OceanGate

[Totenkindly]

So I watched both documentaries that dropped this month about OceanGate -- Titan on Netflix and Implosion on Max.

Surprisingly, despite their reputation for sometimes putting out sketchy docs, the Netflix show felt a lot more balanced and objective -- maybe partly because they actually took time to do lengthy interviews with real principals involved with OceanGate over the prior eight years, including their Director of Engineering, other director positions as well. It was pretty much just facts or accounts based on factual basis. I didn't feel like I was getting a slam piece, it felt like an attempt to build a picture of what happened and why OceanGate continued to operate until the implosion on June 18, 2023.

As you can tell by the title, the Max documentary felt more sensationalistic and judgmental -- less accounts from people directly in positions on authority at OceanGate who had personal feelings about Stockton Rush and his behavior, although it improved as it went due to actually pulling in some other people who worked at OceanGate (just those with less authority).

There was nothing really new here, I think we've got a public opinion pretty much seasoned and baked at this point. But it's really clear that Rush had to have known what the noises were that he was experiencing, especially after the fateful Dive 80 (after which the acoustic assessments on each trip after showed clear and ongoing elevation in the degradation of the carbon-fiber hull), and yet he kept diving whether to save face and/or avoid the company from going under. He wasn't piloting all of those missions so it was some form of luck he was piloting the one in which the sub imploded (bad luck = losing his life, good luck = not dealing with the fallout of his irresponsibility and the destruction of his company and reputation).

While he talked up safety around potential ticket-buyers, it was clear that in any discussion that if you disagreed with him, you'd soon find yourself out of a job and potentially even sued (like they did with David Lochridge, Director of Marine Operations, who quit/was let go and then filed a safety complaint -- they went after him full force until he was running out of money and couldn't make headway and had to withdraw his complaint -- I think we saw a lot of his reports being mentioned shortly after the sub imploded).

It's kind of fascinating how death was instantaneous. Human beings are bad at understanding extremes. For example, we have a good idea of what $1000 is; a decent idea of $100,000; less of an idea of what $1 million is; and we don't fathom at all what $1 billion looks like compared to a million. In the same way, events seem to happen around us "instantaneously" but they don't -- and we don't realize how long it takes us to get a sensory input, process it, and then cognitively become consciously aware of it and what it means. In this case, at the instant of failure, it took about 1-2 milliseconds for the sub to implode, which totally pulverized its contents and created an enormous amount of heat for a brief flash. By the time the passengers would have had time to process all this and consciously become aware of the pain or events, they would have been long (tens or hundreds of milliseconds) dead.

I did see in the Max doc that while they did not mention recovering any flesh remains, they found a shred of cloth from Rush's jumper caked into the sludge inside one of the titanium endcaps, and when they peeled it apart, there was an intact pen, a ticket voucher, and part of a legible itinerary (which they showed on screen) -- pretty wild that it was just smashed flat in there and survived intact, considering everything else was pulverized.

But it was really clear that Rush had sidestepped every regulation possible, especially not getting the vehicle flagged / approved by any particular relevant country's oversight boards, and tried to muddy it up to avoid being put under the microscope. And the one safety thing (the acoustic system meant to capture the sound of carbon fibers snapping) that he touted as an innovative safety measure that would warn them ahead of time to avoid catastrophe was the same safety system he continued to ignore when there were numerous recorded events and disturbing sounds of breakage. He actively had to keep dismissing the fears of his passengers and pretending the sounds were "normal."

I think the "mission specialist" appellation was also interesting -- they were just paying customers being given official titles to make it sound like they knew more than they did -- because don't we do that with space program things officially? I thought I'd seen it before. (I'm not sure what the Katy Perry recent flight had as the official title for their all-female crew for their short 'space flight'.)

 

[conscious]

Hey, did they talk about the engineering of the sub at all? Or was it more strictly a documentary?

I remember hearing about the loud cracking sounds they would hear inside the sub and how they were all aware that each dive was destroying the integrity of the carbon fiber. And how they all were aware that the alarm system wouldn't have enough time to alert you before catastrophic failure...which of course is what happened.

