This PDF* is the AUSS document I’ve been looking at. It goes into considerable detail on their processes, including the process for attaching the end caps, which does emphasize the cleaning and surface prep. It’s certainly more than we know about Ocean Gate’s process from that assembly video. (Though the video certainly makes it look like they were half-assing it.)
*The PDF has been scanned from microfiche, and it even has a disclaimer page noting that it’s the best quality copy available, which amuses me a bit.
Lots more awful stuff in there about how the carbon fiber hull was manufactured. Just totally ridiculous.
But one interesting bit is that their monitoring system–dodgy as it was–actually did detect a failure! On a previous dive, one of the acoustic sensors heard a pop (which Stockton Rush dismissed as something impacting the hull). But that could be correlated with a discontinuity on a strain gauge near one of the rings. And then on the next dive, it showed a marked difference in the behavior of the strain vs. depth as compared to previous dives.
So as shoddy as everything was overall, they nevertheless had all the information they needed to conclude something was wrong and to stop future dives. Which Rush of course totally ignored.
Unknown, but they still technically exist and would have a few physical assets at the very least.
Quite possibly some of it. Rush’s wife was an executive in the company and they are sure as shit getting sued.
OceanGate, Rush’s estate, Tony Nissen as an individual (OceanGate director of engineering), Electroimpact (purportedly participated in construction), Janicki Industries (purportedly participated in construction) and the Hydrospace Group (purportedly participated in construction).
Out of business and sitting in limbo. But it has not been liquidated per se - it has a new CEO who was appointed to manage it through the investigations and shutdown. But it is also not doing anything with investigations and lawsuits flying. If all went well it could potentially be resurrected. All will not go well.
The total lawsuit purportedly amounts to claims of around $50 million. Whether there is enough money to cover that is a complete unknown far as I know. But I imagine the Nargeolet family will settle with taking them for every dollar they can, bankrupting as many as they can and destroying as many as they can. In their shoes I’d get some satisfaction from that.
With all due respect to Nargeolet and his family, ISTM that of all the victims, Nargeolet has the least claim to any damages. He was more of an expert than Rush, and was as aware of the risks of being in that vessel as anyone. The families of the others can at least claim that they were taken in by Rush’s BS, but Nargeolet was in a position to know better, and went along anyway. The others might even argue that Nargeolet’s presence gave them additional confidence.
Fully agreed and I’m sure that is going to be the crux of the defense. But Nargeolet’s family no doubt are looking at things through a rather more personally biased lens and are probably going to argue that his Titanic obsession made him vulnerable to being snowed by Rush. We’ll see where it goes.
Well this is morbid. The footage shows Stockton Rush’s wife hearing the explosion and asking a colleague “what was that bang?”. Then moments later she gets a text message from the submarine telling her it had dropped two weights and was ascending so she believes all is well. The bang overtook the message.
The BBC has had unprecedented access to the US Coast Guard’s (USCG) investigation for a documentary, Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster.
The footage was recently obtained by the USCG and shows Wendy Rush, the wife of Mr Rush, hearing the sound of the implosion while watching on from the sub’s support ship and asking: “What was that bang?”
That graphic appeared to show the text messages from the submarine to the support vessel. ISTM that using text messaging, complete with typing errors and annoying auto corrections, is not the most effective way to communicate while undertaking a dangerous mission. But perhaps it’s just a husband sending unofficial updates to his wife.
I read this article too, and I won’t lie–I found it a bit suspect. I’m genuinely going to hope that they misinterpreted something the USCG said because this makes no sense.
From the article:
However, the text message, which must have been sent just before the sub failed, took longer to reach the ship than the sound of the implosion.
I had to read this multiple times to understand what they were trying to say. I’ve worked in sonar engineering pretty much my entire adult life. This simply doesn’t happen. Sounds do not “overtake” each other in water.
I’m also unconvinced that a collapse of a relatively small volume at 3300m is going to be that loud (or even audible at all) from within a ship’s hull. I genuinely think it’s just some random noise onboard that they’ve incorrectly correlated with the event.
