CEO on board, it's only too easy to imagine the CEO encouraging the pilot to 'get us in a little closer'...

[lpm]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

[jimbob]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

Assuming it didn't get caught on something, the answer is, "not well enough".

The CEO seemed to think that "Macguyvering" systems was a good thing, for something that did not have any time constraints other than self-imposed ones.

It reminds me slightly of Musk's approach to SpaceX launches. But with even higher risks to people's lives.

[shpalman]

debris field found

[headshot]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

It reminds me slightly of Musk's approach to SpaceX launches. But with even higher risks to people's lives.

Funny...my friend who works at JPL made precisely this comparison earlier today.

[lpm]

debris field found

but but but there's banging every 30 minutes from the highly skilled professional submariner who knows just what to do and is keeping the other passengers calm and they are preserving oxygen by doing mindfulness and

[lpm]

Killed by being woke. Didn't hire "50 year old white guys", instead went for disabled black lesbian immigrants with sociology degrees.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1671372833979785217

[Pishwish]

debris field found

We will have to wait till 8 pm for the press conference as the submersible parts that have been mentioned so far could have been jettisoned as part of the emergency ascent procedure.

[Pishwish]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

It reminds me slightly of Musk's approach to SpaceX launches. But with even higher risks to people's lives.

Funny...my friend who works at JPL made precisely this comparison earlier today.

Ironically, there's such a hunger to link Musk to this debacle that several outlets insinuated that the comms loss was due to Starlink. Snopes got egg on its face for this https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjjwq/ ... -submarine.

[Imrael]

This has probably been a body recovery operation from day one, and I'd think a certainty now. I kind of hope it was a quick death - its not in me to cheer torturing strangers to death over several days even if they are rich idiots.

Wreckage found and (by CNN) assessed to be from the sub, so it seems my hopes it was a quick death were met.

[Fishnut]

Press conference confirms they've found the sub. The debris field was about 1600 feet from the bow of Titanic but isn't in her debris field and is consistent with the location the sub likely was when contact was lost.

[Pishwish]

They found the end bells of the pressure vessel, so catastrophic implosion it is then.

[Fishnut]

The BBC has a documentary about the company/sub that is terrifying in retrospect. There's bad stuff happening that they've been allowed to show - including a thruster coming off as they launched the sub from its floating platform (around 21min 40). There's a conversation between one of the launch divers and another crew member (starting around 22 min 10) about the thruster:

Crewmember: "That's the one you just replaced?"

Diver: "Yeah" looks skyward, shrugs his arms, "They checked it, said it was good, so..."

Crewmember: We'll find out, we'll see" As she says it she turns to the camera and makes this facial expression:

We'll see.jpg (11.23 KiB) Viewed 728 times

[jimbob]

Carbon fibre seems a really odd choice to make the submersible out of.

[Boustrophedon]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

I was going to suggest something clever as a solution to this, but the thought occurred that someone somewhere must have needed this in the past. A quick google finds that such devices are commercially available for the very need suggested.

https://www.underseareleases.com/

[jimbob]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

I was going to suggest something clever as a solution to this, but the thought occurred that someone somewhere must have needed this in the past. A quick google finds that such devices are commercially available for the very need suggested.

https://www.underseareleases.com/

I have mentioned elsewhere my favourite engineering solution, which was how to design a reliable, rugged, lightweight, waterproof time fuse for limpet mines, given 1940s technology

Have the two terminals of the detonator circuit embedded in a gobstopper, and protected by a condom.

The diver removes the condom after the mine has been set, and once the seawater has dissolved and exposed the bare wires, the circuit is completed.

[Pishwish]

Carbon fibre seems a really odd choice to make the submersible out of.

James Cameron is not a fan (at 6 min 30 sec in the clip).

[Boustrophedon]

Carbon fibre seems a really odd choice to make the submersible out of.

I went for an interview many years ago with a firm that made submersibles for the North Sea oil industry. Whilst I was there I witnessed them making a pressure hull for a submersible out of a monolithic fibreglass lay-up. The guy doing it had been at the job for a week, it was much thicker than the 5" quoted for Titan. The explanation is that the resin is strong enough in terms of compressive strength but you need the high modulus fibre to provide stability against Euler buckling. The domed ends were laid up as part of the whole.

They were also making rigid diving suits with articulated arms, the spherical joints at the elbows etc were very clever indeed, the hydrostatic force pushing them together being many tons but they were as smooth as silk to articulate even under pressure. Anyway the transparent domes were pure acrylic, three inches thick but just Perspex.

[Boustrophedon]

Dissolving ties? Sounds unlikely. How would that work in practice?

