I've refrained from saying anything to date about the loss of the Titan submersible, used to explore the wreck site of the SS Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean. Yesterday's news that the submersible imploded, and debris from it has been found less than half a mile from the Titanic itself, confirms that all aboard are dead. Given that certainty, there are a few points I'd like to suggest for further thought.
The first is the utter ghoulishness with which the news media and social media have pursued the unfolding story. I enjoy amusing memes as much as the next person, as my weekly collection of them shows: but I've been sickened by the gallows humor displayed by some "memers", to coin a phrase. Five people are dead. Their bodies will most likely never be recovered. Their families are grieving. How on earth can it be acceptable to make fun of such a tragedy? How would we feel if we'd lost loved ones like that, and had to endure the world making fun of them as we mourned?
The ghoulishness continued in news media reports about how the men aboard the submersible might have been feeling, or reacting, to the situation in which they found themselves. Nobody knew what had happened, so all such articles were invented out of whole cloth by those seeking to make money out of sensationalizing tragedy. I can only imagine what the families of the deceased men must have felt, reading and hearing such bloodthirsty speculation. If only there were some means of silencing such "journalists" permanently, preventing them from ever writing for public consumption again, I'd vote for it in a heartbeat. Sadly, we can't prevent such people from dancing in the blood of the dead for profit. I hope they choke on it.
Second, based on news reports that may or may not be reliable, it appears that questions have been raised about the safety of the Titan submersible: whether or not it was built to adequate safety specifications and parameters, etc. I don't know, and perhaps we'll never know for sure. It had made successful descents to the Titanic in the past, so that's bound to be used as a defense by the company that owned and operated it when it comes to the inevitable lawsuits. There are too many armchair lawyers and wannabe engineers commenting on the subject right now. They need to shut up and leave it to the real experts, who are doubtless trying very hard to learn as much as they can for future reference.
Next, there appears to be a growing chorus accusing the US Navy of dereliction of duty by not reporting last Sunday that they had heard the noise of an implosion near the wreck site. That's factually untrue. The Navy did hear such a sound, but they could not confirm for sure what it was - only that it resembled the noise of an implosion. They immediately informed the search coordinators, who used the Navy's data to refine their search pattern, ultimately leading to the discovery yesterday of wreckage from the Titan. If the Navy had said anything more last Sunday, it would have been nothing more than speculation, at a time when that would have merely added to the media tumult. I think the Navy did the right thing by making no public comment at the time.
Finally, let's acknowledge that there will always be adventurers pushing the boundaries of what's possible, and what's prudent, in exploring the unknown. In this case, they pushed the boundaries too far, and paid the ultimate penalty for doing so. In that sense, they're like the bodies of dead climbers on Mount Everest: they're a permanent reminder that adventure has its price. The crew of the Titan weren't the first to pay that price in full, and they most certainly won't be the last.
Full marks to everyone involved in the rescue effort for their hard work and dedication. May those who died, rest in peace.
Peter
32 comments:
Thank you for a voice of compassion...and sanity
Peter none of us will ever hear the full story. I understand part of it was a billionaire's bucket list of Mt Everest, a space flight and the deepest dive.
It wasn't exploration, it was tourism and bragging rights.
Sad it was a well-timed distraction from other news about Hunter Biden's DOJ secular baptism clearing him of what would put you and I under the jail for decades. 2+ tier application of the "laws of the Land" in its purist manner.
The collapse of Zelenski's spring offensive.
And China telling Blinken to pound sand in the most polite manner.
Diplomacy the fine art of telling someone to go to hell and they thank you and ask for directions.
Roman Empire 2.0 but with Wi-Fi and social media
As a former submariner the design was alarming. The Navy has test depth and crush depth, you only go to test depth. Safety margin is important. This wasn't the equivalent of climbing Everest. The first dive down to design depth (crush depth) was with passengers. Basic testing was ignored.
There is a huge body of knowledge how to operate submerged vessels safely. Not just warcraft like attack submarines but research vessels as well. No Subject Matter Experts from what I have seen were hired, just young and innovative Engineers. Problem is a lot of those safety rules were written in blood, and been rewritten. The young didn't have the institutional knowledge of those rules. Innovation is not ignoring hard won experience, innovation is overcoming a barrier. Submarines have been innovating for over 100 years.
