Beyond Titan - physics and the deep sea

[TokyoStories]

Continuing our crash course in all things deep-sea.

Roger Boisjoly actually went home after work and said to his wife something like, "I've just killed the Challenger crew".

I think I read somewhere he was told to, "think like a business man not an engineer"

The utter shame is that it is fairly common knowledge that rubber loses elasticity in cold weather.

I don't know if the O rings were ordinary rubber or something else, but I think they either were rubber or behaved like it.

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I don't think ignoring safety warnings is difficult to understand when looked at sociologically. How many of us have taken risks at work? I've seen people using fire extinguishers at doorstops. People skipping thru health and safety courses and just doing the quiz at the end and hoping for the best. I'm did a participant observation over time, involving night clubs, the number of women who'd walk to their cars at 0400 in a crime riddled town, instead of waiting 10 minutes for door staff to finish and walk them. We all take risks if we want gratification of some sort.
Thank you for the links, everyone. Really interesting.

@TokyoStories i wonder the same, it indeed looks like a tape…

@TokyoStories I looked and checked if it’s a maybe a part of their logo or some markings but I couldn’t find anything like that shape.

Re the remains, could they not just be teeth and bone (sorry)?

The duct tape is covering up the Oceangate logo I believe.

Although based on everything else we know it might have been holding the thing together.

Most likely, but the one thing I've learned from this whole debacle is that none of us knows as much as we think about deep sea physics.

Re the remains, could they not just be teeth and bone (sorry)?
(I feel a bit macabre writing this, as these were real people, with families who loved them). Not if it imploded, think more like the remains you get given at a crematorium ie very small particles.

In fairness the remains you get in the west after a cremation have been pulverised in a machine as much bone remains intact.

In Japan it's tradition to have a 'Kotsuage' ceremony where the loved ones pick out the bones with chopsticks after cremation.

There is also the matter of metal in the bodies (fillings, replacement joints or pins from accidents) which would likely survive some of the forces involved.

I'm not posting a link but if anyone is really interested the myth busters made a fake diver out of a pig and then depressurised the diving suit.

My non-expert assumption is that the white outer skin of the carbon fibre centre tube wouldn't have been structural, just overlaid for aesthetics and not sealed or pressurised in any way.

@Locutus2000 thank you, yes that makes sense about covering the logo..
but as you said I wouldn’t be surprised about the other way taping the sub together..

My understanding was the carbon fibre was the main structure, sealed at either end with the titanium caps.

Yeah, exactly, so the white parts weren't structural, hence being recoverable.

No. They were structural. It was an experimental structure, made up of the carbon fibre cylinder in which they sat and the two end caps.

If only the cylinder had been made of titanium as they knew it should have been

Did they cover the cylinder or were they the cylinder?

A bit like paper on a can?

Do we know why Stockton Rush didn’t use the traditional steel or titanium for his submersible? Was carbon fibre cheaper?

Those white parts were not part of the carbon fibre tube or the titanium semi-spherical endcaps. If you watch any of the videos of the construction of the Titan you can see the actual carbon fibre tube, and that is not what was recovered.

They covered it!

The cylinder was made of carbon fibre approximately 4.5" thick.

Well, obviously I have watched videos of the recovered parts! To me they look like the panels of the carbon fibre body of the submersible. It may be they are parts of the fibreglass tail shell...

Either way, the carbon fibre hull was structural.

But what was on the outside of it?

I can imagine a cylinder. I can imagine it made of thick carbon fibre.
Then I can imagine putting something around it - to add logos, etc. So a cover.

Yes, and I think it was also to do with carbon fibre being much lighter so easier to transport and get on and off the boat.