Tourist submarine missing!

[servodude]

Totally agree. I also wonder how much OceanGate is worth today, to make it worth suing them. Peanuts I suspect so not worth the effort. They can only be a busted flush, surely?

I agree and said so above. I doubt that there will be any point in anyone suing OceanGate. Those taking part must have known what the risks involved (ie the risk of death) but unless they were all truly on a suicide mission, they must have trusted Stock. Obviously he was a strong character; couldn't have been otherwise and it must have been such as to convince the passengers that the risks were worth taking. Group thinking and all that; we see it all the time on these boards.

Dod

Nice to see you all in agreement

I wonder if all this will get covered in the inevitable (?) movie

[GoSeigen]

people smart enough to have become billionaires

Oh no, not that old chestnut!

Eclesiastes 9:11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."


GS

[mc2fool]

Totally agree. I also wonder how much OceanGate is worth today, to make it worth suing them. Peanuts I suspect so not worth the effort. They can only be a busted flush, surely?

I agree and said so above. I doubt that there will be any point in anyone suing OceanGate. Those taking part must have known what the risks involved (ie the risk of death) but unless they were all truly on a suicide mission, they must have trusted Stock. Obviously he was a strong character; couldn't have been otherwise and it must have been such as to `. Group thinking and all that; we see it all the time on these boards.

Well Stockton Rush did have the ultimate convincer -- he was on the sub too -- so I suspect not so much a case of convincing the passengers that the risks were worth taking but rather that he'd mitigated them and so the risks were minimal. It does seem that by far the biggest risk was not so much the environment but the attitude of Rush to accepted engineering and safety norms.

BTW, as far as these things go 4,000m isn't exactly a tourist world record; for triple the price you can go to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. That's 11,000 metres.

Interesting article on the history of diving that location from the end of last year: In 2012, the Avatar director's submarine took him to the bottom of the Challenger Deep. Ten years on, the Mariana Trench is a crowded place

"[Deep sea exploration] is about being comfortable with the technology. People think it’s all staring death in the face, but actually you’re trying to be as conservative and boring as possible. After all, it only counts as a dive if you come back up, right?"

[stewamax]

I wonder if all this will get covered in the inevitable (?) movie

A tasteless idea; but this is the US, so quite likely. I was in Houston in 1986 when on January 28 Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral with the loss of seven crew. After the crew module detached itself and was seen on CNN as arcing towards the Atlantic, there was no way for the crew to escape. There were no ejection seats. The ground staff, those of the crew who were still conscious and many CNN viewers will have realised that certain death awaited.
Sounds familiar In the present context.

A less tasteless idea would be a documentary on the Titanic’s wreckage and what about the original mechanism of its demise can now be deduced.

[servodude]

I wonder if all this will get covered in the inevitable (?) movie

A tasteless idea; but this is the US, so quite likely. I was in Houston in 1986 when on January 28 Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated shortly after launch from Cape Canaveral with the loss of seven crew. After the crew module detached itself and was seen on CNN as arcing towards the Atlantic, there was no way for the crew to escape. There were no ejection seats. The ground staff, those of the crew who were still conscious and many CNN viewers will have realised that certain death awaited.
Sounds familiar In the present context.

A less tasteless idea would be a documentary on the Titanic’s wreckage and what about the original mechanism of its demise can now be deduced.

The movie focusing on Feynman's involvement in the investigation was pretty good

[Dod101]

people smart enough to have become billionaires

Oh no, not that old chestnut!

Eclesiastes 9:11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."


GS

It is not often that we get a Biblical text quoted on these Boards but I rather like Ecclesiastes and that particular quote. Mind you, people can and often do make their own luck.

Dod

[Mike4]

Oh no, not that old chestnut!

Eclesiastes 9:11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."


GS

It is not often that we get a Biblical text quoted on these Boards but I rather like Ecclesiastes and that particular quote. Mind you, people can and often do make their own luck.

Dod

Indeed they do. I also occasionally notice people who do the reverse, i.e. self-sabotage.

For example the self-employed gardener I've just booked to do half a day a week for me every week, for ever. Nice earner for him but he's just texted me to say he's lost his driving license so he can't do the gardening after all. Drink driving. A three year ban too, so either driving miles over the limit or not a first offence.

I knew a builder like this too. Always struggling, then inherited a house, YAY! Sold it, bought a Porsche, wrapped it around a tree, no insurance. Back to square one.