I feel for the grieving families, I have lost family as well. The CEO apparently believed his story enough he went with them. As a submariner you hate the loss of any submarine. Still, it didn't have to be this way.
If the Titan had indeed imploded, those onboard most likely never experienced a thing, they died instantly. There is solace in knowing they did not suffer.
Well said
I have to say, I am definitely one of the people you're appalled at here. From my perspective, one of the people on board was a Davos participant, and I am quite confident that the world is a better place for every last one of those that dies. I am only remotely sad about the pilot. Perhaps I'd have felt differently a year ago, but when the upper class of the world apparently are determined to starve a large portion of the world to death in pursuit of their worship of the ecocult and turn the ones they don't starve to death into permanent serfs... my sympathy at the death of any person belonging to that social class goes down quite a bit. Accordingly, I'm amused at the gallows humor involving the memes. They likely didn't suffer, and that's quite a bit more than the people they're determined to starve to death can say.
I don't actually have an opinion about the engineering or safety of the craft, because I know exactly dick about the design of submarines. I also don't blame the Navy for the course of action they took. I don't know enough to have an opinion about it anyway. The timing of the public release of information was beyond the people actually involved and was certainly a decision of the administration, and the fact that the information was released on the same day that there was whistleblower testimony in Congress about Hunter Biden taking bribes on behalf of his father... well I stopped believing in coincidences involving this administration a long time ago.
Sir,
While I echo your thoughts regarding the fact that five people are dead under dreadful circumstances, I would gently point out that, using the public pronouncements of the CEO as a starting point, there seem no depths to which the woke will not go in pursuance of their agendas...
No fifty-year-old white men were harmed in the creation of this comment.
There are many lessons here. Some are not pleasant.
Mike in Canada
Nope.
OceanGate honked their Diversity Horn too loud to slide on this one.
There are reports of using materials known to catastrophically fail, and scrimping on proper viewports capable of withstanding the depths, purely for cost reasons. Which was doubtless not made clear to passengers.
OceanGate made their bed...on the seabed.
Now those who trusted them lie in it.
The company has earned all the flak that comes their way as a result.
Titanic was a tragedy, which nonetheless absolves them not a whit of sailing to fast for conditions, inadequate lifeboats, shoddy design and materials, and any other dozen things that contributed to a needless loss of life.
And now, also directly because of those screw-ups over a century ago, they own a share of 5 more deaths near the same spot.
As far as I've seen, nobody's making fun of the dead, per se. (That would be ghoulish.) They're making fun of the people who made them dead.
That's fair play, and well in-bounds, IMHO.
This story is news to keep Biden's corruption off the front pages.
Well said, Peter. Thank you for being a voice of reason among the howling insanity of this world.
Maybe it's worth adding that what they were doing was essentially visiting a mass grave site. It's like going in the night to a cemetery, digging up graves and trying to see how well preserved 100yr old bodies are. This is not 'adventure' nor 'exploring'. I hope OceanGate bankrupts + this whole sad story is a lesson to all private enterprises trying to do similar things.
My mind can't help but wander back to the engineer's quote that Canadian Mike mentioned. As I often say, DEI should be respelled DIE.
Just wait until all of this Whypeeboo envy hits airline travel.
Additional comment:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/online-mockery-titanic-submersible-leaves-cultural-observers-sickened-garbage-dump-vile-commentary
They're "sickened" and clutching their pearls only because it's their Diversity ox that's being gored.
They'll go right back to dancing in the blood of children after a mass shooting, in milliseconds, and none the worse for wear.
When they have to virtue signal about their virtue signaling, the memes are hitting the target.
@Aesop
They fired the guy who raised safety flags and didn't have a way to open the hatch from inside the sub.
Murder Kitten said.Well stated and I agree 100% another of the type of Soros leaves there Earthly bounds is fine by me.
Love you, Peter, but I have to disagree.
