Titanic tourist submarine goes missing in the Atlantic Ocean

[Matted Joybeard]

Holy cow, a crewed mission to 11,000 meters in 1960!!!

"The descent into the Challenger Deep took nearly five hours. Once the Bathyscaphe Trieste reached the sea floor, Walsh and Piccard observed their surroundings. The ship's light allowed them to see what they described as a dark brown "diatomaceous ooze" covering the sea floor, along with shrimp and some fish that appeared to resemble flounder and sole. Since the Plexiglas viewing window had cracked during the descent, the men were only able to spend about twenty minutes on the sea floor. Then, they unloaded the ballasts (nine tons of iron pellets, and tanks filled with water) and began to float back to the ocean's surface. The ascent was much quicker than the dive, taking only three hours and fifteen minutes."

Source:

Bathyscaphe Trieste | Mariana Trench | Challenger Deep

On January 23, 1960, Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh boarded the Bathyscaphe Trieste sea vessel and descended to the deepest part of the ocean: the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench

geology.com

Fascinating.

The wild part is the plexiglass window cracked on the way down and they stuck to their guns and went for it.

 

[Vastator]

The wild part is the plexiglass window cracked on the way down and they stuck to their guns and went for it.

Link..?

 

[Matted Joybeard]

I really wish the late Paul Allen were alive, or maybe some other billionaire (James Cameron?) with an interest in the ocean would finance a visit to that trench again with high tech lighting and high definition cameras, it would be fascinating to see what lurks in those depths.

James Cameron did that ten years back and filmed it.

On 26 March 2012, Cameron reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. The maximum depth recorded during this record-setting dive was 10,908 metres (35,787 ft).[42] Measured by Cameron, at the moment of touchdown, the depth was 10,898 m (35,756 ft). It was the fourth-ever dive to the Challenger Deep and the second crewed dive (with a maximum recorded depth slightly less than that of Trieste's 1960 dive). It was the first solo dive and the first to spend a significant amount of time (three hours) exploring the bottom.[1]

 

[San Souci]

A shame. I was watching that as closely as I watched when Apollo 13 was in trouble. But no happy ending here.

 

[Matted Joybeard]

Link..?

It's mentioned in the quotation. And here from Wiki:

The descent to the ocean floor took 4 hours 47 minutes at a descent rate of 0.9 metres per second (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph).[10][11] After passing 9,000 metres (30,000 ft), one of the outer Plexiglas window panes cracked, shaking the entire vessel.[12] The two men spent twenty minutes on the ocean floor. The temperature in the cabin was 7 °C (45 °F) at the time. While at maximum depth, Piccard and Walsh unexpectedly regained the ability to communicate with the support ship, USS Wandank (ATA-204), using a sonar/hydrophone voice communications system.[13] At a speed of almost 1.6 km/s (1 mi/s) – about five times the speed of sound in air – it took about seven seconds for a voice message to travel from the craft to the support ship and another seven seconds for answers to return.

 

[elektra]

In the airgun world, we use carbon fiber bottles pressurized up to 4500 lbs per square inch. With a Max rating a good bit higher. Even in these applications it is known, and accepted that these things have a "shelf life". Based not only on age, but also frequency of subjecting the bottle to high, pressure, and empty. Which is ill advised for the longevity of the cylinder, and ultimately the shooters saftey. It's in the name carbon "fiber". Each time you compress, or stretch it; fibers break. Carbon fiber pressure containment vessels are a "consumable". This dick head clearly didn't heed know knowledge...

I dont know much about carbon fiber, but I do inspect, or have inspected the hulls of Virginia Class submarines for cracks using NDT. Not that gives me insight but I do know at whatever depth the Virginia submerges to, if you put a tight string from one end of the hull to the other and go to depth, there will be 4ft of slack in what was a tight string.

You have to be right about the breakage of the carbon fiber

 

[odanny]

Moral of the story, dont trust your life on Carbon Fiber. I dont think you can do non destructive testing on a 5 inch thick carbon fiber pressure hull. Multiple layers? I wonder how it is built, honeycombs? That thick, to many variables to do an adequate NDT inspection. At that depth, the hull has got to be squeezed inward by inches.

Something like that, with hindsight, you dont trust other's lives with it. And you certainly dont use it over and over and over.

I wonder how many dives the sub made.

Best to stick with HY-80, HY-100, HY-120 carbon steel, I imagine steel is much more flexible than Carbon fiber, returning to it's orginal shape sort of like a rubber band. Elasticity would be the word.

You can get ductility in steel, at the expense of hardness. You get too much hardness, steel gets brittle and cracks, you get ductility and it sees too much stress you get plastic deformation, and it won't bounce back to its original shape and strength. The carbon fiber was not what the hull was made of, it was just added because it's so lightweight, but I am not 100% sure of this. It had to have a hardened steel hull at some point.

 

[Matted Joybeard]

Thanks much for this information, BTW. I am a little late replying.

I had been trying to find this information for days, and I see that it finally started getting coverage today after I saw your post early this a.m.

This is what I had assumed at the beginning - that there should be multiple redundant mechanisms to surface, and if this was the case, then it really indicated a catastrophic failure had taken place. Could not find this info anywhere.

I bet (with strong certainty) that the US Navy heard the submersible implode and that they suspected all along that the crew died days ago. Still worth the search though.

There was reporting today that the those on the mothership Polar Prince heard the implosion right after loss of contact. So they knew, waited eight hours to call for help under the imagination essentially that anyone was alive. I believe I also saw some reporting that the US Navy did hear the implosion as well, so the situation seems as if it were known from the start, assuming accuracy of the reporting.