[stewamax]

I guess the passage of time softens the raw edges.
James Cameron's 1997 film Titanic was a luvvy duvvy epic that just happened to take place on a ship. I doubt if viewers lost sleep over the horror of the real events that took place nearly ninety years before.

The film The Challenger that covered the forensic investigation into the cause of the Challenger disaster and the skullduggery and back-protection that went on in NASA and the US Administration was excellent and was a different kettle of fish altogther. And in real life much hinged on reputation of Richard Feynman whose intellect and credibility as a physicist was beyond question. He was no respecter of authority and, when he sat on the Rogers Commission that investigated the disaster, he frequently clashed with the other members in his search to highlight the cause - to the extent that he refused to sign the Commission's final report unless his excoriating (and correct) analysis was included.

[GoSeigen]

Oh no, not that old chestnut!

Eclesiastes 9:11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."


GS

It is not often that we get a Biblical text quoted on these Boards but I rather like Ecclesiastes and that particular quote. Mind you, people can and often do make their own luck.

Dod

Not particularly a fan of that book, but the above is poetic and illustrates how long ago the thought was first expressed, I'm certainly not using it to claim any authority.

I can say in my case, as a likely member of the 1%, that 99% of my achievement was luck and time, only 1% effort and smarts. For a start I was lucky to be born on the "right" side of the barrel of these guns, then I was lucky to join 1% of the worlds population living on this little island, and here I am many years later, blessed by a succession of small serendipities.

GS

[Spot5]

From Feynman ...

In any event this has had very unfortunate consequences, the most serious of which is to encourage ordinary citizens to fly in such a dangerous machine, as if it had attained the safety of an ordinary airliner.

When playing Russian roulette the fact that the first shot got off safely is little comfort for the next.

//history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm

S
p.s. seems i still can't post links for some reason

[Lootman]

people can and often do make their own luck.

I can say in my case, as a likely member of the 1%, that 99% of my achievement was luck and time, only 1% effort and smarts. For a start I was lucky to be born on the "right" side of the barrel of these guns, then I was lucky to join 1% of the worlds population living on this little island, and here I am many years later, blessed by a succession of small serendipities.

Sure, you could have been born in a time and place where success and wealth would have been much harder to achieve.

But for the place and time that most of us on TLF were born in, there is a marked disparity in financial outcomes. And that is not mostly luck, in my view. But things like ambition, persistence, desire and so on.

[Mike4]

people smart enough to have become billionaires

Oh no, not that old chestnut!

Eclesiastes 9:11: "I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

GS

There is another effect I notice too amongst my small-business-running peers.

Whn things go swimmingly and larges sums of dosh are made, it is invariably attributed to the business acumen, sheer brilliance and general genius of the proprietor.

But when things go t1ts-up, it will invariably due to external factors far beyond their control. Unanticipated large hikes in interest rates being a first class example as it happens.

[mark88man]

It's only when the tide goes out you can see who has been swimming without trousers

Possibly unfortunate analogy for this thread but to show agreement with Mike4

[SimonS]

Gone off air: https://www.oceangate.com/

SSL handshake failed Error code 525
Visit cloudflare.com for more information.
2023-06-23 16:41:53 UTC

Error code 525 = server imploded.

RC

Wrong use of language, The approved phrase is now "unscheduled rapid disassembly|" to avoid worrying people who might feel their world is getting catastrophically smaller.

[SimonS]

Sure, it can be endlessly argued, and probably will be. But this is not like getting on a bus, train or plane, with a reasonable expectation of arriving safely. This was an extreme venture to a very dangerous place undertaken by informed people.

Informed people? The guy & his son were structural engineers?

A dangerous place is one thing but by all the accounts appearing on the news it sounds like the truly dangerous thing was the attitude of the CEO and, consequently the equipment he built. And it's not after-the-fact know-it-alls, it's experts in the field that were raising warnings well beforehand. This is sounding less and less like misadventure and more and more like a slapdash cowboy operation.

It is easy to represent the CEO as taking needless risks, yet 70 million people voted for a man who stated that he was going to repeal all the EPA laws and instructi0ns that had been put in place to protect the environment, and claimed that risking the world was OK so long as it made America great again.

The testing of composite materials is notoriously difficult, so it is easy to Rush either as a risktaker on the grand scale or as a person who has satisfied himself the he has mitigated the risk but those without experience and set in their ways won't see that There's a point where the vessel has been seen to work and is therefore 'reliable'.

