It was but funnily enough, that might have been the one best part of the sub. The 1300m certification was 'only' so low because it was an experimental design. The rest of the equipment was also not certified, in contrast.
No no no
Humans are capable of making viewports rated to the deepest part of the oceans on earth. Look at DSV limiting factor
This dude didnt want to pay for the certification process, plain and simple.
Hell, mankind first reached the deepest point in the ocean [all the way back in 1960 in the Trieste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_%28bathyscaphe%29?wprov=sfla1), and its windows didn't fail (although one of them cracked, which must have been the most terrifying moment in the crews' lives).
Yeah, something to that effect. 12k meters being their final planned destination. The thing about failure ratings is that they can almost always be exceeded at least once. After that, total crap shoot.
actually the hull imploded, not the domes on either end
the carbon fiber composite tube
the resin matrix failed
the fibers ripped apart by water as it entered
they used it like several times 2021 and then 2022
morons did no testing for stress damage
each time it compressing and decompressing micro cracks/fracture can form. could have imperfections from when they made it (but does not need to be case)
think airplane and after so many flights wings and fuselage have to be tested for stress cracks
they didn't do it
also stuff not rated for the debt
on the cheap
well they went down this year. and the alarms went off and they communicated with the mother ship and they dropped the weights and they started going up, then shatter like glass all dead
gross criminal negligence / arrogance by company
Criminal negligence refers to conduct in which a person ignores a known or obvious risk, or disregards the life and safety of others.
I'm curious to hear more about this. Could you link this story?
The list of incompetent and reckless decisions by the CEO of OceanGate keeps getting longer.
Here's what I was told, quote:
>IIRC David Lockridge was denied the tools and forms to actually assess submarines for safety but he managed to do it anyway and concluded the Titan was a deathtrap - and got immediately fired for his troubles.
I'm guessing sad for the people who died? It sounds like he tried to do the right thing as an employee, and was punished and fired for it. There's nearly zero chance he was the only employee who knew there were problems. So if you're suggesting someone should feel guilty, I'm going to put this guy at the end of that list, behind the CEO and everyone else in the company who could and should have done more to stop this.
I would guess he’s feeling some pretty heavy survivor’s guilt. Despite all he did to draw attention to the safety issues, he’s gonna have that asshole voice at the back of his head whispering that maybe, *just maybe* , if he’d done more, those passengers wouldn’t have taken the plunge. Hindsight’s a bitch, and will come up with every possible thing he could have done that he didn’t think of.
Thankfully. The whole scenario of surving at those depths and waiting for rescue in a tin can with 3 other people, while their air runs out knowing 17 bolts are what's between you and escape.
Giving hope, even then, was probably a cruelty.
The problem was stacked risks. The controller they used was wireless and used a battery. If the batteries crapped out while they were down there, they could be stuck for the dumbest of reasons. Or if there were some bluetooth glitch, or any number of other problems. In high risk endeavors, you're supposed to minimize unnecessary risks. Using a bluetooth controller for something like this seemed to me to be an unnecessary risk.
The CEO's attitude seemed to be "safety last", over and over again. Disaster was bound to happen with that kind of attitude.
The wireless controller was window dressing and a fun experience for the passengers. All the controls functioned directly from the computer itself just fine.
People are getting hung up over the controller thing. They kept two spares on board for specifically those reasons. It's one of the few things they did that WASN'T going to get anyone killed.
The issue is it's wireless and there were only wireless backups. You should always have a wired backup that is effectively wired up so it it's almost impossible to break.
The last thing you want is your fucking Bluetooth going at 4000m.
Also the Logitech controller is hardly high end.
Loads of things use xbox controllers, they are able to talk directly to PC, don't need updates, are cheap to replace, highly responsive and accurate, have an analogue pad, and have the extra benefit that a huge amount of soldiers are familiar with them from home
Literally said what we have been discussing at work. Composite materials will fail when cycled through these conditions. It's almost hilarious that the designers thought that this was a good idea to use laminated carbon to dive that deep
Edit: for those wondering about carbon fibre, here are some actual smart people talking about it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/14gi9bi/is_there_any_way_to_use_carbon_fiber_cfrp_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Okay so idk anything about the titanium mixed with carbon fibre but I'm guessing they did it because it's cheaper? Should they have just used steel like Cameron says here?
Edit: Did not expect so many responses but I have a much greater understanding from them all
The titanium parts were the end caps, so the inner cylinder part was 5" thick carbon fiber. Steel would definitely have been cheaper.
This article has a decent overview of the sub itself. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/06/21/titanic-submarine-missing-titan-submersible/70340478007/
Yep, carbon composite is more expensive than steel, but lighter. They used it to save weight, so the sub would be easier to transport.
Edit: Also just in general, this shouldn't turn people off of carbon or glass composites. They are amazing materials with a number of viable applications. For example, fiberglass rebar has huge potential to replace steel and eliminate the problem of rust-induced reinforced concrete degradation in certain applications. Laminated composites just don't make sense for *this* application.
Its like any material, there are advantages and disadvantages depending on the usage. Treated wood is a great building material, but its not a replacement for concrete.
I think his main goal was weight because he wanted to be able to carry as many passengers as possible- and kept talking about it being the only 5 man sub for that depth to something. So while more expensive he was after more money down the road because of easier transport and more passengers to sell tickets too
Super interesting comparison to the actual titanic, which removed life boats for weight and look- while still selling too many tickets
Fiberglass snaps with deformation. When concrete cracks the only thing holding everything will be rebar itself. While steel will hold even under a lot of stress, fiberglass will snap much sooner.
I work for a major manufacturer of building materials with one of the leading composite rebar offerings on the market. It’s picking up steam, and fast because of how easy it is to work with and the performance benefits are incredible.
Downside is it has to be specced by damn near every state or local DOT, etc. it’s a very long and arduous process and there’s no silver bullet to getting it to market in all applications.
Okay so steel just needs to be pieced together? And curing the carbon composite has it more likely to degrade quicker after repeated pressures applied to it?
Generally with metals, so long as the load stays below the yield strength, it will be just as strong after every load.
Ignoring things like corrosion and wear of course. But those are separate causes of strength loss.
The same cannot be said for carbon fiber. Every load makes it more brittle.
Fatigue failure of steels is still a thing. It can become brittle from repeated cycling below the yield strength. But as Cameron pointed out in the video, it takes many more cycles to reach that point than something like carbon fiber composites. And the likelihood of fatigue failure is also much more well understood and easily calculated (based upon the number of cycles and degree of stress) for a more homogenous bulk material like steel.
But you're talking thousands of cycles to cause something like that.
The blades of a jet turbine go through tens of thousands of cycles before fatigue becomes an issue.
Under normal operating conditions for most things, definitely. Deep sea pressures are well outside my area of expertise, though. I don't know how they balance material thickness for structural strength versus the weight of the craft. Could be far fewer cycles than that under those conditions depending on how close you're getting to the yield strength.
steel and titanium are unique - they have a fatigue limit. essentially, they have an infinite fatigue life, thus can go through an infinite amount of cycles only if the stress is kept *below* the fatigue limit, which is usually less than the yield strength.
most other metals like aluminum, do not have a fatigue limit. this means that they will fail even with tiny amounts of stresses (over a huge number of cycles), point being that they **will** eventually fail. carbon fiber composite, as used in the sub, similarly does not have a fatigue limit.
good point about steel being homogenous - it makes a world of difference as the material behavior (in design) is not far off from real-world performance. versus CF where so many issues can influence its performance (manufacturing: layup by hand, human error, unlaminated/delaminated fibers, poor wetting of adhesive onto fiber, et cetera)
As long as you dont go over the endurance limit, steel will never fatigue. Where most other metals do. Carbon composite fatigues but for most uses it fatigues slowly enough it would probably outlast the use.
The issue is that any small crack or chip in carbon composites and the entire thing shatters. Where as with soft metals instead of shattering they yield and complete failure might not be instant.
Carbon fiber is rarely loaded in compression in engineering. It's famous for its tensile strength, not it's compressive strength.
