Titanic tourist sub goes missing

[Hawkmoon]

I figured the indices for salt water and regular old "glass" were close enough to make it hard to find fragments, viz. the marble in (assumedly tap) water as a demonstration.

IIRC Optical glass has a very high refractive index for lens purposes.  I vaguely recall that "optical" glass had lead in it and the lenses were advertised as containing lead.  I also recall that lead lenses were soft and easily scratched. 

A lot of the assumed visibility would depend on the angle of incidence of the illumination.  Down there in the depths, the surveillance device would probably have the lighting close to the viewing lens, so reflections would be pretty much at a minimum except for the angles around the breakage lines, if any.   Sidelighting would make the searched-for glass fragments more visible.

Anyhow, my musey little brain had to laugh at the submarine's window being submerged in miles and miles of glycerin. 
                 

Terry, 230RN

I thought the Titanic tourist sub's viewport was made of some kind of plastic.

[230RN]

"Most plastics have refractive indices in the range from 1.3 to 1.7..."

"If you're working in seawater and just need an approximate value for the visible spectrum, 1.34 is a better approximation than 1.33.)"

So it kinda might matter, might not,  There are enough variables involved in the RIs of the materials.  HankB's post above is helpful.

I don't know if they know what happened to the lens or if it even matters. 

We know the sub was collapsed due to the fact that it was as if there was an absolute vacuum in it, compared to the outside pressure. Whether it lies intact or broken on the sea floor or mixed in with the humanburger that resulted, or what, matters no longer. 

They got the mish-mosh of corpses out, and my real question is how  they got the humanburger properly sorted out for burial.  I asked that in this thread much earlier.

Terry, 230RN
 
 

[dogmush]

Get your popcorn ready:

https://www.newsweek.com/billionaire-sub-titanic-sub-titan-contraption-larry-connor-patrick-lahey-1905086

Nearly a year after the implosion of the Titan submersible, a real estate investor has announced that he'll travel in a submersible to the Titanic to prove it's a safe journey.

In June 2023, an OceanGate submersible imploded underwater, killing the five people on board and raising alarms about the safety of extreme tourism. Not everyone's given up on exploring the Titanic, though, and a new sub from Triton, a company that makes personal submarines, will take Larry Connor, a real estate investor, and the company's CEO down 3,800 feet into the ocean depths to visit the iconic shipwreck.

"He called me up and said, 'You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,'" Patrick Lahey, co-founder and CEO of Triton, told The Wall Street Journal.

[WLJ]

^^^^
From that Newsweek link

WTF? Wildly misleading choice of stock(?) images in the video and then they don't actually show the photos they're referring to.
The standards at NW have gone way down.

[WLJ]

The author of that article who I presume inserted that misleading video

Jenni Fink
Senior Editor, Politics
https://www.facebook.com/jennifinkink/
Twitter

Jenni Fink is a senior editor at Newsweek, based in New York. She leads the National News team, reporting on politics and domestic issues. As a writer, she has covered domestic politics and spearheaded the Campus Culture vertical. Jenni joined Newsweek in 2018 from Independent Journal Review and has worked as a fiction author, publishing her first novel Sentenced to Life in 2015. She is a graduate of the University of Arizona. Language: English. You can get in touch with Jenni by emailing j.fink@newsweek.com.

[RocketMan]

Not everyone's given up on exploring the Titanic, though, and a new sub from Triton, a company that makes personal submarines, will take Larry Connor, a real estate investor, and the company's CEO down 3,800 feet into the ocean depths to visit the iconic shipwreck.

A bit shallow I'm thinking.  Confused feet for meters.

[WLJ]

A bit shallow I'm thinking.  Confused feet for meters.

Seems that author is confused about a lot of things.
Maybe she should stick to politics where it's expected

[AZRedhawk44]

Something I've been pondering off and on about diving to 4000 meters, is how to have an emergency ascent system.  OceanGate was ridiculously un-robust with their "just flip it over and let the weights fall off the legs" design.

4000 meters will result in something in the neighborhood of 12,000 psi of pressure.  Let's say you wanted a balloon style emergency ballast to lift you by creating extra bouyancy.  You'd need to inflate a balloon to 12,000 psi in order for it to displace the necessary water to create bouyancy, so a pressure vessel would have to compress even further, likely to over 100k psi and that would only avail an 8:1 volume of the balloon to the cylinder containing its gas.

And then when you ascend to a certain point, you'd need to bleed off that pressure or you'd shred your ballast balloon.

[Northwoods]

Something I've been pondering off and on about diving to 4000 meters, is how to have an emergency ascent system.  OceanGate was ridiculously un-robust with their "just flip it over and let the weights fall off the legs" design.

4000 meters will result in something in the neighborhood of 12,000 psi of pressure.  Let's say you wanted a balloon style emergency ballast to lift you by creating extra bouyancy.  You'd need to inflate a balloon to 12,000 psi in order for it to displace the necessary water to create bouyancy, so a pressure vessel would have to compress even further, likely to over 100k psi and that would only avail an 8:1 volume of the balloon to the cylinder containing its gas.