After all, there a large number of people who will put their faith in systems like that, such as the people who will abandon logical constraint and let their Tesla drive itself while they sleep in the back, or drive racing cars that live on the edge of destruction (see the queue on track days to try it) or die on Everest because they ran out of oxygen waiting for their moment on the top, or live in sink hole country.

What to me is more worrying is the number of people demanding that the wreckage is recovered by 'someone' ( a government?) sao that what went wrong can be ascertained so that, well why? So that people can gain evermore bragging rights for having been somewhere, done the usual tourist things (leave rubbish, graffiti, damaged ancient treasures etc) rather than agree that if you want to walk on crocodiles, there will be accidents.

[tjh290633]

The testing of composite materials is notoriously difficult, so it is easy to Rush either as a risktaker on the grand scale or as a person who has satisfied himself the he has mitigated the risk but those without experience and set in their ways won't see that There's a point where the vessel has been seen to work and is therefore 'reliable'.

I suspect that the problem lies in the design of a vessel to withstand external pressure. Managing internal pressure is simple by comparison. Filament winding GRP vessels has been around for over 60 years and its use in rocket motors, for example, is well documented. It does not work the other way round

I don't see any alternative to a rigid metal shell with internal reinforcement. That reinforcement also needs to be rigid metal. Fibre of any sort only works in tension, not in compression. Weight is the penalty to be paid for resistance to external pressure.

TJH

[Itsallaguess]

The testing of composite materials is notoriously difficult, so it is easy to Rush either as a risktaker on the grand scale or as a person who has satisfied himself the he has mitigated the risk but those without experience and set in their ways won't see that

There's a point where the vessel has been seen to work and is therefore 'reliable'.

But perhaps that's not the case if, every time that it's 'seen to work', the extreme stress-cycling of the pressure-vessel is actually slightly weakening it until it eventually simply loses it's capacity to cope with those immense pressures...

I suspect it would be a brave man who would bet against such an issue being the reason for failure in this terribly sad case...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[mc2fool]

What to me is more worrying is the number of people demanding that the wreckage is recovered by 'someone' ( a government?) sao that what went wrong can be ascertained so that, well why? So that people can gain evermore bragging rights for having been somewhere, done the usual tourist things (leave rubbish, graffiti, damaged ancient treasures etc) rather than agree that if you want to walk on crocodiles, there will be accidents.

If you want to walk on crocodiles then wear proper shoes!

It's not clear to me that the wreckage needs to be recovered (even if that's practical) to ascertain what went wrong. From the info we've heard from the experts in the field It sounds like it's known what went wrong already and a desk investigation (along with possibly some lab tests) might well be sufficient.

After all, if OceanGate had undergone and obtained the industry's recognized certification process for the design, fabrication and testing of the vehicle, then all the experts would be clamouring for a full investigation 'cos obviously something unknown had gone wrong that might affect other similarly certified submersibles. But it didn't undergo such certification and the experts were warning about safety concerns five years ago.

[servodude]

What to me is more worrying is the number of people demanding that the wreckage is recovered by 'someone' ( a government?) sao that what went wrong can be ascertained so that, well why? So that people can gain evermore bragging rights for having been somewhere, done the usual tourist things (leave rubbish, graffiti, damaged ancient treasures etc) rather than agree that if you want to walk on crocodiles, there will be accidents.

If you want to walk on crocodiles then wear proper shoes!

It's not clear to me that the wreckage needs to be recovered (even if that's practical) to ascertain what went wrong. From the info we've heard from the experts in the field It sounds like it's known what went wrong already and a desk investigation (along with possibly some lab tests) might well be sufficient.

After all, if OceanGate had undergone and obtained the industry's recognized certification process for the design, fabrication and testing of the vehicle, then all the experts would be clamouring for a full investigation 'cos obviously something unknown had gone wrong that might affect other similarly certified submersibles. But it didn't undergo such certification and the experts were warning about safety concerns five years ago.

Precisely. It sounds as though the warnings they were given have proven to be pretty much on the ball

[jfgw]

It's not clear to me that the wreckage needs to be recovered (even if that's practical) to ascertain what went wrong. From the info we've heard from the experts in the field It sounds like it's known what went wrong already and a desk investigation (along with possibly some lab tests) might well be sufficient.

We might be 99% sure of 99% of what went wrong but not 99.9% without recovering the bits. The extra knowledge gained may not be useful to deep-sea submarine builders (we already know that carbon fibre is not considered suitable) but it may be useful elsewhere.


Julian F. G. W.