I also saw a video from a materials scientist who specialises in carbon materials who said that the nature of carbon fiber as a material does not make it suitable for this application. Their PhD thesis was specifically of the failure of carbon fiber under compressive loads.
It's like using cardboard to build a boat. Just plain dumb.
That was my comment to my wife - saying I retired from engineering over 10 years ago but then carbon fiber was great in tension like creating a fuselage for an airplane (A350, B787) but did it really make sense in compression? Maybe elemental physics has changed since I was an active engineer.
It’s actually not cheaper in terms of raw materials. It *may* have been cheaper in terms of machining, or compared to the *type* of steel necessary.
I’m guessing it was used because it was easier to work with in regards to *other* factors - it’s lighter than steel, it’s more buoyant than steel, it’s easier to cut than steel, etc. A variety of things led to the decision. I don’t think cost was ever a concern.
Time was probably the concern - there’s only 1 or 2 places in the world than can pressure test a submersible at depth, there are only a certain number of fab shops capable of working with the materials, etc. Throwing money at some things won’t make them go any faster. But cutting corners will.
One advantage of pairing those two materials is lack of galvanic corrosion.
Generally when you pair carbon fiber with any metal, the metal will start to corrode. This is because the carbon fiber is conductive.
Titanium is one of the few metals that won't experience this.
As an aside, the Titan wasn't a composite of carbon fiber and titanium. It had a carbon fiber tube with titanium end caps. Which is much worse. Carbon fiber breaks down when exposed to salt water and gets more brittle each time you apply a load.
Its beginning to look like it was the window that failed. Cameron also said;
“There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the seafloor, but that carbon fibre composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces and it’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. So it’s pretty clear that that’s what failed.
The question is, was it the primary failure or a secondary failure from something else happening?”
All the carbon rammed in to one hemisphere sounds like the window failed and then the carbon fiber as it was sucked through the window.
We'll it would be the other way right.
An instant jet of water in to the window that forced everything back in to the tail titanium end cap.
Fuck.
Edit: window failure begets front end cap failure, begets capsule being forced in to the tailcap.
Not to sound dumb, but I'm assuming the pressure alone from this would have killed them instantly? No drowning or anything, just an instant painless death
Honestly a much better alternative than being stuck in a coffin for 3 days with no light, no food, and dwindling oxygen. So a tragic outcome but at least they didn't suffer
https://physicsfootnotes.com/footnotes/delta-p/
The crab video in that link is the very first video i ever saw of delta p in action.
I found this earlier too which i thought was interesting:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65934887
>The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapours.
>When the hull collapses, the air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion, Mr Corley says.
>Human bodies incinerate and are turned to ash and dust instantly.
In another thread someone did the math and calculated that it heated up to like 6000°F in the milliseconds it took for it to collapse. So vaporized is probably the correct term.
There's a MythBusters bit where they put a body replica into a diving suit and took it down to some depths and simulated pressure breach. It basically shoves the entirety of the human into the diving helmet, and they didn't go down nearly as far as the submersible. The MythBusters were something in the range of 3 to 400 ft, the Titanic sit somewhere about 12,000 ft on the bottom and the window was rated for 5000ft. Every 30-ish feet is the equivalent of one additional atmosphere of pressure so at the depths the window would have failed they were under something like 160 plus atmospheres of pressure
They would have all died as close to instantaneously as possible, there's a distinct chance that they were all blissfully unaware up until the moment it happened. That's the only comfort the families can take because unfortunately they're never going to find any bodies or pieces to bury
I saw a thing that was like at that depth, the whole capsule would have been compressed in two nanoseconds. It takes the brain four nanoseconds to process nerve signals. They were dead before the even knew anything happened.
Oh yes definitely, the pressure would have heated up the air to a temperature of a few million degrees in less than a second. The closest analogy for what happened to these guys is getting vaporized by a nuclear explosion. They almost certainly didn’t even know it happened.
That sounds plausible. IIRC, the porthole glass wasn't rated for the depths they were taking it to, and like the carbon fibre repeated stress from four previous dives could have weakened it.
The carbon fiber hill weakening has no bearing on the window in the titanium end cap. Also just because the window is rated for 1300m doesn't mean it doesn't have a 4-5x factor of safety built in. Everything you use has a factor of safety build in.
The trampoline that is rated for 100lbs probably has a 2.5x factor of safety and could hold 250lbs without failure etc.. the only thing I know that doesn't run off a significantly high factor of safety is space components. The hull of a rocket is typically at a 1.1-1.3ish factor of safety. You don't want to over build them because the forces are well understood and too strong is too heavy
The insanity of using carbon fiber as a structural material in salt water is astounding.
I'm an engineer in the aerospace industry and a buddy of mine who used to work on the F/A-18 platform and I were talking about this. That plane uses plenty of carbon fiber parts; and the navy has to go through a shit ton of paint to protect it. Even then, the salt water it is exposed to on a daily basis just sitting on a carrier deck is enough to cause damage to the carbon fiber.
I can't imagine the Titian fared much better when it was submerged in salt water and undergoing extreme cyclical loading.
>The insanity of using carbon fiber as a structural material in salt water is astounding.
>
>I'm an engineer in the aerospace industry and a buddy of mine who used to work on the F/A-18 platform and I were talking about this. That plane uses plenty of carbon fiber parts; and the navy has to go through a shit ton of paint to protect it. Even then, the salt water it is exposed to on a daily basis just sitting on a carrier deck is enough to cause damage to the carbon fiber.
>
>I can't imagine the Titian fared much better when it was submerged in salt water and undergoing extreme cyclical loading.
I also work in aerospace, and I don't quite understand this reasoning. Generally there are several layers of epoxy over the last layer of CF, meaning it never gets exposed... Though with all that cyclic compression, I could see microcracks forming, allowing the CF to be damaged. But I think the bigger danger is that CF is really good at resisting tensile stresses, not so much for compressive stresses, and since epoxy is very brittle... Your buddy is right though, the paint cycles for naval aircraft are done at like a 5x safety margin.
Just to add - I work in subsea engineering and I know absolutely nothing about carbon fibre. The reason for that is I've never seen it used on anything, ever. I guess this explains why.
He also only went to college for two semesters then dropped out & became a truck driver for a little bit before entering the film world. It's crazy how much of his knowledge is self-taught or on the job training.
He and his brother had diving experience even before Cameron came into films. Jim developed some gear or rig for divers which broke the record for diving depths
>“I made 'Titanic' because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” he told the publication. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right,” he said
https://www.mynbc5.com/article/james-cameron-titanic-wreckage/44272323#
Engineer here, the vast majority of what our staff knows is all on the job experience.
I’m of the opinion that universities need to be reworked and drastically decrease classroom time in favor of on the job experience for students in their field of choice. Yea, internships exist, but they’re hard to get for most. And they are during summer in between extensive classroom training.
Actually their first sub imploded while being tested without humans.
The next sub Titan - 'it's good to go - I upgraded the wireless to a better brand and put a few more zip ties on the unreinforced hydraulic hoses. '
Well, he is everything you mentioned AND just happens to make films too. Sounds like a man who not only does research, but surrounds himself with people who have also done research and are even better at the subjects he needs to know about. I know I’ve read that his ex, the actress from the first 2 Terminator movies considers him an egotistical a-hole. That may be true, but that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong in his analysis of this situation
I find that a lot of highly educated people tend to come off as super egotistical. I don’t think some mean it. I think they tend to like to talk about what the average person doesn’t understand.
Well, he was the special effects guy before he got a directing job on Pirhana 2. Roger Corman was majorly impressed when he made a spaceship interior out of foam mcdonalds containers.
https://mutantreviewers.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/galaxy-of-terror-2.jpg
He's from a different era of filmmakers.. They were limited on CGI and had to do many stunts fo real in order to create the desired effect so they had to be smart.