When stupid people do stupid things, pointing it out is educational. When the CEO of a company pointedly insults 50 year old competent white men in favor of young, enthusiastic diverse know-nothings, and dies as a result, taking 4 others with him, it's a teaching moment.
The insult to the dead is not my fault, not the fault of the memers. It's the combined fault of those who put them there. That's the company, the executives, the employees, and the passengers themselves. It's the attitudes of young, probably diverse engineers who don't understand safety, tradition, testing, and procedures. It's the rejection of competence and accomplishment in favor of wokeness and diversity.
Frankly, I hope that we see more of these type of consequences of putting diversity into responsible positions. The unfortunate part is not the deaths; it's the fact that innocents will die. Best case would be some sort of feedback loop, so the incompetent suffer for their incompetence. Sort of like my friend, the Army parachute packer, who was given one of her own chutes every week and told to jump.
I feel sorry for their families.
As a White male heterosexual I no longer care who's offended by memes and slogans. When I'm considered despicable, deplorable, and racist just for breathing the air, they can take their outrage and go pound sand.
I feel awful for the passengers, especially the Pakistani man, and his son. What a way for a father-son adventure to end. The CEO of OceanGate, who was driving/piloting? He got less than he deserved. He knew how insanely dangerous the design and construction were, he fired the guy responsible for telling him about it. He emphasized how he preferred "inspirational (diverse) youth" over "white men in their 50's" with experience in building submersibles. Instantaneous implosion was too easy for him. He should've been flayed alive as an example to others. His Declaration of Independence-signing ancestors were unquestionably ashamed of his morally bankrupt, woke stupidity and evil.
There does seem to be some confusion on the history of the Titan. My understanding is that the sub has made many dives to the Titanic over the last couple of years, so this failure is likely the result of material fatigue which Rush apparently didn't consider a problem.
There's a reason SpaceX ditched Carbon Fiber as a spaceship hull material. It's great, until it isn't. And it goes from great to it isn't in an instant. With little to no warning.
The front view window was rated for 1/3 the depth to the Titanic.
Every dive had issues.
Many competent people took a look at the system and backed away. Josh Gates, James Cameron and others, all looked at what was going on, raised flags, were told to pound sand, and backed away.
The system wasn't rated according to the highest standards, or any standards at all.
The warning signs were there.
This is equivalent of building a car out of wood from Home Depot and racing it at Daytona. Or a homebuilt rocket. Or homebuilt plane. All can be done, just not safely if approaching any barriers, like speed or atmospheric or pressure related.
Again, the warning signs were there, from the start.
So dark humor? Yes.
Sadness over the stupid loss of life that shouldn't have happened? Yes.
It's much like those extreme skiers who die in avalanches. Sad? Yes. Unwarranted death? No. Because there were signs, big gigantic glowing neon flashing signs with loud horns and waving flags, all saying "NO, Turn Back, Death Awaits."
EricW -
Carbon fiber in a resin matrix is an incredibly strong material, until it isn't. Unlike steel, you can't X-ray or visually inspect (easily) for signs of failure. CF goes from being ultra strong to broken with little to no warning.
And it doesn't handle pressure cycling or temperature cycling very well. Actually, it handles pressure and temperature really well, until with no warning it doesn't.
SpaceX bought some of the largest CF winders to build their Starships from, and then after lots of thought and testing ditched CF and went with stainless steel for this very reason. Steel is more forgiving, easier to inspect, easier to repair, easier to modify.
And the failure may not have been with the hull itself but the viewport, which the manufacturer only certified for 1/3rd the depth of the Titanic.
In a situation where you'll be stressing your vessel over and over again, it's always good to over-design it. Make it stronger, better, more capable. Just good enough is great for a onesie, like a disposable space capsule or launcher, but to have one last under repeated stress, you overbuild.
It's like the Walmart cheapo lawnmower. Good for 10 mows and then the cheap chinesium deck starts cracking, the bolts strip and the engine starts having serious issues. Or you can buy an overbuilt one (for lots more money) that takes some maintenance but can handle lots of abuse for years and years and years.
Overdesign. Or don't approach the design limits ever.