I'm just wondering because the design sounds intriguing and I guess they use carbon fiber for oxygen tanks for diving and for airplane frames. But the way a structural engineer talked about it with the Titan, he seemed to think the compressive forces perpendicular to the cylinder were probably fine and had most of the force pulling on the carbon strands (which I think is what they were going for), but that the endcap horizontal compression forces were likely pushing on the epoxy and not the carbon strands, cracking and destroying the lamination over time. So it might be possible (?) to do this with more of a spherical structure and a carbon fiber with almost no imperfections. In either case, I think there will be an official report soon by the end of the year.

 

[Totenkindly]

Hey, did they talk about the engineering of the sub at all? Or was it more strictly a documentary?

It didn't quite go into the level of detail as you are discussing below, it was based more on the testimony of the various leads in Oceangate, but that did include obviously some commentary about the carbon fiber.

I remember hearing about the loud cracking sounds they would hear inside the sub and how they were all aware that each dive was destroying the integrity of the carbon fiber. And how they all were aware that the alarm system wouldn't have enough time to alert you before catastrophic failure...which of course is what happened.

Yeah, it was kind of scary how Rush kept dismissing it and just telling them it was normal for any sub and/or carbon fiber vehicle to make these kinds of sounds all the time. Or that it was just "seasoning the sub" for later dives.

I don't have any background in materials comp. About the only thing this reminds me of is how in underground caving, areas that actually have rockfall might be safer because the loose/unstable rock has already fallen, leaving the solid parts intact. But I can't imagine how snapped carbon fiber would be stronger, it would actually be weaker (just as if the strands comprising a rope would start to snap -- it means less strands contributing to supporting the whole). I think he was trying to suggest that air pockets inside the fiber sheaths were just collapsing, etc. But it really doesn't look at that way from the data. Apparently the lamination broke around Dive 80 (a very noticeable bang) and since that point until the sub imploded on Dive 88, the acoustic signatures showed a ton of noise and popping; it had obviously been damaged and was in the process of failing.

They also apparently left it sit in a lot in Newfoundland over a very cold winter after Dive 80, when it should have been kept in temperature-controlled settings.

I'm just wondering because the design sounds intriguing and I guess they use carbon fiber for oxygen tanks for diving and for airplane frames. But the way a structural engineer talked about it with the Titan, he seemed to think the compressive forces perpendicular to the cylinder were probably fine and had most of the force pulling on the carbon strands (which I think is what they were going for), but that the endcap horizontal compression forces were likely pushing on the epoxy and not the carbon strands, cracking and destroying the lamination over time. So it might be possible (?) to do this with more of a spherical structure and a carbon fiber with almost no imperfections. In either case, I think there will be an official report soon by the end of the year.

I'm not sure how the carbon fiber was interplaying with the titanium endcaps, and it didn't go into that kind of analysis. But it does seem like they couldn't find any trace of carbon fiber after the incident. it's like all the carbon fiber of the hull was destroyed/shredded completely, just leaving the endcaps into which was blown the "sludge" remaining from all the remainder of material on the vessel. So when they pulled up the endcaps, they had to scour out all of this sludge and sift through it all.

As far as the carbon fiber as a material goes, certainly if the sub had been spherical, it's very possible it could have withstood the pressure -- there'd be no weak part design-wise, the only weakness would be imperfections in the material and perhaps where the port would be.

There was a lot of dumb stuff going on. One of the guys on a late trip who did get to see the Titanic confirmed there was an incident where one endcap fell off before submersion -- they were only using four bolts out of the 18 to hold it in place, and they all sheered off at once. (I get the notion of just using the four since the water pressure deep down would jam that endcap on there regardless.) Another crew mentioned how the wiring and items were often loose / came off or really disorganized; her experience was in non-manned submersibles and they wouldn't let an unmanned sub go down in that condition. Apparently the Titan had a ton of inexplicable failures across its full gamut of operation, not just the hull issue. Things apparently would regularly fail and they would have to scrub a lot of dives. I have no comparison point for how other submersibles fared, but it should have been very concerning.

They did a lot of interviews with the main board folks, so I think some of that info will come out in their final report. They were seriously looking at and possibly recommending that the incident was not accidental (it seemed an inevitability) but actually should be considered a crime.

 

[The Cat]

Its hard to not imagine the ocean gate guy being a wide eyed lunatic selling holes to idiots at a premium. How did anyone sign off on any of that? Wild.