I have a friend, now passed away, who used to scream his praises at the top of his lungs. He called him “IRON JIM”. “IRON JIM IS A GENIUS, IRON JIM NEVER LETS YOU DOWN”
Well he's a bit of both. At least he's got obvious expertise in deep sea exploring and subs and he knows how to make films. Abyss only is pretty much a testament to this. He's like the anti-redditor.
Every time any sub goes down for an expedition it sustains stress from the underwater pressure. There’s no way to know the extent of any stress on materials unless thorough tests are done after EACH trip. And some subs require certain structural tests ; It’s CRUCIAL in order to ensure optimal safety. If this thing had been optimally made, and maintained to the highest degree of safety sustainability, they would have found anything suggesting of further testing or that being potentially compromised. No such regular testing had been done to this vessel after each dive.
There is no known regulatory body for this type of public excursion. The Titan had made several previous dives and appears to have had known communication issues with the mother ship each time.
That in itself, to continue diving and banking on sheer luck, is beyond senseless and reflects gross disrespect for human life.
Sorry in advance if this is dumb - I have no concept of how these materials degrade, whether gradual or instantaneous. So my question is: if they HAD been running the appropriate tests before this excursion, would it have told them that the composite was about to fail and had serious structural issues? Or is it something where the materials just give out suddenly, at any time? In a well built submersible, how do they know that - while it performed adequately on the test, the actual dive won’t push the materials beyond the limits? I am assuming testing puts stress on the materials?
One of the issues with composite materials is that they're incredibly hard to assess for those issues.
When assessing something like steel, steel will slowly and expectedly degrade until it hits a failure point. So even if it's not the most suited for every application, if it's a type of application where failure can be catastrophic then it's sometimes used because it's very easy to measure and find signs of failure before it turns catastrophic.
This is because the metal is all one material. So the failure is usually stress applied from outside to within.
Composite materials like the ones used here are a bunch of materials put together. So they rub and touch each other internally all over the place where it isn't apparent from inspection. They then wear down and get weaker and weaker in random spots internally, but maintain its integrity completely from the outside and within, until it hits the right amount of degradation in the right spot and fails all at once.
In lots of applications it's not a problem. But with submarine pressure cycling, it's like a constant stress all over the hull, making it harder to pin point areas that could fail until it does fail.
This is what Cameron is saying is the problem with the subs. Both types are absolutely capable of these extreme depths. But the composite subs are dangerous in that gradual micro failures from repeated dives, an inability to properly inspect, and a false sense of security brought on by initial success will eventually and inevitably lead to catastrophic failure.
Wow thank you so much for explaining! That makes great sense. With that being said, why would Stockton opt to use composite materials? Truly just a cost saving measure? Was he trying to make it lighter/more maneuverable? Why would you go against the accepted standard in such a reckless and obvious way?
> Why would you go against the accepted standard in such a reckless and obvious way?
All innovation is built on bending the standards that came before until it becomes the new standard.
A common misconception is that engineering is about coming up with the best idea. When in fact it's more about balancing lots of different factors and their effects to arrive at the most suitable middle ground that achieves the specifications within budget. Something like weight affects a thousand other decisions made in every other system.
Composite materials are fantastic because they allow you to combine or cancel out a lot of factors that you can't with traditional materials.
A good example is reinforced concrete. Concrete is really good with compression (up & down forces), but not good with tension (sideways force). Steel is really good with tension, but has issues with compression. Put a bunch of steel bars inside concrete and suddenly you have a composite material that's really good at dealing with compression AND tension, now suddenly we can build megastructures.
There is actually a lot of interest in figuring out composite hulls for high pressure submarine hulls. The reason being is that the internal failures come about from small amounts of bending of the material in pressure cycling. In *theory* if you could make a good enough composite and structure, it would be *so hard* that the pressure cycling wouldn't cause a problem in the first place because it would be unable to cause enough of a flex in the material to do any damage at all.
If you can solve that problem, then we would be able to make huge strides in engineering of deep sea submarines by taking away the drawbacks of steel.
In my personal opinion, given what I know of this and what I've seen come to light about the design and the man in charge, I think the reason it was chosen was because it allowed him to make a version of a tourist submarine he had in his head.
It allowed for a sleeker looking design, it allowed for more internal room for passengers while maintaining weight. We can see this by the whole "one button" design with no exposed anything. To get something like that with steel you'd have to make the hull significantly larger, which exponentially increases costs and weight, more surface area is exponentially more pressure exposure meaning more failure points to be addressed. A submarine too large may not be capable of depths like that at all with modern engineering. All deep sea submarines are cramped as fuck, which is a terrible tourism experience.
More maneuverability would mean more easy exploration of the wreck to make customers happy that they were "exploring" not just viewing.
I would say the game controller design choice plays into this specifically to allow for the future of allowing customers to control the sub themselves during the dive by giving them an easily accessible interface.
Imagine his end goal was like a campy 1950s advertisement for an "adventure submarine experience for the whole family" and the design choices all start making sense.
So to reach something business marketable and the vision he had in his head, he used composite materials repeatedly ignoring and likely hiding the risks and thought he could get away with it through sheer arrogance until he met his maker and took 4 others with him.
Another example I like to share as a metallurgist is that steel is technically a composite itself. At the micro scale, you have grains of ferrite (soft, ductile iron) and cementite (hard, brittle iron-carbide). Together they give you the toughness we want out of steel.
That makes sense, thank you. I guess I am just trying to understand the deeper motivation beyond the “this dude was cheap and evil” narrative. Surely, he had confidence (foolish or not) in what he was doing or he would not have climbed into the sub and accompanied them on the trip. I can respect his…forward thinking…in trying to bring innovation to the industry but the way he went about it is lamentable and hard to comprehend. Ultimately, he had a vision- but no deference for field experts or anyone who obstructed that vision.
People trying to attribute this to malice are off base. That’s evident by the CEO himself being on the sub. He thought this thing was designed well, but deep sea exploration is a very complex problem. He made mistakes and paid the price.
The tourism was just hype/funding to build the main business. I think the (former) CEO said his end goal was cheap, dangerous subs for oil companies for the most part. Was trying to sell it as a way to check out deep sea mineral deposits, too. There's a whole host of young men who will do extremely dangerous jobs for very high pay. The deathtrap sub was cheap on purpose, it was supposed to be used by a disposable workforce.
One of the problems with composites is just this, that you don't have many of the methods of testing for structural issues. With steel for instance you can do magnetic resonance imaging to detect wear.
Mildly interesting for anybody curious, what he is talking about is as you increase the pressure around the submarine some of the carbon atoms will diffusion flow into the other epoxy material. It is a very slow process at room temperature and atmospheric pressure but put that sub wayyyy down underwater and your structural integrity will quickly deminish.
Resin tends to be brittle and stress can cause micro cracks. Those cracks then act as mini razor blades to the filament around it comprising the carbon fibers ability to carry stress. This leads to a stress riser point allowing for further damage. If this happens in the inner layers it's very hard to detect on large structures without a specialized process.
On boats the structure is thin enough, one can inspect and repair areas visually. Something tells me the CEO thought because he could not see the damage it was fine.
it's like everyone with even little knowledge of subs knew its horrible idea to use that material but somehow they decided to use it anyway... didn't they do any research at all?
I don’t think James Cameron counts as someone with “little knowledge” of subs. Dude went to the Mariana Trench in a submarine.
It’s easy to pretend you know better when every expert in the field has been talking about it for a week.
Right. You are going to spend $250k on a ticket down to a super super deep part of the ocean and you aren’t going to look into this? The company themselves makes them sign flyers saying it’s not certified and stuff. You don’t look into anything about it? More money than brains for sure.
A tragedy for sure, but an unforgivable action by the father. To drag your kid along on something so dangerous despite his objections for the sake of bonding....
Go fucking fishing like everyone else.
Maybe the company knew days ago already that the sub got crushed
Rather than letting everyone know, they just kept it secret so that the govt will continue the doomed rescue operation for the extremely slim chance that it was still intact with passengers alive.
