Titan Submersible Vessel

#276

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2024 12:19 pm
RVInit wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2024 11:47 am Roy Thomas, a representative from ABS, one of the "classing" organizations, is testifying now. Oh my. If the owner of Spencer Composites is watching this presentation he will likely be drinking heavily tonight. I don't know how he is going to avoid lawsuits.

Thomas is being quite thoroughly about why carbon fiber composites are not good materials for pressure vessels for deep sea operations. I was aware of the general "not appropriate material", but this guy is giving specific details as to the difficulties of creating a thick carbon fiber component that would have the same properties throughout the entire thickness. Sounds like it is next to impossible to create such a thing, but also how to evaluate the end result.
How come? He only produced a cylinder to customer specs. He was not involved in evaluating fitness for purpose.

If that's true then that is one more thing that Nissen lied about. According to Nissen everything was all Stockton Rush and the guy at Spencer doing the design work for the hull.

It's not that I take Nissen at his word, he came across as a super sleazy person. He was all in for the paycheck and the four year ride as long as he didn't have to take responsibility for anything. His testimony was cringe and I couldn't believe he wasn't grilled more seriously by the board. I would have left him crying "I want my mommy!!!!" Tried to pretend he pushed back on things, but there is no way he pushed back. Several people that actually DID push back testified and they didn't last long at all. A young woman that worked on the navigation for several dives simply mentioned to Wendy Rush that she is familiar with some computer software that could help with teh navigation and she was immediately relieved of her navigation duties and told "we have experts that designed this" and reassigned to some menial task before being sent home on the next helicopter flight off the ship. So, the idea that Rush allowed Nissen to go from zero to hiring 25 employees to directly work under Nissen while all the time NIssen was "pushing back" is simply not believable. The one and only push back resulted in his being fired. At some point Nissen had convinced Rush to pretty much fire anyone that might compete for Rush's attention and in the end NIssen was the only one left to sign his name on the line that certified the sub was ready for passengers. At that point is when Nissen realized signing his name to such a thing might not be in his best interest. So, after four years of living in the light of Stockton Rush's sun, he did say "no" to that request.

That said, supposedly the specs for the hull were done by Spencer Composites and their website indicates that they do design work for composites as well as the fabrication, so it's not outside the realm of belief that they helped design this thing. Here is their list of services

https://www.spencercomposites.com/wordpress/?page_id=11

#277

Here is an article that describes Spencer Composites and how Stockton Rush found them. They based their design on a deep sea submersible that had been built for Steve Fossett who was killed in a plane crash before he had a chance to be killed in a carbon fiber submersible.

There is much more to the article than this. Spencer was given "basic" requirements, but they were the ones who came up with the design. If their design was only restricted to the cylinder itself that may give them the ability to weasel out of any responsibility, but we don't have a final determination of what exactly failed. One witness gave his opinion that it was the glue that held the titanium rings to the cylinder that failed, but he says he is not an engineer, but has years of experience with mechanics, ROVs, submersibles, and such. He was an impressive witness.

If you read the whole article it does sound like Rush and Spencer together did the design as Nissen said in his testimony.

The design of the Cyclops 2 hull, says Spencer, is based in large part on the strategy applied to Fossett’s DeepFlight Challenger. Thickness, he says, was estimated using micromechanics, and then verified with finite element analysis (FEA). Modeling was done in SolidWorks (Dassault Systèmes, Waltham, MA, US) and analysis was done with COSMOS/M, supplied by Dassault Systèmes subsidiary Structural Research and Analysis Corp. (Santa Monica, CA, US).