I’m really disappointed if the “overtaking sound” is something the USCG “experts” actually proposed.
The tet messages were sent as data packets that must be processed into text. It’s not that the sound was overtaken. The data packets were received, and before it was processed and output on the screen, the sound of the implosion reached the ship.
I couldn’t work out how the text messaging works as obviously there aren’t phone masts at the bottom of the Atlantic. However I found this on an archived version of Oceangate’s FAQs (https://archive.ph/xOid9):
Titan communicates with the topside comms and tracking team via text messages which are exchanged via a USBL (ultra-short baseline) acoustic system. The sub is required to communicate with topside every fifteen minutes or more frequently if needed. Tracking of the sub’s position (lat/long and depth) is achieved through the same system but is controlled by the computer and updates the sub’s position every few seconds.
I have no idea if a system like that would introduce a delay but perhaps it’s as @TroutMan says.
Yeah, I’m not entirely certain how their system works–but I’ve worked on HAIL (the hydroacoustic information link) that communicates between submarines and swimmer delivery vehicles, and the delay from receipt to display isn’t much… on the order of milliseconds.
I think my bigger problem may be the assumption that some random noise heard in the video is the collapse of Titan. She didn’t have a large internal volume and collapsed way down at 3300m. I simply don’t expect that to be audible. Thresher collapsed in the vicinity of Skylark and no one heard her… and she was a full-sized submarine at 750m.
I’d just like to see the CGs final report expected later this year, to see how they’ve come to these conclusions.
I’m not saying it’s impossible–but without supporting data I’m afraid this is little more than hey watch this widow listen to her husband die sensationalist journalism, and that’s disappointing.
I agree, there’s no public interest that I can see in reporting this. However when it’s shown in the documentary, with all the context around it, I would say it’s fine. The BBC does seem to do this sometimes, they will basically run a story which is pretty much marketing for some documentary they have with a feint news angle.
I’ve been looking into this a little bit and USBL communication is also transmitted at the speed of sound. However there is a delay from both signal processing and data processing. So it would certainly have arrived later, and his wife may not have noticed the message instantly.
It’s interesting to note that the speed of sound in water is 1480 meters per second compared to just 343 meters per second in air. And the speed of sound gets greater as the depth increases, so it was well beyond 1480m/sec in this case. The sound would have arrived at the boat very quickly.
Well, this largely depends on the system. As mentioned above, I’ve worked in sonar for nearly 25 years, first as an enlisted sonarman and then shifting over to sonar engineering. For the last decade or so, most of my work has been on active systems including the D-ACOMMS and HAIL subsystems/functions. HAIL is used to communicate with swimmer delivery vehicles and would presumably be the most similar. Both of these systems demodulate and display messages near-instantaneously.
It does seem that this is an active ranging and positioning system, and (as you mention) it is entirely possible that incoming messages are embedded in the ranging and positioning data and not necessarily immediately displayed. (We have submerged acoustic navigation systems that communicate with beacons on test ranges, and they’re not too dissimilar. I’d imagine it’s more like this.)
Again though, I think it’s a moot point because I’m unconvinced that any sound they heard (in the air) on the host platform would be Titan collapsing. I’d like to see that timeline established.
Yeah, sound speed increases with pressure/depth, but depth isn’t as great a contributor as temperature and salinity. Each meter of depth only increases the sound speed by 0.016s so at 3300m it’d be something like 1530m/s (maximum, it’d obviously slow on the way up.)
I’d like to see the official report promised later in the year. I reiterate, I’m not saying it isn’t possible–I’d just like to see how they determined that:
the sound heard onboard was indeed Titan
a clearer understanding of how the receive processing works, because I’ve had friends (outside of my field) ask me how one sound “outran” the other. (No really, some people believe this haha.)
Frankly, maybe it’s just the old salt in me, but I don’t like the fact that they published this without providing amplifying information. I don’t feel like it adds anything to the narrative, but I’ve already beaten that horse to death I think.