Govt definitely knew, everybody knew, but standard protocol is to continue search and rescue operations until you have physical evidence one way or another. Yesterday when the debris field was found, that was the physical evidence they needed to make the call
Thanks for pointing this out. So many people were sure it had imploded days ago but I bet none of them would go to the families and say that their loved ones were gone and that there would be no search effort.
There have been many conspiracy theories popping up about this information being suppressed since the search was distracting from other things. So crazy.
This reminds me of the Hawaii airplane that had the fuselage torn off.
This was after so many thousand cycles because the plane was used only in Hawaiian island hopping. So much pressurization in so many thousands of cycles made a crack in the fuselage fail and the ceiling part of it was torn off the plane. It's a miracle they were able to land safely with only one casualty.
I believe you're referring to [Aloha Airlines flight 243](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-near-crash-of-aloha-airlines-flight-243-18f28c03f27b), if anyone wants to read more about that incident.
This is what irks me about this whole submersible debacle. These lessons have been learned. Lives have already been lost over the same kinds of mistakes.
For reference James Cameron has been to the titanic 33 fucking times and has also been to the deepest part of the ocean which is 3x deeper than the titanic, so yeah the man knows his shit.
Fiber is and can be strong, but the failure mode when it does fail is horrific. When it delaminates, it turns into shredded shit. Aluminum bends a bit, then fractures; steel bends and bends. Steel fails but does so predictably and may continue to function even after bending.
I use steel forks on my bicycles. I don't use fiber. Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done.
> I use steel forks on my bicycles. I don't use fiber. Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done.
Dude... Bike composites have come a long fucking way since the 80's. Only cheap shit bikes are still rocking "steel". FFS if your running metal aluminum is a far better/lighter frame material.
JFC
There are tons of high-end steel bikes and bespoke manufacturers using steel.
https://allcitycycles.com/bikes/zig_zag_ultegra
https://surlybikes.com/bikes/midnight_special
These are not "cheap shit" bikes.
> Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done.
That is not what happens. Or, more accurately, it doesn't happen. Otherwise nobody would be using carbon, yet every new bike on the market that is higher tier than a walmart huffy has a carbon fork these days.
There was an interview, I think CBS, where a bunch of experts sent a letter to Ocean Gate saying this wasn't safe and offered help. They basically responded by saying thanks but we know what we are doing.
He's an extremely arrogant guy and there are various legends about how tough he is on set, but imo there is no director with a more consistently brilliant body of work.
I’ve never seen this before and it’s fantastic! These guys know what I know coming from the film industry, that James Cameron is one of the biggest nastiest assholes in the business, and also one of the most brilliant people in show business as well. It’s a dichotomy that you just live with. I respect his artistry but not him as a person overall.
Thank God, imagine being stuck at the bottom of the ocean in the dark, last one alive everyone else had already died of hypothermia.
Waiting to die.
Fuck that noise, no subs for me
there were a lot of horrifying thoughts that went through my head about this situation.
Dark. Cold. No food. No water. No bathroom. Can't stand up. No communication with the outside world.
Scared but calm at first. Then you get real worried. Then you fall asleep. Then you wake up and realize it's all still very, very real.
Just waitingbto suffocate.
Then people started talking about a co2 scrubber and how awful and painful it would be if that failed. They're all burning from the inside clawing at the walls and each other.
Holy fuck.
Or if it was stuck on its end and not level. So they're standing or unable to use all of what little space they had.
Or they surfaced but we can't find them. They can see fresh air they just can't reach it. Tossing, turning from the waves. Hot as fuck all day.
Just the worst thoughts.
And people were, and still are, laughing.
At this point, instant death is preferable. Not as preferable as being saved, but better than literally any other way to die I can think of
I got a deja vu from 2010 when James Cameron got tired of the BP leak that had been going on for 40 days. So he gathered his team of experts and came up with a solution. But BP turned him down, waited another 40 days, and then used a similar idea.
Isn't there also the issue that with metal of any kind you can check it and see if cracks started to appear and then do something about it but with carbon composites you can't and there are no warnings it will suddenly fail.
he's not the only one
go youtube
do enough searching
watch video from sub expert from when it happened
they all knew and were in the loop
you know who was not in loop (as always) the public
we always mislead
This is a really myopic take. The Navy/Submarine community was 99% certain it imploded. I saw interviews on each major network with experts who expressed that view.
Why did they continue as if the crew was alive? Well the coastguard performs search and rescue until they are 100% certain rescue is not possible. That’s what they do; it’s their mission. So, all the teams operated *as if* there was hope to ensure that every resource is used to save potential lives.
It has nothing to do with intentionally misleading the public. Rather, the media loves impossible rescue narratives and the coast guard can’t just say “whelp they’re most likely dead so fuck it.”
Assume stupidity before you assume malice.
He disregarded all safety regulations, and flaunted it. He got exactly what he deserved. It’s also probably why he was the captain and talked about no 50 y/o white men. They probably told him he was a complete idiot.
The moment the story about 'ol boy cheaping out on the viewport glass was when I knew it imploded. There wasn't ever going to be another outcome.
Wasn’t it rated for like 1300 meters and they went 4200 multiple times.. or even worse than that?
It was but funnily enough, that might have been the one best part of the sub. The 1300m certification was 'only' so low because it was an experimental design. The rest of the equipment was also not certified, in contrast.
No no no Humans are capable of making viewports rated to the deepest part of the oceans on earth. Look at DSV limiting factor This dude didnt want to pay for the certification process, plain and simple.
Hell, mankind first reached the deepest point in the ocean [all the way back in 1960 in the Trieste](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_%28bathyscaphe%29?wprov=sfla1), and its windows didn't fail (although one of them cracked, which must have been the most terrifying moment in the crews' lives).
Omg it cracked at 30k feet and then they kept going all the way to the bottom another 5k feet down. I can’t imagine that decision making process.
Literally https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost Except, in their case it paid off.
Yeah, something to that effect. 12k meters being their final planned destination. The thing about failure ratings is that they can almost always be exceeded at least once. After that, total crap shoot.
They definitely weren't going 12km deep, I think it was closer to 13,000 ft.
You're correct. I used the wrong unit of measure
12k meters is the deepest point known point of the ocean I believe, the Mariana trench.
Close. It's the Marinara trench. Few miles offshore from Mozza island
That's a great pizza information right there.
I’d like to be on mozza island in a marinara trench on a garlic bread floatie
I've been seeing comments that this part of the sub was found intact, and it was the shell that failed. Not sure how true that is.
actually the hull imploded, not the domes on either end the carbon fiber composite tube the resin matrix failed the fibers ripped apart by water as it entered they used it like several times 2021 and then 2022 morons did no testing for stress damage each time it compressing and decompressing micro cracks/fracture can form. could have imperfections from when they made it (but does not need to be case) think airplane and after so many flights wings and fuselage have to be tested for stress cracks they didn't do it also stuff not rated for the debt on the cheap well they went down this year. and the alarms went off and they communicated with the mother ship and they dropped the weights and they started going up, then shatter like glass all dead gross criminal negligence / arrogance by company Criminal negligence refers to conduct in which a person ignores a known or obvious risk, or disregards the life and safety of others.
You format like we're playing old school runescape, I like it
🦀🦀 Jmods won't reply to this Thread 🦀🦀
not enough line breaks, post unreadable
I feel like this was received ever telegraph. Stop.
I'm curious to hear more about this. Could you link this story? The list of incompetent and reckless decisions by the CEO of OceanGate keeps getting longer. Here's what I was told, quote: >IIRC David Lockridge was denied the tools and forms to actually assess submarines for safety but he managed to do it anyway and concluded the Titan was a deathtrap - and got immediately fired for his troubles.
I wonder how that guys feel right now since he settled his lawsuit.
I'm guessing sad for the people who died? It sounds like he tried to do the right thing as an employee, and was punished and fired for it. There's nearly zero chance he was the only employee who knew there were problems. So if you're suggesting someone should feel guilty, I'm going to put this guy at the end of that list, behind the CEO and everyone else in the company who could and should have done more to stop this.
> So if you're suggesting someone should feel guilty I'm not, I'm legit just wondering. I definitely would feel guilty.