The biggest challenge, Spencer reports, was developing a manufacturable design that “would produce a consistent part with no wrinkles, voids or delaminations.” And without use of an autoclave. Spencer opted for a layup strategy that combines alternating placement of prepreg carbon fiber/epoxy unidirectional fabrics in the axial direction, with wet winding of carbon fiber/epoxy in the hoop direction, for a total of 480 plies. The carbon fiber is standard-modulus Grafil 37-800 (30K tow), supplied by Mitsubishi Chemical Carbon Fiber & Composites Inc. (Irvine, CA, US). Prepreg was supplied by Irvine-based Newport Composites, now part of Mitsubishi Chemical Carbon Fiber & Composites Inc. The wet-winding epoxy is Epon Resin 682 from Hexion Inc. (Columbus, OH, US). The curing agent is Lindride LS-81K frLindau Chemicals Inc.cals (Columbia, SC, US).

https://www.compositesworld.com/article ... eep-waters

RTH10260 · #278

H/T @RVinit, i do not follow this as close as you do.

p0rtia · #279

#280

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Mon Sep 23, 2024 1:25 pm H/T @RVinit, i do not follow this as close as you do.

If I didn't own a pair of headphones I wouldn't be able to follow it as close. Thanks to having lots of mindless chores to do I get a chance to listen to this crap during the day..

#281

Someone set up an OceanGate Archives YouTube channel and I guess they must have uploaded all the videos before OceanGate took all their stuff down.

If you are curious about the engineer I've been badmouthing, here he is with his smirky little smile. This video gives a clue to how seriously he took things up until it came time for him to actually possibly have to take responsibility for what he and his team put together. This video shows the process of gluing one of the titanium end rings to the carbon fiber tube (version 1, which delaminated and had to be tossed). Nissen is the guy who smiles quite a bit in this video. This is his team that is doing this work, in house in OceanGate's warehouse. Notice the guy who is cleaning the titanium ring, touching it with a gloveless hand after wiping it with a dirty cloth.

#282

I didn't have a chance to put together my impression of yesterday's testimony, but today there is a very extended break between the morning and afternoon session because the morning witness OceanGate apologist didn't go for as long as scheduled. I listened to this relatively short synopsis of yesterday's testimony and in just over 11 minutes it's a decent overview of yesterday.

Guillermo Sohnlein, Roy Thomas, and Phil Brooks testified yesterday. I found a description of Sohnlein that made me laugh and also it occurred to me it seems quite fitting: serial entrepreneur. In his introduction of his background and qualifications I was surprised to learn that he has a law degree, but it seems he's never practiced law. He was "looking for his passion" and apparently he finds his new passion quite often right after his previous passion turned sour or no longer brought him income. He is currently involved in the Humans2Venus Foundation. Yes, they are advocating for humans to pursue colonizing Venus.

Roy Thomas was very impressive, he revealed that OceanGate had never reached out to ABS regarding getting their submersible classed. That was all BS by Rush. He started out by giving a presentation about classification, the unsuitability of carbon fiber for deep sea vessel construction, and then answered questions.

Phil Brooks was a computer engineer who was promoted to Director of Engineering after two previous directors both seemed fine with working for OceanGate, collecting a paycheck, and LARPing as submersible designers, but both got cold feet when asked to sign paperwork giving Rush the go-ahead to actually put people inside the submersible.

Here is a decent breakdown of their testimony that pretty well coincides with my own reaction to their testimony. It's just over 11 minutes and a good overview if you don't want to watch the 8 hour video of the day's testimony.

Volkonski · #283

Humans colonizing Venus?

They should check a Venusian weather report first.

roadscholar · #284

Failure at the forward dome joint looks likely, as the rear dome has carbon fibre wreckage still attached, but the forward one can be seen lying on the sea bed completely clean.

#285

roadscholar wrote: ↑Tue Sep 24, 2024 12:58 pm Failure at the forward dome joint looks likely, as the rear dome has carbon fibre wreckage still attached, but the forward one can be seen lying on the sea bed completely clean.

That is the same thing that one of the contractors said. He believes it was a failure of the glue that held the titanium ring to the carbon fiber. Based on how he described it, he clearly had been one of the people who examined the parts that were brought up. He was on the boat that operated the ROV and helped identify parts to bring up.