 

[conscious]

Wow, thanks for sharing all that. I didn't know they had so many problems. Storing it out in the cold of winter sounds bizarre, but so does the way they recklessly engineered everything.

It's too bad. I think they had an idea that might have had engineering potential if they went slower and did a lot more testing and maybe even treated the cylinders as disposable up to a point, maybe by having a proper inspection process after dives. But I know they didn't have a lot of money for R&D anyway.

 

[conscious]

Oh boy! I watched the Netflix documentary. Words can't describe, but this can

They never had a working test prototype that handled the pressures around the Titanic...
They built the final product anyway and heard intense cracking, delamination, and failing of the carbon fiber on every dive, almost every step of the way.
The first hull was damaged so bad you could see a large tear on the carbon fiber. It was even scrapped and deemed unsafe.
Was the second hull even engineered differently? They didn't mention it, so I presume it wasn't. Maybe it was thicker?

I have a bit of a crazy engineering monkey-brain so I had to look up how this was engineered in greater detail and try to devise something that might actually work...I can't help myself...

Titan Problems:
1. Not-Continuous Carbon Fiber: The layers weren't even continuous! They were cross-layered like in a 3d print!
2. Air pockets: It wasn't created in a zero-vacuum pressure chamber, so air and contaminants were likely between layers. This is bad! Force loading wouldn't be balanced and crystalline. You'd expect cascading failure...
3. Compressive Loading: They didn't try to balance the hoop stress. All forces were compressive, not taking advantage of the stronger tensile strength of carbon fiber.

Begs a Question: Did they even have a proper structural engineer? I'm not a structural engineer and maybe I'm totally misrepresenting something here, but I see serious problems here that probably should have been addressed in the testing phase.

Solution?: I think there might be a solution to all of these problems. The sphere likely wouldn't work because you end up with the same problem of non-continuous layering, inviting problems. What might work instead is to start with a thin metallic ferromagnetic cylinder with curved walls, like taking a toroid and stretching it out along its height. Then wrap a mediating compressive layer between the toroid and carbon fiber. Now wrap the fiber around that continuously and as perfectly as possible with no air inside. So you need some kind of zero-g vacuum environment, probably requiring a manufacturing facility in space and a special space robot capable of carrying the spool through the cylinder. The mediating layer is to make up the difference between the different ductility of the metal and carbon fiber, while giving you something to wrap the fiber around uniformly. But you could also use it as a fudge factor to ensure the carbon fiber rests against it and doesn't overextend its tensile strength and break.

By doing this, you can attach and remove the endcaps by magnetizing and demagnetizing the ferromagnetic core. But most importantly, you also end up loading all hydrostatic forces perpendicular to the carbon fiber at ALL locations (which you want). And when the carbon fiber is compressed from outside forces, the carbon fiber wrapped inside the hull would stretch inward, offloading the outside compressive force to a tensile load that pushes back, utilizing the carbon fiber strength as best as possible.

In other words, if the carbon fiber is looped on itself around the hull, it can utilize its tensile strength to push back against the compressive forces of the water.

Could this work? If I was a mad-man with more money than I knew what to do with, a desire to be seen as a genius willing to try almost anything, and an ego that has no bounds...hmmm, I have someone in mind.

 

[The Cat]

Oh boy! I watched the Netflix documentary. Words can't describe, but this can

They never had a working test prototype that handled the pressures around the Titanic...
They built the final product anyway and heard intense cracking, delamination, and failing of the carbon fiber on every dive, almost every step of the way.
The first hull was damaged so bad you could see a large tear on the carbon fiber. It was even scrapped and deemed unsafe.
Was the second hull even engineered differently? They didn't mention it, so I presume it wasn't. Maybe it was thicker?

I have a bit of a crazy engineering monkey-brain so I had to look up how this was engineered in greater detail and try to devise something that might actually work...I can't help myself...

Titan Problems:
1. Not-Continuous Carbon Fiber: The layers weren't even continuous! They were cross-layered like in a 3d print!
2. Air pockets: It wasn't created in a zero-vacuum pressure chamber, so air and contaminants were likely between layers. This is bad! Force loading wouldn't be balanced and crystalline. You'd expect cascading failure...
3. Compressive Loading: They didn't try to balance the hoop stress. All forces were compressive, not taking advantage of the stronger tensile strength of carbon fiber.

