Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Titanic Disaster ........Too many questions, too many mistakes

Written by Grant G

Saddens me to write this, and I do hope that i'm wrong, however my gut instincts tell me it's already over..

From what i've read the company owner is a risk taker, innovator and is very strident, very strong in his belief that fast innovation requires an element of risk....He also seems to be prepared to personally take that risk, that risk being death....

The part that bothers me the most, risk and all is fine, but to try and turn this risk into a money making venture...we haven't got there yet, not for 13,000 feet below the surface....This submersible was a ticking time bomb....wasn't a matter of if, but when it failed.

https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-faced-lawsuit-depths-safely-travel-oceangate

Too early to write a longer post....however..

The surface support lost contact/communications with the submersible about 2 hours into descent....Probably between 9000 and 10,000 feet....

We know the submersible had more than just communication issues, because it never resurfaced, ..i'm sure if communications failed 3/4 of the way down the submersible would abort and head back up to the surface, if it could....So that suggests that the sub lost all power, and according to reports read, there was no back up power.....Like said, too many mistakes, why didn't the sub have the ability to send a sonic pulse out in case of power loss, in fact why didn't the sub have a regular sonic pulse denoting it's position, perhaps a pulse every 5 minutes, or ever 20 minutes, something, anything....a sonic pulse with a separate/single isolated power source, at least the surface would know it's intact

Again, that brings me back to the company owner, his go it bold strategy, his keep it simple strident personality..

When communications went out on the descent, and propulsion power(air pressure buoyancy to bring the sub up)went out....Did the sub continue to fall....is it laying on the bottom....did the heavy deep currents take it away, to who knows where....6000 pounds per square inch of pressure on the hull/shell/tube.....on a submersible that apparently was never pressure tested...as the company owner stated.."There is no way to pressure test it"

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OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

Lochridge’s concerns primarily focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring — cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure — to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick (12.7-centimeter-thick) carbon-fiber hull.

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” Lochridge’s counterclaim said.

Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet), where the Titanic rested. But, according to Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 meters.

OceanGate’s choices would “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible,” the counterclaim said.

However, the company said in its complaint that Lochridge “is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on the Titan.” He was fired after refusing to accept assurances from OceanGate’s lead engineer that the acoustic monitoring and testing protocol was, in fact, better suited to detect any flaws than a scan would be, the complaint said.

https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/lawsuit-companys-insufficient-testing-of-titanic-sub-put-passengers-in-potential-extreme-danger/?utm_content=national-world&utm_source=t.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow

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However, with the extreme temperature changes from bottom to top, the very extreme outside pressure, from 6000 psi to 0 psi of outside pressure...A carbon fiber shell, 5 inches thick, when one expert, maybe more stated it should be 7 inches thick, and the one window, from what I read, is only rated to a depth of 1300 meters, not 3900 meters to where the titanic was..

I suspect it imploded.....Which, in thinking about it, would be instant, a blink of an eye, no suffering...Tragic, reckless, greedy and the very strident owner, taking innovative risks for advancement, maybe even a belief that the knowledge gained was worth the lost lives, personally, i'm not so sure about that..

Lastly...In the event that the submersible is laying on the bottom, 13,000 feet down....There is no sub that can retrieve it, nothing can dive down there, nothing that has a hook or tow line that could grasp the powerless sub and return it to the surface....That type of passing would be painful, terrifying and slow, also, inevitable..

Here's the best read i've found so far ....here are a few snippets..

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In a 2020 article, technology news site Geekwire reported that tests on OceanGate’s carbon-hulled Titan submersible – built for Titanic journeys – that were conducted at the Deep Ocean Test Facility in Annapolis, Maryland, in the US, revealed that its hull at that time “showed signs of cyclic fatigue” at lower depths, with the hull’s depth rating reduced to 3,000 metres as a result.

OceanGate’s website states that the current five-man Titan sub used in Titanic expeditions can now descend to depths of 13,123 feet – or 4,000 metres, with the company stating in a May 2021 court filing that the Titan had an “unparalleled safety feature” that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive

.“That sub has a crush depth of 4,000m, the Titanic is down 3,800 metres,” he said. “So [the vessel] had gone into the red zone. It wasn’t designed to continually go down to that depth.”

The British passenger also raised concerns that there was no “umbilical cord” attaching the Titan to a vessel on the surface that would allow it to rise in case of an emergency.

A three-person research submersible named Alvin, involved in a 1986 exploration of the site of the Titanic shipwreck, was built with an emergency mechanism that would allow a titanium sphere containing the crew to separate and rise to the surface, he argued.

Instead, he said the search mission currently being launched was like “looking for a needle in a haystack”.

https://liveapp.inews.co.uk/2023/06/20/missing-sub-british-titanic-enthusiast-decided-against-oceangate-sub-trip-after-raising-safety-concerns/content.html

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Here's good video(also in below twitter feed), showing failure at 4200 meters....Same company..