Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

[Iron Jaguar]

If they find larger pieces of Carbon Fiber and the front dome is intact it was likely the bonding seal.

Well, you called it.

Has anyone seen that White Island documentary? Of the people touring an active volcano in New Zealand that exploded killing a bunch of people. It's retarded to be walking around that, but I 100% know if I was there and given the chance at the time. I would have been walking around it.

White Island has been a tourist destination for decades. FYI, the fishing around the island is superb.

 

[Oxyjen]

No, to someone looking at the people inside. Like an invisible observer. I can't wrap my head around a body being instantly reduced to nearly nothing by the immense pressure of water.

Aren’t we like 80% water or something like that?
For similar hydraulic horrors see”byford dolphin” - or don’t, it’s pretty grim.

 

[Iron Jaguar]

Aren’t we like 80% water or something like that?
For similar hydraulic horrors see”byford dolphin” - or don’t, it’s pretty grim.

I think that technically counts as a pneumatic horror.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Do you think billionaires of the future will visit the wreck of the Titan sub now we know some remains remain?

 

[Green Man]

I think he risked his own life thinking it would tamp down on charges that he was being negligent or fraudulent or foolhardy. He's riding the sub himself so obviously he believes in it and took all the necessary precautions. And yeah I wouldn't be surprised if something like that crossed his mind.

He strikes me as at the core your typical unfulfilled post industrial guy who never got past his midlife crisis and the existential dread of aging. He wishes he lived in the Jetsons as the Elon Musk who took us there but he can't do space so he speedran Rapture as fast as he could. The impending money problems if true just making him more desperate.

I mean theres nothing wrong about being starry eyed and trying to reach for the future. I'm the same way but I tend to stop short at cutting corners on deep water subs.

Redditors in particular seem to have a strange hatred of the guy, totally out of sync with what he actually did [cut corners and got himself + others killed in a spectacular way] but I suppose they really just hate him for being a rich guy.

I mean I think he made some moronic decisions and shouldn't have accepted paying passengers or "mission specialists" but if he wants to build the worst submersible on Earth and try to use it to reach one of the most inhospitable and brutally unforgiving places on Earth and he's using his own money to do it, that's his prerogative. Sounds like an expensive fucking suicide method but go for it. I suppose all I can really be angry at him for is probably bullshitting his passengers on the safety of the design and firing everyone who tried to tell him it wasn't safe. More curious is the fact that P.H Nargeolet signed on with this operation and had no problem with any of this, despite absolutely knowing what competent and safe submarine operations look like. Though he had lost his wife recently, so maybe he just didn't care and the Titanic gripped him enough that he figured if he died next to her wreck, he wouldn't be too put out about it.

From what I hear the earlier models Stockton funded and had designed were actually relatively safe and competent, so I fully believe he knew what needed to be done from an engineering perspective to do this task safely but he wanted to take risks and save on costs. And I can't knock him too hard for that, well I couldn't if he hadn't flim-flammed a bunch of people into thinking it was safe and got them killed. That's my main bone to pick with him. He probably saw himself as a Howard Hughes sort of figure and just like Howard Hughes, he trusted his designs. In Hughes' case it got him lifelong injuries, in Stockton's case it got him turned into something resembling jam at the bottom of the sea next to 1912's 'unwarranted hubris' exhibit. As far as ways to go I guess it wasn't bad, they were all crushed before their brain could even compute that something had happened.

 

[The giant penis of doom]

faster than the speed of sound

Just a nitpick, but the speed of sound is highly dependent on the medium. And fluid dynamics don't really allow faster than that under normal circumstances, so the implosion happened a hair under the local speed of sound (also know as the Mach number).
But it was definitely faster than the speed of sound in air at sea level.

 

[Hall of Cost Payer]

Do you think that's why he was piloting? So he wouldn't have to deal with the aftermath if something went wrong?

I think these two witnesses are really interesting:

It basically gives off the vibe that Stockton was a bit too full of himself. Like he knew better how to pilot a submersible than a trained pilot. And in the woman's case, he'd much rather have one less customer than miss out on showing off how great he is.

I guess he thought he was a genius, that the sub was actually safe and he was piloting it because he could do so "better than anyone else".

 

[Iron Jaguar]

He probably saw himself as a Howard Hughes sort of figure

OceanGate company motto:

 

[Betonhaus]

So it turns out their navigation software was Microsoft Excel

 

[not william stenchever]

so he speedran Rapture as fast as he could.