#286

Karl Stanley is testifying now. Holy smokes. He went on the first sub, he says he had considered Stockton Rush to be a friend and he is finding out things that Rush had not told him prior to his being willing to get into the sub. The lawyer for OG is not happy with his testimony. Stanley described a test dive where it seemed pretty clear the hull was delaminating. There were four people in the sub including Stockton Rush, and Rush did not want to pilot the sub himself, he was passing the control around to the other four. Stanley says that if Rush had been honest about certain things he would never have gone on that sub.

Over a period of the next year he exchanged a number of emails where he implored Rush not to take people down in that sub. He thought it was not safe, tried to tell him that if he took several people down and even one person said (s)he was not comfortable with the sounds this thing is making, what are you going to do? They are paying a quarter of a million dollars to go down and if one person wants to come up how are you going to handle that? Passengers will be arguing with each other over the safety. Oh man, the lawyer for OceanGate is not liking this man's testimony, they had to take a break! This is the first time there is actual drama of a sort during these hearings.

#287

The members of the board of inquiry are going to be drinking heavily before I can finish these two paragraphs.

Karl Stanley attempted to give his opinion of how and why this happened. I was aware that he's kind of a bohemian character, and the chairman of this inquiry had to shut him down. But he still gave the gist of what he had to say.

He talked about Rush coming from a very wealthy family of well known people who make their mark on history. He gave his definition of an accident as (paraphrasing here) " unexpected thing that randomly happens" and Stanley believes this was not an accident. Then he said that if this wasn't an accident that it could have been criminal. This is the point where the chairman first tried to get him to focus on knowns and be brief. Stanley continued on to say something to the effect of Rush found himself having accepted hundreds of millions of dollars from board members and donations and knowing his business plan was a joke and unworkable made a decision to do something to get himself more well known than his father and other famous members of his family. He was shut down at this point and told thank you for your testimony.

Yikes.

#288

Rolodex · #289

Wow! That's an unexpected plot twist!!

#290

As far as I know only PH Nargeolet's family has filed a lawsuit in this case. I have a suspicion the others are waiting until the end of the official inquiry, and fully expect they will all file lawsuits.

Interesting note: Tony Nissen (former Director of Engineering) is listed as a defendant in this case. It mentions that he hired engineering students by giving them challenges to solve some of the real world problems they were encountering in the design and build of the submersible and it goes on to claim the same as Lochridge had said, none of them were in any way experienced enough to be doing this kind of work, including Nissen himself. Some hadn't graduated yet, and some were just interested in engineering but not actually enrolled in engineering.

Here is the lawsuit. Based on the testimony in the hearings they may need to revise some of this, particularly the part where they claim evidence the crew had knowledge they were in trouble and trying to ascend. The lawsuit bases that assumption on the dropping of 70 pounds of weight, but the general consensus is that was normal to drop two of the 35 pound weights in order to slow the descent.

OceanGate-Wrongful-death-complaint.pdf: (329.54 KiB) Downloaded 1 time

#291

Sorry for the late heads up, but this morning would be a good time to watch the hearings. An engineer from NTSB is testifying and giving a presentation of analysis of both of Titan's hulls. Lordy, lordy, there are tapes. Well, acoustic sensors that picked up changes in hull behavior after an infamous event that got someone fired for speaking up about it.

Loud sounds were heard and reported. Stockton Rush determined it was just the hull settling into it's cradle and no effort was made to do any inspection, too time consuming for them to have done such a thing.

johnpcapitalist · #292

RVInit wrote: ↑Wed Sep 25, 2024 9:18 am Sorry for the late heads up, but this morning would be a good time to watch the hearings. An engineer from NTSB is testifying and giving a presentation of analysis of both of Titan's hulls. Lordy, lordy, there are tapes. Well, acoustic sensors that picked up changes in hull behavior after an infamous event that got someone fired for speaking up about it.