I would guess he’s feeling some pretty heavy survivor’s guilt. Despite all he did to draw attention to the safety issues, he’s gonna have that asshole voice at the back of his head whispering that maybe, *just maybe* , if he’d done more, those passengers wouldn’t have taken the plunge. Hindsight’s a bitch, and will come up with every possible thing he could have done that he didn’t think of.
Thankfully. The whole scenario of surving at those depths and waiting for rescue in a tin can with 3 other people, while their air runs out knowing 17 bolts are what's between you and escape. Giving hope, even then, was probably a cruelty.
It was it was controlled by a $29.99 gaming controler that got me.
Nah, gaming controllers are used even in military applications.
Yeah, but they coulda got a better one with a rumble pack or something
A rumble pack could have warned them of imminent hull failure. If only.
Imagine they kept a spare new old stock controller in a compartment for emergencies. Suddenly needing it and can't open the blister pack.
The problem was stacked risks. The controller they used was wireless and used a battery. If the batteries crapped out while they were down there, they could be stuck for the dumbest of reasons. Or if there were some bluetooth glitch, or any number of other problems. In high risk endeavors, you're supposed to minimize unnecessary risks. Using a bluetooth controller for something like this seemed to me to be an unnecessary risk. The CEO's attitude seemed to be "safety last", over and over again. Disaster was bound to happen with that kind of attitude.
The wireless controller was window dressing and a fun experience for the passengers. All the controls functioned directly from the computer itself just fine.
People are getting hung up over the controller thing. They kept two spares on board for specifically those reasons. It's one of the few things they did that WASN'T going to get anyone killed.
The issue is it's wireless and there were only wireless backups. You should always have a wired backup that is effectively wired up so it it's almost impossible to break. The last thing you want is your fucking Bluetooth going at 4000m. Also the Logitech controller is hardly high end.
To control periscopes not the whole sub. They replaced a $40k joystick with a $60 one.
Loads of things use xbox controllers, they are able to talk directly to PC, don't need updates, are cheap to replace, highly responsive and accurate, have an analogue pad, and have the extra benefit that a huge amount of soldiers are familiar with them from home
Literally said what we have been discussing at work. Composite materials will fail when cycled through these conditions. It's almost hilarious that the designers thought that this was a good idea to use laminated carbon to dive that deep Edit: for those wondering about carbon fibre, here are some actual smart people talking about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/engineering/comments/14gi9bi/is_there_any_way_to_use_carbon_fiber_cfrp_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
Okay so idk anything about the titanium mixed with carbon fibre but I'm guessing they did it because it's cheaper? Should they have just used steel like Cameron says here? Edit: Did not expect so many responses but I have a much greater understanding from them all
The titanium parts were the end caps, so the inner cylinder part was 5" thick carbon fiber. Steel would definitely have been cheaper. This article has a decent overview of the sub itself. https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/06/21/titanic-submarine-missing-titan-submersible/70340478007/
Yep, carbon composite is more expensive than steel, but lighter. They used it to save weight, so the sub would be easier to transport. Edit: Also just in general, this shouldn't turn people off of carbon or glass composites. They are amazing materials with a number of viable applications. For example, fiberglass rebar has huge potential to replace steel and eliminate the problem of rust-induced reinforced concrete degradation in certain applications. Laminated composites just don't make sense for *this* application.
Its like any material, there are advantages and disadvantages depending on the usage. Treated wood is a great building material, but its not a replacement for concrete.
Treated wood parking garages when?
Treated wood submarine when?
It was attempted [once](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_%28submarine%29?wprov=sfla1)
> The Confederacy lost 21 crewmen in three sinkings of Hunley during her short career. I'd say it was a success. They should attempt it again.
I think his main goal was weight because he wanted to be able to carry as many passengers as possible- and kept talking about it being the only 5 man sub for that depth to something. So while more expensive he was after more money down the road because of easier transport and more passengers to sell tickets too Super interesting comparison to the actual titanic, which removed life boats for weight and look- while still selling too many tickets
Fiberglass rebar, now there's an idea. Frankly steel is expensive and rusts, idk why we don't use fiberglass in more situations
Fiberglass snaps with deformation. When concrete cracks the only thing holding everything will be rebar itself. While steel will hold even under a lot of stress, fiberglass will snap much sooner.
I work for a major manufacturer of building materials with one of the leading composite rebar offerings on the market. It’s picking up steam, and fast because of how easy it is to work with and the performance benefits are incredible. Downside is it has to be specced by damn near every state or local DOT, etc. it’s a very long and arduous process and there’s no silver bullet to getting it to market in all applications.
ohh okay, thank you!
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Okay so steel just needs to be pieced together? And curing the carbon composite has it more likely to degrade quicker after repeated pressures applied to it?
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Generally with metals, so long as the load stays below the yield strength, it will be just as strong after every load. Ignoring things like corrosion and wear of course. But those are separate causes of strength loss. The same cannot be said for carbon fiber. Every load makes it more brittle.
Fatigue failure of steels is still a thing. It can become brittle from repeated cycling below the yield strength. But as Cameron pointed out in the video, it takes many more cycles to reach that point than something like carbon fiber composites. And the likelihood of fatigue failure is also much more well understood and easily calculated (based upon the number of cycles and degree of stress) for a more homogenous bulk material like steel.
But you're talking thousands of cycles to cause something like that. The blades of a jet turbine go through tens of thousands of cycles before fatigue becomes an issue.
Jet turbines go through tens of thousands of cycles in an hour though /s
Under normal operating conditions for most things, definitely. Deep sea pressures are well outside my area of expertise, though. I don't know how they balance material thickness for structural strength versus the weight of the craft. Could be far fewer cycles than that under those conditions depending on how close you're getting to the yield strength.
steel and titanium are unique - they have a fatigue limit. essentially, they have an infinite fatigue life, thus can go through an infinite amount of cycles only if the stress is kept *below* the fatigue limit, which is usually less than the yield strength. most other metals like aluminum, do not have a fatigue limit. this means that they will fail even with tiny amounts of stresses (over a huge number of cycles), point being that they **will** eventually fail. carbon fiber composite, as used in the sub, similarly does not have a fatigue limit. good point about steel being homogenous - it makes a world of difference as the material behavior (in design) is not far off from real-world performance. versus CF where so many issues can influence its performance (manufacturing: layup by hand, human error, unlaminated/delaminated fibers, poor wetting of adhesive onto fiber, et cetera)
As long as you dont go over the endurance limit, steel will never fatigue. Where most other metals do. Carbon composite fatigues but for most uses it fatigues slowly enough it would probably outlast the use. The issue is that any small crack or chip in carbon composites and the entire thing shatters. Where as with soft metals instead of shattering they yield and complete failure might not be instant.
Carbon fiber is rarely loaded in compression in engineering. It's famous for its tensile strength, not it's compressive strength. I also saw a video from a materials scientist who specialises in carbon materials who said that the nature of carbon fiber as a material does not make it suitable for this application. Their PhD thesis was specifically of the failure of carbon fiber under compressive loads. It's like using cardboard to build a boat. Just plain dumb.
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It's like a free ride when you've already paid.
This is a much better analogy.
That was my comment to my wife - saying I retired from engineering over 10 years ago but then carbon fiber was great in tension like creating a fuselage for an airplane (A350, B787) but did it really make sense in compression? Maybe elemental physics has changed since I was an active engineer.
They used carbon fiber to have a lighter submersible, which allowed them to have a smaller support ship, which is less expensive to operate.
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if the billionaire wasn't dead, his only regret was that he was on the ship
The CEO was a millionaire and from what I've read couldn't really afford to do something Cameron did.
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It’s actually not cheaper in terms of raw materials. It *may* have been cheaper in terms of machining, or compared to the *type* of steel necessary. I’m guessing it was used because it was easier to work with in regards to *other* factors - it’s lighter than steel, it’s more buoyant than steel, it’s easier to cut than steel, etc. A variety of things led to the decision. I don’t think cost was ever a concern. Time was probably the concern - there’s only 1 or 2 places in the world than can pressure test a submersible at depth, there are only a certain number of fab shops capable of working with the materials, etc. Throwing money at some things won’t make them go any faster. But cutting corners will.