"I chose something different. I chose... Rupture"

 

[Screamer_2]

From what I hear the earlier models Stockton funded and had designed were actually relatively safe and competent, so I fully believe he knew what needed to be done from an engineering perspective to do this task safely but he wanted to take risks and save on costs.

My take is that he was suffering from the dunning kruger effect. He knew some stuff, had some knowledge but over estimated how much he knew and didn't know how much he didn't understand. He had enough money to hire people who didn't know, or would just shut up for the money. Fired people who tried to point out the mistakes.

This then played in with his ego as he thought he could be cutting edge. All the previous ideas and safety standards about steel hulls were just outdated over cautious thinking. He'll be the genius to revolutionise building deep-sea submarines. He's the rogue hero in his story showing everyone what is possible. People disagreeing with him are just naysayers that are being conservative in their engineering thinking and against his vision and genius.

 

[Oxyjen]

I do (or have done), layups and destructive stress testing on CF, and you’re not wrong. The method of the filament wind shown in one of their videos also looked very dubious to me. And the glued on end caps may have been the only way to achieve that but yeah. if tube didn’t just outright disintegrate, it probably eventually deflected enough (they said 4” of hourglass shape was normal!) to peel that joint open, or crack the composite next to the bond.

Totally narcissistic and hubristic. Many people told him he was fucking op, both within the industry and his own experts. I’ve worked for bosses like that and if it’s their brainchild these guys will dig in their heels until the bitter end. Never seen a better illustration than this.

Heh, if the diver guy is correct with his theory, so am I.

He's the rogue hero in his story showing everyone what is possible.

This had apparently worked for him in the experimental aircraft field. So he was wedded to using composites, even though it’s a totally different application, because that was his brand. And he’d obviously powered through and become successful once before with that same management style of going with his gut.

 

[Betonhaus]

This had apparently worked for him in the experimental aircraft field. So he was wedded to using composites, even though it’s a totally different application, because that was his brand. And he’d obviously powered through and become successful once before with that same management style of going with his gut

Or, he had manic narcissistic disorder and got lucky the first time.

 

[MoonState]

Day 5 of the hearing starts in 15 minutes.

 

[ATI Escapee]

What I dont get is why these Mission Specialists were a thing. They paid crazy money to be a 'part of the crew'...just really weird. I would not at all be comfortable with a paying customer having responsibilies on the submersible I was in, no matter how small.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

So it turns out their navigation software was Microsoft Excel

Even worse: Sonardyne -> handwritten notes -> Excel -> ArcGIS and apparently if you touched the ArcGIS map at all, you could knock everything out of alignment and fuck the whole map up. I've cut out the section with her testimony on navigation if you don't want the retarded TikTok zoomer version. OceanGate is a comedy of errors at every level.

 

[AnOminous]

What I dont get is why these Mission Specialists were a thing. They paid crazy money to be a 'part of the crew'...just really weird. I would not at all be comfortable with a paying customer having responsibilies on the submersible I was in, no matter how small.

I think it was a liability thing. There's no way they were really "crew members." By any common sense definition, they were passengers and everyone views them as such. I'm not big on admiralty law, though, since I don't like fringed flags.

 

[Seymour Duncan]

What I dont get is why these Mission Specialists were a thing. They paid crazy money to be a 'part of the crew'...just really weird. I would not at all be comfortable with a paying customer having responsibilies on the submersible I was in, no matter how small.

It's a part of the experience. The customers wanted to take part in an "expedition" and have their egos stroked about being all important and shit, as opposed to just blatantly being a really expensive guided tour for rich morons.

 

[AnOminous]

It's a part of the experience. The customers wanted to take part in an "expedition" and have their egos stroked about being all important and shit, as opposed to just blatantly being a really expensive guided tour for rich morons.

It didn't occur to them that a lowered standard of liability for "crew members" signing waivers might be to the benefit of someone deliberately sending them down in a death trap.

 

[Oxyjen]

What I dont get is why these Mission Specialists were a thing. They paid crazy money to be a 'part of the crew'...just really weird. I would not at all be comfortable with a paying customer having responsibilies on the submersible I was in, no matter how small.

It was basically illegal for them to offer a charter service in a not classified vessel. The coastguard would have shut them down.

So they had to fudge around it. Other options discussed were to make the customers part owners of the vessel. Or to *pay* the passenger $1 as an employee, and have them pay their way via donation to the other organization.