Loud sounds were heard and reported. Stockton Rush determined it was just the hull settling into it's cradle and no effort was made to do any inspection, too time consuming for them to have done such a thing.

The arrogance and stupidity of these people continues to amaze me. This is what happens when you give rich people enough freedom to operate outside their domain of expertise (if any). These types that made their fortunes in something else or that inherited their wealth (as Stockton Rush did) think that the size of their bank accounts means that they're smarter than other people and don't have to follow well understood best practices.

Clearly, wealth made Stockton Rush stupid because he spent time as a flight test engineer on F-15's early in his career. That's an industry and a specific job area where you investigate the living daylights out of any bizarre and unexpected stuff that happens. There's a reason that airline fatalities in the US have been nearly zero for more than a decade.

Uninformed · #293

For those unable to watch the hearing the BBC have reasonably good “livestream” commenting:

“Safety expert tells inquiry how Titan sub came apart”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/clyv1kqz948t

#294

Oh my. I was not able to sit at my computer to watch the NTSB engineer's testimony, we had late breakfast this morning, so I was cooking and feeding mom. This witness finished earlier than scheduled and the next witness was moved up a whole hour.

While waiting for the second witness I moved the timeline back in the feed so I could watch the slide presentation which I had not been able to see. I will let everyone know when the CG uploads this presentation to the Titan Hearing page, there are tons of photos of the pieces of carbon fiber.

That hull contained every type of anomaly possible, and lots of them. Dozens of people had risked their lives riding in this thing. If any of them are watching they may end up having nightmares for a while.

roadscholar · #295

Suggested edit:

…I was cooking, and feeding mom.”

#296

roadscholar wrote: ↑Wed Sep 25, 2024 11:43 am Suggested edit:

…I was cooking, and feeding mom.”

#297

The guy who was involved in making the acrylic window is testifying. I don't even have the words to describe his testimony, but if you go to the Coast Guard's official live feed and read through the live chat it's a hoot. But the joke I made about the board members having to drink heavily after Karl Stanley's closing statement yesterday....lordy....this board will not be waiting for the end of day to begin drinking today.

This guy actually started talking about Roman history and the development of the arch and there was a collective groan in the live chat. You would have to watch any random five minutes of his testimony to understand. I don't recommend watching any more than any random five minutes. This guy is just not capable of answering a question. He's giving his philosophy of life, what farming means to him, and all sorts of random and completely irrelevant nonsense. On and on and on and on. I can't believe they aren't reining him in more. They need to put a stop to this witness.

#298

The powerpoint presentation (in pdf format) is now available for download on the USCG Titan Hearing web page. The title of the document is CG-107 NTSB TITAN MATERIAL ANALYSIS.PDF_REDACTED

Here is the link for that page: https://www.news.uscg.mil/News-by-Regio ... scription/

#299

If it had not been for the live chat session, the testimony from William Kohnen from Hydrospace would have been one of the most painful 1.5 hours I've ever spent. Don't do it. Just don't. The live chat session, which is something I don't usually personally participate in, is a hoot and a half though, quite entertaining.

It took the entire 1.5 hours to get a single worthwhile piece of information from this uninteresting, bloviating storyteller. Basically he received engineering drawings for the acrylic window that OceanGate wanted Hydrospace to make for them. He informed them it was not the appropriate geometry for deep sea use. A design that was more appropriate was provided. Stockton Rush said no thanks, please make the one I want. Hydrospace sent an eight page email letting them know they can certainly make such a thing, but it would only be rated for a depth far less than where the wreck of the Titanic sits. Rush wanted it anyway and Hydrospace made it for them. That's it. One and a half hours of painful history and Kohnen's philosophy of life and the ocean and "we need innovation" got us exactly this single bit of information.

I bet the board is having a two martini lunch. At least.

#300

Was this an elaborate suicide? How could anyone ignore all the warnings and get in the thing himself?