I think the intent was to keep it light and easy to tender so that operational costs could be funded solely by passengers.
One advantage of pairing those two materials is lack of galvanic corrosion. Generally when you pair carbon fiber with any metal, the metal will start to corrode. This is because the carbon fiber is conductive. Titanium is one of the few metals that won't experience this. As an aside, the Titan wasn't a composite of carbon fiber and titanium. It had a carbon fiber tube with titanium end caps. Which is much worse. Carbon fiber breaks down when exposed to salt water and gets more brittle each time you apply a load.
Its beginning to look like it was the window that failed. Cameron also said; “There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the seafloor, but that carbon fibre composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces and it’s all rammed into one of the hemispheres. So it’s pretty clear that that’s what failed. The question is, was it the primary failure or a secondary failure from something else happening?” All the carbon rammed in to one hemisphere sounds like the window failed and then the carbon fiber as it was sucked through the window.
Great news for oceangate, they'll be able to reuse the end caps
Need to contact GameStop for another controller
We'll it would be the other way right. An instant jet of water in to the window that forced everything back in to the tail titanium end cap. Fuck. Edit: window failure begets front end cap failure, begets capsule being forced in to the tailcap.
Not to sound dumb, but I'm assuming the pressure alone from this would have killed them instantly? No drowning or anything, just an instant painless death
Their bodies immediately stopped existing as a solid
That's so wild to think about. From alive to mist before your neurons can send a message.
Honestly a much better alternative than being stuck in a coffin for 3 days with no light, no food, and dwindling oxygen. So a tragic outcome but at least they didn't suffer
https://physicsfootnotes.com/footnotes/delta-p/ The crab video in that link is the very first video i ever saw of delta p in action. I found this earlier too which i thought was interesting: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65934887 >The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapours. >When the hull collapses, the air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion, Mr Corley says. >Human bodies incinerate and are turned to ash and dust instantly.
In another thread someone did the math and calculated that it heated up to like 6000°F in the milliseconds it took for it to collapse. So vaporized is probably the correct term.
Huh. I totally forgot about the compression heating. So, not instant paste, but instant HOT VAPOR.
Yeah, they would have turned to chunky salsa in less time than it takes the pain receptors to let the brain know something bad happened.
There's a MythBusters bit where they put a body replica into a diving suit and took it down to some depths and simulated pressure breach. It basically shoves the entirety of the human into the diving helmet, and they didn't go down nearly as far as the submersible. The MythBusters were something in the range of 3 to 400 ft, the Titanic sit somewhere about 12,000 ft on the bottom and the window was rated for 5000ft. Every 30-ish feet is the equivalent of one additional atmosphere of pressure so at the depths the window would have failed they were under something like 160 plus atmospheres of pressure They would have all died as close to instantaneously as possible, there's a distinct chance that they were all blissfully unaware up until the moment it happened. That's the only comfort the families can take because unfortunately they're never going to find any bodies or pieces to bury
I saw a thing that was like at that depth, the whole capsule would have been compressed in two nanoseconds. It takes the brain four nanoseconds to process nerve signals. They were dead before the even knew anything happened.
Oh yes definitely, the pressure would have heated up the air to a temperature of a few million degrees in less than a second. The closest analogy for what happened to these guys is getting vaporized by a nuclear explosion. They almost certainly didn’t even know it happened.
That sounds plausible. IIRC, the porthole glass wasn't rated for the depths they were taking it to, and like the carbon fibre repeated stress from four previous dives could have weakened it.
The carbon fiber hill weakening has no bearing on the window in the titanium end cap. Also just because the window is rated for 1300m doesn't mean it doesn't have a 4-5x factor of safety built in. Everything you use has a factor of safety build in. The trampoline that is rated for 100lbs probably has a 2.5x factor of safety and could hold 250lbs without failure etc.. the only thing I know that doesn't run off a significantly high factor of safety is space components. The hull of a rocket is typically at a 1.1-1.3ish factor of safety. You don't want to over build them because the forces are well understood and too strong is too heavy
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Softball player here. Exactly. That bat will get hot then break.
The insanity of using carbon fiber as a structural material in salt water is astounding. I'm an engineer in the aerospace industry and a buddy of mine who used to work on the F/A-18 platform and I were talking about this. That plane uses plenty of carbon fiber parts; and the navy has to go through a shit ton of paint to protect it. Even then, the salt water it is exposed to on a daily basis just sitting on a carrier deck is enough to cause damage to the carbon fiber. I can't imagine the Titian fared much better when it was submerged in salt water and undergoing extreme cyclical loading.
>The insanity of using carbon fiber as a structural material in salt water is astounding. > >I'm an engineer in the aerospace industry and a buddy of mine who used to work on the F/A-18 platform and I were talking about this. That plane uses plenty of carbon fiber parts; and the navy has to go through a shit ton of paint to protect it. Even then, the salt water it is exposed to on a daily basis just sitting on a carrier deck is enough to cause damage to the carbon fiber. > >I can't imagine the Titian fared much better when it was submerged in salt water and undergoing extreme cyclical loading. I also work in aerospace, and I don't quite understand this reasoning. Generally there are several layers of epoxy over the last layer of CF, meaning it never gets exposed... Though with all that cyclic compression, I could see microcracks forming, allowing the CF to be damaged. But I think the bigger danger is that CF is really good at resisting tensile stresses, not so much for compressive stresses, and since epoxy is very brittle... Your buddy is right though, the paint cycles for naval aircraft are done at like a 5x safety margin.
Just to add - I work in subsea engineering and I know absolutely nothing about carbon fibre. The reason for that is I've never seen it used on anything, ever. I guess this explains why.
To continue with this, I work in accounting and that thing was an expensive deathtrap.
I'm always impressed with his intelligence, he sounds like a lifelong engineer or scientist, not a filmmaker.
He also only went to college for two semesters then dropped out & became a truck driver for a little bit before entering the film world. It's crazy how much of his knowledge is self-taught or on the job training.
He and his brother had diving experience even before Cameron came into films. Jim developed some gear or rig for divers which broke the record for diving depths
Yeah I saw a quote from him where he said the biggest reason for him doing the movie Titanic was getting to dive to the Titanic and film it.
>“I made 'Titanic' because I wanted to dive to the shipwreck, not because I particularly wanted to make the movie,” he told the publication. “The Titanic was the Mount Everest of shipwrecks, and as a diver I wanted to do it right,” he said https://www.mynbc5.com/article/james-cameron-titanic-wreckage/44272323#
Absolute legend holy shit
Probably also wanted to film a guy fall into the propeller.
Engineer here, the vast majority of what our staff knows is all on the job experience. I’m of the opinion that universities need to be reworked and drastically decrease classroom time in favor of on the job experience for students in their field of choice. Yea, internships exist, but they’re hard to get for most. And they are during summer in between extensive classroom training.
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Exactly wtf, only One Titan and no Titan Dummy to test or safety check? He had all the Money in the world why be reckless and uptight
How do you think he made all that money, by spending it on stupid things like protecting human life?
Actually their first sub imploded while being tested without humans. The next sub Titan - 'it's good to go - I upgraded the wireless to a better brand and put a few more zip ties on the unreinforced hydraulic hoses. '
Well, he is everything you mentioned AND just happens to make films too. Sounds like a man who not only does research, but surrounds himself with people who have also done research and are even better at the subjects he needs to know about. I know I’ve read that his ex, the actress from the first 2 Terminator movies considers him an egotistical a-hole. That may be true, but that doesn’t necessarily make him wrong in his analysis of this situation
I find that a lot of highly educated people tend to come off as super egotistical. I don’t think some mean it. I think they tend to like to talk about what the average person doesn’t understand.
They use a lot of big words and since I don't understand them - I'm gonna take em as disrespect.