I was going to suggest something clever as a solution to this, but the thought occurred that someone somewhere must have needed this in the past. A quick google finds that such devices are commercially available for the very need suggested.

https://www.underseareleases.com/

I have mentioned elsewhere my favourite engineering solution, which was how to design a reliable, rugged, lightweight, waterproof time fuse for limpet mines, given 1940s technology

Have the two terminals of the detonator circuit embedded in a gobstopper, and protected by a condom.

The diver removes the condom after the mine has been set, and once the seawater has dissolved and exposed the bare wires, the circuit is completed.

I saw a water ingress alarm for an unmanned submersible made out of a clothes peg with contacts on the gripper end held open by an aspirin.

[jimbob]

France 24 was reporting that it wasn't possible to test 5" thick carbon composite adequately, so were relying on acoustic detection of cracks. I'd have thought you could have used embedded fibre optic strain gauges - something that was being developed in the mid 1990s, and reportedly one potential advantage of composite materials for monitoring.

But if one couldn't, and given that steel or titanium has been shown to be reliable and safe, a material that one cannot test should have been ruled out right at the start.

[jimbob]

I was going to suggest something clever as a solution to this, but the thought occurred that someone somewhere must have needed this in the past. A quick google finds that such devices are commercially available for the very need suggested.

https://www.underseareleases.com/

I have mentioned elsewhere my favourite engineering solution, which was how to design a reliable, rugged, lightweight, waterproof time fuse for limpet mines, given 1940s technology

Have the two terminals of the detonator circuit embedded in a gobstopper, and protected by a condom.

The diver removes the condom after the mine has been set, and once the seawater has dissolved and exposed the bare wires, the circuit is completed.

I saw a water ingress alarm for an unmanned submersible made out of a clothes peg with contacts on the gripper end held open by an aspirin.

The book I read that in (The Secret War of Charles Frazer Smith) which was the wartime autobiography of the biggest inspiration behind Ian Fleming's "Q" said that he used alker seltzers for timers on mines dropped by bomber to disrupt Rhineland and other riverine traffic in occupied Europe

[Boustrophedon]

France 24 was reporting that it wasn't possible to test 5" thick carbon composite adequately, so were relying on acoustic detection of cracks. I'd have thought you could have used embedded fibre optic strain gauges - something that was being developed in the mid 1990s, and reportedly one potential advantage of composite materials for monitoring.

But if one couldn't, and given that steel or titanium has been shown to be reliable and safe, a material that one cannot test should have been ruled out right at the start.

Composites have been used for submersibles for 30 years or more, it's a mature technology. Composite middle with titanium ends that's not the way it's done. Problem is it seems he seems to have been working outside of the industry as established, because they were too slow and hidebound and it has been reported that they just didn't want to pay for the testing.

[Grumble]

France 24 was reporting that it wasn't possible to test 5" thick carbon composite adequately, so were relying on acoustic detection of cracks. I'd have thought you could have used embedded fibre optic strain gauges - something that was being developed in the mid 1990s, and reportedly one potential advantage of composite materials for monitoring.

But if one couldn't, and given that steel or titanium has been shown to be reliable and safe, a material that one cannot test should have been ruled out right at the start.

Composites have been used for submersibles for 30 years or more, it's a mature technology. Composite middle with titanium ends that's not the way it's done. Problem is it seems he seems to have been working outside of the industry as established, because they were too slow and hidebound and it has been reported that they just didn't want to pay for the testing.

Too slow - what’s the rush for? Hidebound = following good engineering practice. The more I hear the angrier I get about this man.
Yesterday I was told that the carbon fibre has been tested and show to have problems below about 1200m. Might be a mature technology, but not for those depths.

[jimbob]

France 24 was reporting that it wasn't possible to test 5" thick carbon composite adequately, so were relying on acoustic detection of cracks. I'd have thought you could have used embedded fibre optic strain gauges - something that was being developed in the mid 1990s, and reportedly one potential advantage of composite materials for monitoring.

But if one couldn't, and given that steel or titanium has been shown to be reliable and safe, a material that one cannot test should have been ruled out right at the start.

Composites have been used for submersibles for 30 years or more, it's a mature technology. Composite middle with titanium ends that's not the way it's done. Problem is it seems he seems to have been working outside of the industry as established, because they were too slow and hidebound and it has been reported that they just didn't want to pay for the testing.

Too slow - what’s the rush for? Hidebound = following good engineering practice. The more I hear the angrier I get about this man.
Yesterday I was told that the carbon fibre has been tested and show to have problems below about 1200m. Might be a mature technology, but not for those depths.

Well put. It's not an engineering challenge that hasn't been solved.

I doubt it would even have been significantly cheaper once proper testing hab been factored in.


The novelty was in doing something that had already been done, but with untested materials and design.

I guess we'll see how valid the legal disclaimer is. I hope it's not.
It's not like inventing a jet engine when aircraft are using piston engines.