Begs a Question: Did they even have a proper structural engineer? I'm not a structural engineer and maybe I'm totally misrepresenting something here, but I see serious problems here that probably should have been addressed in the testing phase.

Solution?: I think there might be a solution to all of these problems. The sphere likely wouldn't work because you end up with the same problem of non-continuous layering, inviting problems. What might work instead is to start with a thin metallic ferromagnetic cylinder with curved walls, like taking a toroid and stretching it out along its height. Then wrap a mediating compressive layer between the toroid and carbon fiber. Now wrap the fiber around that continuously and as perfectly as possible with no air inside. So you need some kind of zero-g vacuum environment, probably requiring a manufacturing facility in space and a special space robot capable of carrying the spool through the cylinder. The mediating layer is to make up the difference between the different ductility of the metal and carbon fiber, while giving you something to wrap the fiber around uniformly. But you could also use it as a fudge factor to ensure the carbon fiber rests against it and doesn't overextend its tensile strength and break.

By doing this, you can attach and remove the endcaps by magnetizing and demagnetizing the ferromagnetic core. But most importantly, you also end up loading all hydrostatic forces perpendicular to the carbon fiber at ALL locations (which you want). And when the carbon fiber is compressed from outside forces, the carbon fiber wrapped inside the hull would stretch inward, offloading the outside compressive force to a tensile load that pushes back, utilizing the carbon fiber strength as best as possible.

In other words, if the carbon fiber is looped on itself around the hull, it can utilize its tensile strength to push back against the compressive forces of the water.

Could this work? If I was a mad-man with more money than I knew what to do with, a desire to be seen as a genius willing to try almost anything, and an ego that has no bounds...hmmm, I have someone in mind.

As far as I can tell it was a hairbrained DIY project that he came up with on a budget. Pretty much the last thing you would want to do if you expected to live through the maiden voyage. Like this thing was seemingly built the same way Peter Molynieux did video games, over promise and under deliever. A part of me wonders if he was just an compelling idiot in over his head or if he just tragically embodied 99% of the Mark Twain Quote: All you need is ignorance and confidence and success is assured...it's that last 1% that gets you. The devil is in the details and this guy seemed to think of himself as a big picture kinda guy.

I always figure if it were easy, we'd already have a gift shop down there.

 

[The Cat]

 

[Totenkindly]

The first hull was damaged so bad you could see a large tear on the carbon fiber. It was even scrapped and deemed unsafe.

Oh yeah. I think I forgot to mention that bit. *eye roll* Wow.

Was the second hull even engineered differently? They didn't mention it, so I presume it wasn't. Maybe it was thicker?

Titan Problems:
1. Not-Continuous Carbon Fiber: The layers weren't even continuous! They were cross-layered like in a 3d print!

Yeah, I think my understanding was the pressure cracked the lamination and separated the layers, versus just having one layer wrapped around repeatedly to comprise the layers (I think that's what you're saying?)

I don't have any engineering background myself.

Begs a Question: Did they even have a proper structural engineer? I'm not a structural engineer and maybe I'm totally misrepresenting something here, but I see serious problems here that probably should have been addressed in the testing phase.

No idea, but didn't he contract with a place like Lockheed / Boeing or similar for awhile, but then they either dropped him or he cut them out to get his own engineering staff and to cut costs further?

Could this work? If I was a mad-man with more money than I knew what to do with, a desire to be seen as a genius willing to try almost anything, and an ego that has no bounds...hmmm, I have someone in mind.

I think his issue was basically "costs" which he kept trying to control but likely to the degree of making a very unsafe vehicle.

And yeah, maybe if the Tesla idiot was absorbed in doing more fun projects like this, he'd have less time to be mucking around in politics.

 

[The Cat]

Oh yeah. I think I forgot to mention that bit. *eye roll* Wow.


Yeah, I think my understanding was the pressure cracked the lamination and separated the layers, versus just having one layer wrapped around repeatedly to comprise the layers (I think that's what you're saying?)

I don't have any engineering background myself.