And then when you ascend to a certain point, you'd need to bleed off that pressure or you'd shred your ballast balloon.

Easily dropped ballast that is reliably fail-safe and a design that requires ballast to sink is the best option.  You want the vessel at least slightly positively bouyant at a depth that other means of rescue are viable without ballast. That way, if you need to ascend you pull levers to drop ballast and up you go.

[230RN]

"...confused feet for meters..."

I miscalculated a couple of things based on that error early on in this topic-.

What's interesting is how many details touched on earlier are being repeated here.

[Hawkmoon]

I just stumbled across this on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb9uqlr7b4Q

[WLJ]

US Coast Guard hearing today
TDM is monitoring and updating as it goes https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13855727/titan-oceangate-hearing-titanic-submarine-disaster.html

So far

In the 2022 expedition, there were 48 issues including batteries that died, the platform was damaged during recovery, and the drop weights malfunctioned

In the 2021 expedition, there were 70 equipment issues that required correcting

It was tested at 1.09x the operating pressure, but the industry standard is 1.25x

May not sound like much of a difference but at those pressures it's a lot.

Following the 2022 expedition, the Titan was reportedly left uncovered in a parking lot for months
The average temperature in the parking lot was over 100 degrees, the hearing heard

So they just left it uncovered in a parking lot. 

[WLJ]

Tail cone

[WLJ]

Tony Nissen, former OceanGate engineering director Tony Nissen, is the first to give his testimony on Monday.

He said he was the first OceanGate employee and was never told the company was working on a mission to the Titanic wreck.

You would think that telling the engineering dir what they're working on would be kind of important

[WLJ]

Now I don't know how much of this is the engineering dir covering his arse and throwing Stockton Rush, who can't defend himself, under the bus.

OceanGate's former director of engineering says CEO Stockton Rush was actually the one to make most of the engineering decisions.

'Stockton would fight for what he wanted and what he wanted, even if it changed from day to day, and he wouldnt give an inch much at all,' Nissan said.
'Most people would eventually back down to Stockton, it was death by a thousand cuts,' Nissan added.

[dogmush]

Tail cone

That really looks like a gun turret from Portal sitting down there waiting for more subs.

[WLJ]

BTW: What I'm copying and pasting here is just what I consider the highlights so you may want to go to the TDM link posted above if you want to see more

[WLJ]

The last words heard from the crew of an experimental submersible headed for the wreck of the Titanic were 'all good,' according to a visual re-creation of the journey of the Titan before it imploded.

[WLJ]

Here's a doozy

    Nissan said he and Stockton were worried about the carbon filler hull because the scale model showed the model imploding.
    But, according to Nissa, Brian Spencer, the manufacturer of the hull, was 'unwilling to change' the design.

[WLJ]

Tony Nissen said pilot David Lochridge provided a 2018 report detailing concerns about the carbon fiver hull and was fired afterwards.

[MechAg94]

US Coast Guard hearing today
TDM is monitoring and updating as it goes https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13855727/titan-oceangate-hearing-titanic-submarine-disaster.html

So far
May not sound like much of a difference but at those pressures it's a lot.
So they just left it uncovered in a parking lot. 

On that first, it doesn't matter if you are only going to say 70% of design pressure, but I somehow doubt that is the case.  Some overdesign ought to be the order of the day especially if they want to do some sort of commercial enterprise. 

As far as leaving it outside, I don't know if the carbon fiber/epoxy material they used is sensitive to heat or sunlight, but it should have been addressed. 

[WLJ]

    Tony Nissen said the submersible by struck by lightning in the Bahamas in 2018.
    He said he told Stockton Rush the hull had probably been compromised.
    Nissen said that Rush replied, 'It'll be okay.'

    Tony Nissen said he was terminated after he would not sign off on the damaged hul for the 2019 Titanic expedition.
    Nissen said Rush took him to lunch and said 'either he or I had to go' after a meeting with board members.
    Rush allegedly added, 'it's not going to me.'

Not seeing anything just what that damage was and if it was it caused by the lightning strike or something else. Maybe more will come out later on that.

[WLJ]

    The hull was never reviewed by any third parties as is standard procedure, Coast Guard representatives said.
    There were no efforts to seek classification or certification for the Titan.
    'There was no desire by Stockton to go do it,' Nissen testified.

Bonnie Carl said she never saw anyone sign a waiver and assumed they would before the missions happened.

She said Nissen would not let her see the paperwork for the acrylic dome, and that the O-ring groove 'looked odd.'
In February 2018, Carl decided to leave the company over its 'attitude towards safety.'

[WLJ]

    Catterson said he did two test dives with the Titan
    He said of the drop weights: 'They were only able to drop 70 pounds. That’s not enough to do what they needed to have happen.'

[K Frame]

Everything I've read on this mess tells me that it wasn't an industrial accident...

It was, at best, negligent homicide.