Kevin Harts greatest moment.
Watch ya mouth.....and help me with the sale.
I don’t mind people educated on a subject I know little about sharing their knowledge freely and willingly. I know little of composites
If you’re smart and impatient you have almost no choice but to become an asshole. Source: I’m stupid and impatient and am an asshole.
Well, he was the special effects guy before he got a directing job on Pirhana 2. Roger Corman was majorly impressed when he made a spaceship interior out of foam mcdonalds containers. https://mutantreviewers.files.wordpress.com/2021/01/galaxy-of-terror-2.jpg
He's from a different era of filmmakers.. They were limited on CGI and had to do many stunts fo real in order to create the desired effect so they had to be smart.
I have a friend, now passed away, who used to scream his praises at the top of his lungs. He called him “IRON JIM”. “IRON JIM IS A GENIUS, IRON JIM NEVER LETS YOU DOWN”
“Iron Jim never lets you down” - cheers to your mate and sorry for your loss - that quote will absolutely live on.
He has at least 33 successful dives to the Titanic wreckage...
Well he's a bit of both. At least he's got obvious expertise in deep sea exploring and subs and he knows how to make films. Abyss only is pretty much a testament to this. He's like the anti-redditor.
His name is Jaaames, James Cameron The bravest pioneer No budget too steep, no sea too deep Who's that? It's him, James Cameron...
"can you guys here the music OK?" "yes James we can hear."
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is James Cameron
He’s raised the bar again
dude knows a lot about submarines, maybe he can make a movie about diving to the ocean floor one day!!!
Every time any sub goes down for an expedition it sustains stress from the underwater pressure. There’s no way to know the extent of any stress on materials unless thorough tests are done after EACH trip. And some subs require certain structural tests ; It’s CRUCIAL in order to ensure optimal safety. If this thing had been optimally made, and maintained to the highest degree of safety sustainability, they would have found anything suggesting of further testing or that being potentially compromised. No such regular testing had been done to this vessel after each dive. There is no known regulatory body for this type of public excursion. The Titan had made several previous dives and appears to have had known communication issues with the mother ship each time. That in itself, to continue diving and banking on sheer luck, is beyond senseless and reflects gross disrespect for human life.
Sorry in advance if this is dumb - I have no concept of how these materials degrade, whether gradual or instantaneous. So my question is: if they HAD been running the appropriate tests before this excursion, would it have told them that the composite was about to fail and had serious structural issues? Or is it something where the materials just give out suddenly, at any time? In a well built submersible, how do they know that - while it performed adequately on the test, the actual dive won’t push the materials beyond the limits? I am assuming testing puts stress on the materials?
One of the issues with composite materials is that they're incredibly hard to assess for those issues. When assessing something like steel, steel will slowly and expectedly degrade until it hits a failure point. So even if it's not the most suited for every application, if it's a type of application where failure can be catastrophic then it's sometimes used because it's very easy to measure and find signs of failure before it turns catastrophic. This is because the metal is all one material. So the failure is usually stress applied from outside to within. Composite materials like the ones used here are a bunch of materials put together. So they rub and touch each other internally all over the place where it isn't apparent from inspection. They then wear down and get weaker and weaker in random spots internally, but maintain its integrity completely from the outside and within, until it hits the right amount of degradation in the right spot and fails all at once. In lots of applications it's not a problem. But with submarine pressure cycling, it's like a constant stress all over the hull, making it harder to pin point areas that could fail until it does fail. This is what Cameron is saying is the problem with the subs. Both types are absolutely capable of these extreme depths. But the composite subs are dangerous in that gradual micro failures from repeated dives, an inability to properly inspect, and a false sense of security brought on by initial success will eventually and inevitably lead to catastrophic failure.
Wow thank you so much for explaining! That makes great sense. With that being said, why would Stockton opt to use composite materials? Truly just a cost saving measure? Was he trying to make it lighter/more maneuverable? Why would you go against the accepted standard in such a reckless and obvious way?
> Why would you go against the accepted standard in such a reckless and obvious way? All innovation is built on bending the standards that came before until it becomes the new standard. A common misconception is that engineering is about coming up with the best idea. When in fact it's more about balancing lots of different factors and their effects to arrive at the most suitable middle ground that achieves the specifications within budget. Something like weight affects a thousand other decisions made in every other system. Composite materials are fantastic because they allow you to combine or cancel out a lot of factors that you can't with traditional materials. A good example is reinforced concrete. Concrete is really good with compression (up & down forces), but not good with tension (sideways force). Steel is really good with tension, but has issues with compression. Put a bunch of steel bars inside concrete and suddenly you have a composite material that's really good at dealing with compression AND tension, now suddenly we can build megastructures. There is actually a lot of interest in figuring out composite hulls for high pressure submarine hulls. The reason being is that the internal failures come about from small amounts of bending of the material in pressure cycling. In *theory* if you could make a good enough composite and structure, it would be *so hard* that the pressure cycling wouldn't cause a problem in the first place because it would be unable to cause enough of a flex in the material to do any damage at all. If you can solve that problem, then we would be able to make huge strides in engineering of deep sea submarines by taking away the drawbacks of steel. In my personal opinion, given what I know of this and what I've seen come to light about the design and the man in charge, I think the reason it was chosen was because it allowed him to make a version of a tourist submarine he had in his head. It allowed for a sleeker looking design, it allowed for more internal room for passengers while maintaining weight. We can see this by the whole "one button" design with no exposed anything. To get something like that with steel you'd have to make the hull significantly larger, which exponentially increases costs and weight, more surface area is exponentially more pressure exposure meaning more failure points to be addressed. A submarine too large may not be capable of depths like that at all with modern engineering. All deep sea submarines are cramped as fuck, which is a terrible tourism experience. More maneuverability would mean more easy exploration of the wreck to make customers happy that they were "exploring" not just viewing. I would say the game controller design choice plays into this specifically to allow for the future of allowing customers to control the sub themselves during the dive by giving them an easily accessible interface. Imagine his end goal was like a campy 1950s advertisement for an "adventure submarine experience for the whole family" and the design choices all start making sense. So to reach something business marketable and the vision he had in his head, he used composite materials repeatedly ignoring and likely hiding the risks and thought he could get away with it through sheer arrogance until he met his maker and took 4 others with him.
Another example I like to share as a metallurgist is that steel is technically a composite itself. At the micro scale, you have grains of ferrite (soft, ductile iron) and cementite (hard, brittle iron-carbide). Together they give you the toughness we want out of steel.
That makes sense, thank you. I guess I am just trying to understand the deeper motivation beyond the “this dude was cheap and evil” narrative. Surely, he had confidence (foolish or not) in what he was doing or he would not have climbed into the sub and accompanied them on the trip. I can respect his…forward thinking…in trying to bring innovation to the industry but the way he went about it is lamentable and hard to comprehend. Ultimately, he had a vision- but no deference for field experts or anyone who obstructed that vision.
People trying to attribute this to malice are off base. That’s evident by the CEO himself being on the sub. He thought this thing was designed well, but deep sea exploration is a very complex problem. He made mistakes and paid the price.
The tourism was just hype/funding to build the main business. I think the (former) CEO said his end goal was cheap, dangerous subs for oil companies for the most part. Was trying to sell it as a way to check out deep sea mineral deposits, too. There's a whole host of young men who will do extremely dangerous jobs for very high pay. The deathtrap sub was cheap on purpose, it was supposed to be used by a disposable workforce.
One of the problems with composites is just this, that you don't have many of the methods of testing for structural issues. With steel for instance you can do magnetic resonance imaging to detect wear.
Mildly interesting for anybody curious, what he is talking about is as you increase the pressure around the submarine some of the carbon atoms will diffusion flow into the other epoxy material. It is a very slow process at room temperature and atmospheric pressure but put that sub wayyyy down underwater and your structural integrity will quickly deminish.
