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It's been quite the few days, following this story! I was rooting for them to be found all the way up until the final announcement. I had hope.
I’ve always admired people with adventurous minds and willing to take some risks but following the story and seeing several interviews with the CEO he kind of struck me as a bit too sure of himself, a bit arrogant maybe, definitely overly confident. I mean the missions he was trying to achieve had zero room for error. And in the end, it cost him his life!
Guests on news programs are saying that carbon fiber had never been used before
to build the hull of a deep-diving sub. I wonder how much testing had been done,
before this sub was even designed, about the suitability of carbon fiber.
And, would there have been any way of studying the hull after each dive,
for signs of material fatigue from the repeated pressurization and release?
One thing I just read, they haven't found the crew compartment, apparently. Basically just the front and back ends and the 'sled'.
If it imploded on the way down.. Pretty big stroke of luck that multiple pieces of debris landed in basically the same spot.. But, then again, if the pieces were similar in weight, it's possible. Anyway.. I can make arguments on both sides of this.. I honestly couldn't even give an opinion as to which might be correct. It's about 50/50 for me.
I'm not ruling out that they reached bottom.
Here's a video of slow motion implosions of containers under water pressure. What we see is what I think happened here. The parts that contained air cavities were annihilated while the parts that did not were left intact. The frame and the tail cone did not have air cavities but the crew compartment did.
Guests on news programs are saying that carbon fiber had never been used before
to build the hull of a deep-diving sub. I wonder how much testing had been done,
before this sub was even designed, about the suitability of carbon fiber.
And, would there have been any way of studying the hull after each dive,
for signs of material fatigue from the repeated pressurization and release?
Lack non-destructive testing was the basis of whistle blower complaint by former employee. Employee was terminated.
In his complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, Lochridge alleged he had raised concerns about the safety of the Titan with OceanGate and advised the company to conduct more testing of the the vessel's hull. Lochridge said he had disagreed with his employer about the best way to test the safety of the sub and that he objected to OceanGate's decision to perform dives without "non-destructive testing to prove its integrity."
Non-destructive testing is a type of analysis used on materials to determine their integrity and reliability.
"The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible," Lochridge's legal filing stated.
Lochridge, a submarine pilot and underwater inspector, said in a legal filing that he was "trained to recognize flaw and points of failure in subsea equipment." His job at OceanGate involved "ensuring the safety of all crew and clients during submersible and surface operations," according to the filing.
Lochridge also expressed concern that the company planned for the sub to rely on an acoustic monitoring system to detect if the hull was breaking down or about to fail. That wouldn't provide much help in an emergency, Lochridge claimed in the filing, because the acoustic analysis would only alert people about imminent problems, "often milliseconds before an implosion."
Lochridge claimed the submersible needed additional types of tests to ensure its hull could withstand the rigors of deep-sea exploration. "Non-destructive testing was critical to detect such potentially existing flaws in order to ensure a solid and safe product for the safety of the passengers and crew," his legal filing claims.
Rather than address those concerns, OceanGate "immediately fired" Lochridge, the court document claim. The company allegedly gave him "approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises."
I've been following this story pretty closely and am actually relieved that it was an instantaneous implosion rather than the crew dying from lack of oxygen. The debris was found about 1,600 feet off the bow of the "Titanic" and I like to think that they all got a look at the ship before they perished and that they are now entombed near the object of their desire.
This one is good too - based on this guy, who has been involved with deep sea subs for decades, the Titan is the only one that has ever failed, and its the only one using the type of materials its made of.
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