No idea, but didn't he contract with a place like Lockheed / Boeing or similar for awhile, but then they either dropped him or he cut them out to get his own engineering staff and to cut costs further?


I think his issue was basically "costs" which he kept trying to control but likely to the degree of making a very unsafe vehicle.

And yeah, maybe if the Tesla idiot was absorbed in doing more fun projects like this, he'd have less time to be mucking around in politics.

People should convince him he can become meme if he's the test pilot for all his rockets.

 

[conscious]

Yeah, I think my understanding was the pressure cracked the lamination and separated the layers, versus just having one layer wrapped around repeatedly to comprise the layers (I think that's what you're saying?)

I looked it up because I didn't catch it in the documentary, but I guess the only difference was they did 5 layers at a time? Sanding away the air pockets (lol) and letting it cure for awhile before moving on to the next 5 layers. It did make a difference, but lol. I don't know why they didn't at least use a vacuum environment.

In retrospect, an engineer said the middle of the tube was probably under the most pressure and is what probably failed first. The engineer also mentioned the measurements of the strain gauges from the Dive 80 decompressive bang (that happened at the surface) and how they showed a lot of decompressive spring from the center and much less towards the endcaps. Rush could have at least made the carbon fiber curved outward to help with that. But he probably thought it would cost more by making the design more complicated. It sounds like he was just trying to be as cheap as possible and hope for uncovering some engineering miracle. They said the carbon fiber used was even expired!

It's surprising he wasn't afraid! I guess he really believed he could defy common engineering sense. Although I guess to be fair, it did make it to the Titanic under multiple dives and supposedly Titanium breaks and wears out over time too. So in a sense, it was a success, but they just didn't do enough testing to understand the limits to failure. But I don't know many people that would be comfortable hearing fiber crackling and breaking during a dive lol.

 

[Totenkindly]

They said the carbon fiber used was even expired!

Gawd. That's just...

It's surprising he wasn't afraid! I guess he really believed he could defy common engineering sense. Although I guess to be fair, it did make it to the Titanic under multiple dives and supposedly Titanium breaks and wears out over time too. So in a sense, it was a success, but they just didn't do enough testing to understand the limits to failure. But I don't know many people that would be comfortable hearing fiber crackling and breaking during a dive lol.

I don't really understand people who just think they can deny reality.

I wonder if he felt like his dream was falling apart after Dive 80 and that it was all gonna catch up to him, and he made some kind of semi-conscious decision to surge ahead and go down with the ship when it finally failed, vs having to survive losing his company and dream. I just don't understand it otherwise.

That other millionaire was a trip -- the one who they said "must have a high risk tolerance." he seemed to be of the mindset that "sure, it's risky as hell and I probably could die, but wtf, I did it anyway and got away with it. That's the breaks, and anyone who didn't understand that was just fooling themselves."

 

[conscious]

I wonder if he felt like his dream was falling apart after Dive 80 and that it was all gonna catch up to him, and he made some kind of semi-conscious decision to surge ahead and go down with the ship when it finally failed, vs having to survive losing his company and dream. I just don't understand it otherwise.

Woah...that makes a lot of sense. It sounded like he wanted to be the SpaceX of ocean exploration. And he was getting old and maybe didn't care about the risks. I guess he thought it better to take a chance. And if it pays off he becomes successful for breaking rules and trying things. And if it doesn't, he tried his best and he's lived long enough?

What a dark psychology, especially being willing to take other lives with you for the chance at success. I can't imagine how this effects his wife because she has to live with the ramifications.

 

[The Cat]

Be our expert?
The Design Violates everything I know about the physics of a submersible.
Go away hater.
*Boom*
I truly wonder if there was a close quarters fight between the victims and the murderer in those mysterious fathoms below in the final moments.
​

 

[Totenkindly]

I truly wonder if there was a close quarters fight between the victims and the murderer in those mysterious fathoms below in the final moments.
​

That's being saved for the anime adaptation.

And after the sub explodes, the winner of the fight becomes a water mage and is currently ruling the bottom of the ocean floor with an army of aquatic monsters.

 

[The Cat]

That's being saved for the anime adaptation.

And after the sub explodes, the winner of the fight becomes a water mage and is currently ruling the bottom of the ocean floor with an army of aquatic monsters.