A sad detail is that in an ABC interview today with Bob Ballard and James Cameron, they both let on that it was their impression that the crew on Titan recognized there was an issue - possibly alerted by the 'innovative' hull health monitoring system - and that the crew had dropped ballast and were trying to ascend just prior to the implosion occurring. So while the implosion was sudden and imperceptible to the crew, the immediate danger was recognized in the lead-up to the catastrophe. Kind of like an air crash in reverse.

 

[elektra]

You can get ductility in steel, at the expense of hardness. You get too much hardness, steel gets brittle and cracks, you get ductility and it sees too much stress you get plastic deformation, and it won't bounce back to its original shape and strength. The carbon fiber was not what the hull was made of, it was just added because it's so lightweight, but I am not 100% sure of this. It had to have a hardened steel hull at some point.

I found this, not sure it is accurate, but given what you say about steel, the same must be said about titanium, three different materials joined together, with different ductility (thanks for the proper word), had to be asking for trouble.

 

[odanny]

I found this, not sure it is accurate, but given what you say about steel, the same must be said about titanium, three different materials joined together, with different ductility (thanks for the proper word), had to be asking for trouble.

It sounds like you've done some ultrasonic testing in the past, I have years of experience doing UT on steel castings, and have done some aluminum as well, usually for cracks but sometimes for wall thickness. The CEO said previously that both Boeing and the Univ. of Washington were involved in the design and build and both issued a statement today that neither was involved in the design or the build of this craft. Basically this was a game of Russian Roulette, there was no bullet in the chamber of the previous dives, but the one before this must have caused a fatal weakening somewhere, and I wonder if enough can be retrieved to determine where.

 

[Vastator]

I dont know much about carbon fiber, but I do inspect, or have inspected the hulls of Virginia Class submarines for cracks using NDT. Not that gives me insight but I do know at whatever depth the Virginia submerges to, if you put a tight string from one end of the hull to the other and go to depth, there will be 4ft of slack in what was a tight string.

You have to be right about the breakage of the carbon fiber

With fiber/reisn based material that threshold decreases with every cycle...

 

[Dekster]

Okay but if I were a billionaire, I would wrap myself in bubble wrap before going out to the pick up the newspaper in the morning. I sure as hell wouldn't say, "Hey, being bolted in a propane tank with 4 other people and dropped 12k feet into the ocean seems like a cool thing to do."

 

[Matted Joybeard]

Yeah, if you're a billionaire who can spare no expense, why would you cheap out in this case?

 

[Vastator]

Yeah, if you're a billionaire who can spare no expense, why would you cheap out in this case?

In this case, it was the only game in town for this venture. This company had a track record of success, and the customer just took that for granted. Shit happens...

 

[52ndStreet]

The wild part is the plexiglass window cracked on the way down and they stuck to their guns and went for it.

I hate to say it again, this submarine had no proper certification, or testing prior to going to those depths. This was a disaster waiting to materialize. There should have been some NTSB intervention to stop them from diving to those depths. God rest their souls.

 

[elektra]

In this case, it was the only game in town for this venture. This company had a track record of success, and the customer just took that for granted. Shit happens...

actually, from what I have read, the company had a track record of near misses

reading what other passengers have said, it really was nothing more than a high school science fair project, they said that things like they never got to the titanic, drifted, spinning on the bottom, with no communications with the surface. The communications they did have was text messaging?

 

[Matted Joybeard]

In this case, it was the only game in town for this venture. This company had a track record of success, and the customer just took that for granted. Shit happens...

The brit billionaire that signed up to ride on that piece shit had been down to the Challenger Deep in the Limiting Factor, three times deeper than the Titanic. So it's not the only game in town. Check out the Limiting Factor - notable is the fact they committed to the classing that Titan never went through.

SAFETY​

Common to the entirety of Triton’s fleet is third-party attestation to the integrity of the design and build by a recognised international Classification Society. For Triton, the Limiting Factor could be no exception and although the process is expensive, arduous and time-consuming, it is the best guarantee that a submersible has been developed thoughtfully, carefully and with engineering rigour.

Commercial certification also provides the gold standard for vessel safety. It allows the sub to be insured by standard maritime agents and should give peace of mind to any sub passengers that they will be as safe in their dives as on any other commercially-rated vessel.

I'm not an expert and completely full of shit about all of this - but when you look at the Limiting Factor - which Hamish had ridden on before, how he then took a look at the Titan with no seats, a bluetooth game controller that no one should be trusting Mario's life to, let alone their own, no hand holds, a rat nest of exterior cables and a bird's nest under the floor mats... how he thought this was up to calibre I have no idea.

This:

vs. this:

 

[skye]

They are all gone!

Stop the discussion.

 

[elektra]

The brit billionaire that signed up to ride on that piece shit had been down to the Challenger Deep in the Limiting Factor, three times deeper than the Titanic. So it's not the only game in town. Check out the Limiting Factor - notable is the fact they committed to the classing that Titan never went through.



I'm not an expert and completely full of shit about all of this - but when you look at the Limiting Factor - which Hamish had ridden on before, how he then took a look at the Titan with no seats, a bluetooth game controller that no one should be trusting Mario's life to, let alone their own, no hand holds, a rat nest of exterior cables and a bird's nest under the floor mats... how he thought this was up to calibre I have no idea.

This:

View attachment 797726

vs. this:

View attachment 797727

I am not trying to correct your or take away from your comment, and now that I think about I am comparing to different systems, never mind...

but, what I was going to say is that the Virginia Class Navy Submarines use a Xbox controller, but that is just for the camera that replaces the periscope.

 

[skye]

I hate to say it again, this submarine had no proper certification, or testing prior to going to those depths. This was a disaster waiting to materialize. There should have been some NTSB intervention to stop them from diving to those depths. God rest their souls.