The sub company underdesigned and then continually exceeded design limits. It was an accident waiting to happen.
As Peter said, this sub had made repeated previous visits, so claims that the window was only rated to 1/3 the depth don't make sense.
yes, Carbon Fiber is an questionable choice for the hub, but the person with the most information about the reasons for selecting it was on board, so we will never have the full information about it
having a hatch that is bolted on from the outside is not uncommon for such deep submersibles, making it able to open from both the inside and the outside would require a penetration of the pressure hull, which would be a very significant weakness.
As for continuing the search after the Navy reported a sound 'consistent with an implosion'
Imagine that the search had been called off at that point and then years later the sub washed up on a beach somewhere with the mummified crew inside, complete with logs showing that they had been bobbing on the surface, unable to communicate for some reason until their air ran out.
while there was a chance to save the crew, they were searching for any sign of an intact sub, including at the extreme limits of sensor range where the most processing power would be needed. After that point they could re-allocate the processing power to reexamine the scans and look for smaller stuff that could be debris, so I'm not surprised that they found the debris field shortly after the deadline for the air running out.
David Lang
People have said I've been blessed with a weird way of looking at ... well everything. Actually, it's more like curse.
I'm left wondering: the price of the trip I understand was a quarter mil.
If I had a few more than several mil, and had stashed quite a bit more than that somewhere safe and wanted to disappear and begin again under a new name in a new place ... I can't help thinking this would be a great way to do it: automatic control to beyond test depth, soluble (gelatin) dummies with a few old bones.
Could be the start of a great novel.
Myself, a 50 something white hetero male, I feel that I have something to add to this. Criminal negligence. Every one of the Board who did not take the fateful dive belongs in prison, for the deaths of the 4 "customers" who perished. These ghouls knew the boat was not able and let it happen anyways. Nail them to the wall!
One more thing; If the DEI crowd does not like the memery, maybe they should take a long, hard look in the mirror. The memes are written for us, not by us...
Tom762
As a 62 year old mechanical engineer, I was surprised to see that the interior of the Titan did not have stiffeners. All pressure vessels used in extreme vaccuum service have stiffeners, all submarines have stiffeners (bulkheads). Looks like a bad design to me.
I spent 21 years in the Navy in P-3 Orion aircraft, hunting submarines.
"Their bodies will most likely never be recovered. "
The bodies of the five people no longer exist in any recognizable form. They would have been smashed to jelly, and have no doubt been consumed by the fish. At least they didn't suffer; they were dead before they knew there was a problem.
@ken, Scott Manley put it this way:
when the sub imploded, they ceased to be biology and became physics
His back-of-the-envelope math puts the implosion force the equivalent of ~76Kg of TNT
David Lang
+100
How could they not go bankrupt? Who would sign up for a trip now?
But the trials should be interesting.
The claims make sense when you consider that the viewport was *rated* for less pressure != turns into powder above that pressure. They always leave a safety margin, and (as such) they don't make the "rated depth" the "max depth before failure".
The fools (the company) were relying on their analysis that the viewport was significantly "downstairs" from its actual pressure capacity. Unfortunately, part of the reason they downrate such things is cycled loading. But it's anyone's guess what failed first, the repeatedly stress cycled carbon fiber cylinder, the seals connecting it to the end bells, the viewport, or something else. But the point is there were multiple potential sources of catastrophic failure, and they were essentially ignored and glossed over. I wonder if the "acoustic monitoring system" (installed instead of doing more testing, per multiple articles, citing a lawsuit over wrongful termination of the guy in charge of freaking safety) beeped before the implosion? I say again. CEO should have been flayed. Alive.
@Boron- Very plausible scenario, pay off anyone who could talk, especially the 17 bolt installer. Otherwise they were simply bored fools playing a risky fools game to view the Titanic, as if that's necessary to fulfill ones life.
"...and backed away."
And while not their responsibility, they may still wonder every day 'what if I had just yelled louder?'
"The system wasn't rated according to the highest standards, or any standards at all."
The sub was launched in international waters, so no review/rating was required.
Further to that point, reading the required waiver should have been enough to scare away any potential participants.
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