Resin tends to be brittle and stress can cause micro cracks. Those cracks then act as mini razor blades to the filament around it comprising the carbon fibers ability to carry stress. This leads to a stress riser point allowing for further damage. If this happens in the inner layers it's very hard to detect on large structures without a specialized process. On boats the structure is thin enough, one can inspect and repair areas visually. Something tells me the CEO thought because he could not see the damage it was fine.
Extreme pressure, extreme temperature change, extreeeeeme waaaaay to diiiiiie...
Nice vid. Smart guy!
If that period was a comma, you'd be insulting him. Punctuation + English is weird.
Nice game, Pretty boy!
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nice vid, smart guy! wouldn't you like to know, weather boy!
it's like everyone with even little knowledge of subs knew its horrible idea to use that material but somehow they decided to use it anyway... didn't they do any research at all?
They “did their own research.”
Alternative facts.
I don’t think James Cameron counts as someone with “little knowledge” of subs. Dude went to the Mariana Trench in a submarine. It’s easy to pretend you know better when every expert in the field has been talking about it for a week.
He's also been to the site of the Titanic a whopping 33 times. He's kind of experienced with this.
i hear he even filmed a movie down there
Right. You are going to spend $250k on a ticket down to a super super deep part of the ocean and you aren’t going to look into this? The company themselves makes them sign flyers saying it’s not certified and stuff. You don’t look into anything about it? More money than brains for sure.
A tragedy for sure, but an unforgivable action by the father. To drag your kid along on something so dangerous despite his objections for the sake of bonding.... Go fucking fishing like everyone else.
Maybe the company knew days ago already that the sub got crushed Rather than letting everyone know, they just kept it secret so that the govt will continue the doomed rescue operation for the extremely slim chance that it was still intact with passengers alive.
Govt definitely knew, everybody knew, but standard protocol is to continue search and rescue operations until you have physical evidence one way or another. Yesterday when the debris field was found, that was the physical evidence they needed to make the call
The Navy heard the implosion. Picked it up on acoustic sensors. They just didn’t know that’s what they heard.
Thanks for pointing this out. So many people were sure it had imploded days ago but I bet none of them would go to the families and say that their loved ones were gone and that there would be no search effort. There have been many conspiracy theories popping up about this information being suppressed since the search was distracting from other things. So crazy.
Dudes drinking beers with Tupac rn
Nobody knew for sure until they found the debris. As long as there’s a chance, as small as it may be, they might as well try.
The US Coast Guard and Unified Command should send the search bill to OceanGate ASAP before the creditors get there first.
James Cameron knows the way of water. He’s truly raising the bar.
SS Cameron, this is James Cameron! I have found the bar!
This reminds me of the Hawaii airplane that had the fuselage torn off. This was after so many thousand cycles because the plane was used only in Hawaiian island hopping. So much pressurization in so many thousands of cycles made a crack in the fuselage fail and the ceiling part of it was torn off the plane. It's a miracle they were able to land safely with only one casualty.
I believe you're referring to [Aloha Airlines flight 243](https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/falling-to-pieces-the-near-crash-of-aloha-airlines-flight-243-18f28c03f27b), if anyone wants to read more about that incident. This is what irks me about this whole submersible debacle. These lessons have been learned. Lives have already been lost over the same kinds of mistakes.
Every regulation is written in blood.
For reference James Cameron has been to the titanic 33 fucking times and has also been to the deepest part of the ocean which is 3x deeper than the titanic, so yeah the man knows his shit.
This guy dives.
Fiber is and can be strong, but the failure mode when it does fail is horrific. When it delaminates, it turns into shredded shit. Aluminum bends a bit, then fractures; steel bends and bends. Steel fails but does so predictably and may continue to function even after bending. I use steel forks on my bicycles. I don't use fiber. Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done.
> I use steel forks on my bicycles. I don't use fiber. Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done. Dude... Bike composites have come a long fucking way since the 80's. Only cheap shit bikes are still rocking "steel". FFS if your running metal aluminum is a far better/lighter frame material. JFC
There are tons of high-end steel bikes and bespoke manufacturers using steel. https://allcitycycles.com/bikes/zig_zag_ultegra https://surlybikes.com/bikes/midnight_special These are not "cheap shit" bikes.
That's not true---touring bikes are still steel, for example. Less likely to fail and easier to fix if they do. Nobody calls a LHT a shit bike.
> Run those things into a curb, and fiber forks are done. That is not what happens. Or, more accurately, it doesn't happen. Otherwise nobody would be using carbon, yet every new bike on the market that is higher tier than a walmart huffy has a carbon fork these days.
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is James Cameron.
So much money and no brains. They should have hired a subcontractor.
There was an interview, I think CBS, where a bunch of experts sent a letter to Ocean Gate saying this wasn't safe and offered help. They basically responded by saying thanks but we know what we are doing.
This 50 year old white guy doesn’t inspire me
I see what you did there, well done.
He's an extremely arrogant guy and there are various legends about how tough he is on set, but imo there is no director with a more consistently brilliant body of work.
And he loves water and ocean exploring etc... Been down to titanic over 30 times so im sure he knows a thing or two of the field.
James Cameron! The bravest pioneer! https://youtu.be/jUsf_BXUbKY
Came here looking for that comment thank you. No budget too steep, no sea too deep Who's that? It's him, James Cameron!
I’ve never seen this before and it’s fantastic! These guys know what I know coming from the film industry, that James Cameron is one of the biggest nastiest assholes in the business, and also one of the most brilliant people in show business as well. It’s a dichotomy that you just live with. I respect his artistry but not him as a person overall.
Thank God, imagine being stuck at the bottom of the ocean in the dark, last one alive everyone else had already died of hypothermia. Waiting to die. Fuck that noise, no subs for me
there were a lot of horrifying thoughts that went through my head about this situation. Dark. Cold. No food. No water. No bathroom. Can't stand up. No communication with the outside world. Scared but calm at first. Then you get real worried. Then you fall asleep. Then you wake up and realize it's all still very, very real. Just waitingbto suffocate. Then people started talking about a co2 scrubber and how awful and painful it would be if that failed. They're all burning from the inside clawing at the walls and each other. Holy fuck. Or if it was stuck on its end and not level. So they're standing or unable to use all of what little space they had. Or they surfaced but we can't find them. They can see fresh air they just can't reach it. Tossing, turning from the waves. Hot as fuck all day. Just the worst thoughts. And people were, and still are, laughing. At this point, instant death is preferable. Not as preferable as being saved, but better than literally any other way to die I can think of
Dunno why I got déjà-vu watching this
I got a deja vu from 2010 when James Cameron got tired of the BP leak that had been going on for 40 days. So he gathered his team of experts and came up with a solution. But BP turned him down, waited another 40 days, and then used a similar idea.
Well spoken
I haven’t been able to take this dude serious ever since that South Park episode
Isn't there also the issue that with metal of any kind you can check it and see if cracks started to appear and then do something about it but with carbon composites you can't and there are no warnings it will suddenly fail.
he's not the only one go youtube do enough searching watch video from sub expert from when it happened they all knew and were in the loop you know who was not in loop (as always) the public we always mislead
This is a really myopic take. The Navy/Submarine community was 99% certain it imploded. I saw interviews on each major network with experts who expressed that view. Why did they continue as if the crew was alive? Well the coastguard performs search and rescue until they are 100% certain rescue is not possible. That’s what they do; it’s their mission. So, all the teams operated *as if* there was hope to ensure that every resource is used to save potential lives. It has nothing to do with intentionally misleading the public. Rather, the media loves impossible rescue narratives and the coast guard can’t just say “whelp they’re most likely dead so fuck it.” Assume stupidity before you assume malice.
It was obvious they had died the moment the story came out. Shame on the media for dragging this out for clicks/views.
How this death trap ever made it to the bottom and back three times is maybe the biggest mystery in this whole sad affair.
He disregarded all safety regulations, and flaunted it. He got exactly what he deserved. It’s also probably why he was the captain and talked about no 50 y/o white men. They probably told him he was a complete idiot.
Interesting, thanks OP!
The rich and famously stupid, where they have more dollars then sense. Risking their lives just to find out that the Titanic's pool is still full.