Makes a lot of sense to be, cut clearly I’m nobody when it comes to actually having an understanding of the failure modes. Looking at the photos of the porthole before and the photos after sure looks to me like it blew outward. So if the carbon fiber body of the sub was what collapsed, it’s easy to imagine the air inside blowing out the porthole just like blowing the cap off of a tube of toothpaste by stomping on the tube itself. All grossly uninformed speculation though.
See, this is part of the problem. Looking at one of the closeup views of that porthole, all you see is that the titanium structure is completely intact (because it’s extremely strong) and the window is missing. It could have blown out, but you might see exactly the same thing if it had suddenly cracked and imploded. Of course that’s just from the picture – the real thing would yield a lot more clues. But if the window was not at fault (i.e.- it blew out after something else imploded) it might be harder to pin it down, especially if it was simply a structural failure in a weakened part of the hull, which was now reduced to little more than carbon-fiber dust at the bottom of the ocean.
If the porthole failed, what would the failure look like in the rest of the vessel? I assume you’d initially have a jet of hypersonic water that would blast against the opposite end cap, but also 6000 psi of pressure holding the cap in place. Is it enough to blow the cap off? Would the bolts fail, the adhesive holding the ring in place, or the carbon fiber itself?
Then what happens to the rest of the cylinder? Could a porthole failure lead to the implosion and complete destruction of the entire carbon fiber structure?
News articles are now making reference to the discovery of “presumed human remains”. I assume clothing is capable of surviving that kind of compression in some form, not sure what else.
The placement of the tarps on the pieces of debris seems a bit haphazard at first glance; is it possible that they’re actually covering something?
Probably just to protect any potential biological (DNA, etc) trace evidence on the hull’s interior.
Looks like they also covered up the OceanGate logo, for whatever reason.
Painting over the company branding on wreckage is a time honored aviation tradition. Usually done the moment the NTSB clears out. I imagine the tarps here are similarly motivated.
The NTSB often issues a preliminary report long before the final report so we may have a pretty good idea of where the failure started.
There was mention somewhere on the intenet that the mothership heard the implosion. I’m wondering if there was a last communication that indicated they were surfacing ASAP. It would be nice if Rush narrated what occurred as a matter of protocol.
I wouldn’t expect that. Pressure in the vessel was extremely low. By rushing in, it was equalizing to outside, and shouldn’t have created much if any expansionary force.
However a scenario that seems reasonable is:
- Window is engineered to be held in place by extreme external pressure, and there’s very little holding it against internal pressure.
- Implosion happens, equalizes pressure
- With pressure being equalized, and pressure vessel damaged and/or warped, window no longer is held by any forces, and simply falls out.
However I find it equally likely that weak parts of the pressure vessel (of which window is weakest) simply disintegrated as violent equalization occurred.
Kraken? Grab and squeeze the invader in my territory and see if it is good to eat
I remember that from the American Airlines 625 crash in St. Thomas in 1976. We were asked to provide security for the crash site and I remember being somewhat shocked that painting out the AA logo was one of the first things that was done.
I do not know who will have jurisdiction over this mishap. It might not be NTSB. I also read a lot of rail & marine mishap reports on NTSB, and the way they do investigations for those modes is quite different from how they do aviation investigations.
At least in aviation, prelims even of major accidents are typically little more than a recitation of the obvious documented facts. About like:
Vehicle X crashed at date/time Y at location Z while trying to perform activity A under weather conditions B resulting in C fatalities, D injuries, approximately E damage to the vehicle, and approximately F damage to the surroundings. Investigation is ongoing.
I agree it’ll be very interesting to see what comes out, regardless of which agency(ies) are involved.
double post, sorry
I had a spectacular crash on my last day driving a UPS truck. Company reps and suits arrived quickly. The very first thing they did was to make one poor guy wade into the muddy ravine and cover the UPS logo.
Why is this done? We know which company it is.
Because suits are stupid.
Or rather suits are so convinced of the abject dullness (unlike themselves) of the unwashed masses they rightly rule over that they think we’ll all be fooled by a large brown slab-sided van with narrow yellow side stripes and a splash of black (or white) paint over where the shield logo usually is.
I find suits’ disdain to be about the worst insult there is.
I suspect because a photograph of a charred, crumbled brown van with a recognizable UPS logo tends to get front page treatment with “UPS Driver Collides with Family Van, Kills 6” headlines, while just a photo of a brown van gets swept to the back pages.
If it was just this, I’d side with those dismissing the corporate suits. But the fact is, if there is a photo of a muddy, upturned UPS truck in the news story, then that means forever after it is going to show up in various places on the internet, as part of a meme, as part of a listicle of the “ten companies you thought were safe”, etc. Knowing that the picture is going to last forever, maybe the suits have a point…
I’m wondering about some of the broader issues this investigation is raising. What’s the purpose of this investigation? The general principle at work?
The Titan was a unique ship. So there’s no need to determine if it had flaws that might cause the destruction of similar vessels.
Is it a matter of adding to the general database of engineering and material science?
Or are there legal liability issues involved? Will the investigation reveal details which will determine who gets sued?
Can OceanGate (or any other private company) refuse to participate in an investigation? Could they theoretically say that the remains of the Titan are their property and they don’t want the government to look at them?