Titan sub noise heard on board support ship. 2

[LittleInch]

Just watched a new documentary by the BBC and others like Discovery so if you're interested look out for it. Implosion: The titanic sub disaster.

Key new part for me is that they released video of the moment a loud "crump" was actually heard on board the support vessel apparently through the hull with Rushs wife Wendy doing the monitoring of the sub and her saying "what was that?". They then got a message from the sub which must have been somehow delayed saying dropped two weights which confused them. It is pretty chilling to listen to alright. That and the fact that they were thought not to be at the ocean floor implies they were getting some warnings.

This is a clip but there are others.

Not much we didn't already know, but they have noted dive 81 (out of 88) where there was a very large bang heard which they reckon was the point at which the hull was on its last legs after a major internal failure.

The Discovery documentary maker back in 2022 was very unimpressed with the whole thing and persuaded the company to can their documentary as he was convinced it would end in failure and didn't want to be seen to promote the operation.

Looks like it's on Discovery pretty soon. If you're interested, it's pretty good and not that big into the human interest side, but does have input from the wife of the man and his son that died which is quite moving.

How to watch 'Implosion: The Titanic Sub Disaster' - Stream the thought-provoking documentary online

Scientists explore how the Titan submersible implosion was more than just a tragic accident

www.tomsguide.com

 

[XR250]

That's where compartmentalization comes into play. You can have two competing sets of knowledge and apply them independently depending on the situation.

I don't buy it.
Isn't knowing the earth is roundish a basic requirement for navigation? Or are you saying sometimes he thinks it is round and sometimes he thinks it is flat? Either way, he belongs in a mental hospital rather than on the helm.

 

[IRstuff]

Isn't knowing the earth is roundish a basic requirement for navigation? Or are you saying sometimes he thinks it is round and sometimes he thinks it is flat? Either way, he belongs in a mental hospital rather than on the helm.

Unless you are deriving the navigation solutions from scratch, you can use equations or GPS without paying attention to WGS-84, spherical Earth, or relativistic motion corrections for GPS timebases, etc.

 

[TugboatEng]

Navigation uses formulas. You can memorize the formulas and work them without understanding them.

On the other hand Ptolemy was able to create relatively predictive models of the universe using a wildly inaccurate assumption, geocentric.

 

[Tomfh]

Isn't knowing the earth is roundish a basic requirement for navigation

Who’s navigating from first principles? Most of us follow maps or devices.

 

[IRstuff]

On the other hand Ptolemy was able to create relatively predictive models of the universe using a wildly inaccurate assumption, geocentric.

You can't have "relatively predictive" given "wildly inaccurate". The Ptolemaic geocentric model was actually VERY accurate, otherwise, it wouldn't have been accepted for a thousand years. The Antikythera mechanism is geocentric and very accurate, assuming the reconstructions of it were done correctly amd unbiased.

 

[Tomfh]

You can't have "relatively predictive" given "wildly inaccurate".

Yes it's accurate in terms of predictions relative to the earth, but in terms of underlying assumption that the earth is at the centre of the universe it's way off. And likewise a map can be very accurate in terms of predictions even if it assumes the earth is flat. You can go hundreds of km before a planar assumption starts to wreck navigational accuracy.

 

[waross]

Years ago I came across a discussion of an indigenous map from the Alaska/Yukon mountains that came into the possession of some academics.
They were able to identify the locations but the supposed distances were way off.
Then someone tried comparing primitive travel times.
The map was surprisingly accurate in terms of travel time.

 

[IRstuff]

Yes it's accurate in terms of predictions relative to the earth, but in terms of underlying assumption that the earth is at the centre of the universe it's way off. And likewise a map can be very accurate in terms of predictions even if it assumes the earth is flat. You can go hundreds of km before a planar assumption starts to wreck navigational accuracy.

All models can work, until they don't. In Ecuador, there is a HUGE monument call Mittad del Mundo placed on the spot Spanish and French scientists and surveyors determined where the Earth's equator was, but according to the model used in GPS, it's 200 meters off from what is now determined to be the equator. My point was that the geocentric model was accurate enough for a thousand years, and maybe possibly more, had Copernicus not messed things up. It wouldn't have done the job in the space age, but for ordinary people, does it really matter whether the retrograde motion is just some predictable oddity in a geocentric orbital model or an optical illusion caused by heliocentric orbital mechanics?

 

[LittleInch]

This Thread is going seriously off topic.....

Has anyone else managed to see the documentary?

 

[XR250]

Unless you are deriving the navigation solutions from scratch, you can use equations or GPS without paying attention to WGS-84, spherical Earth, or relativistic motion corrections for GPS timebases, etc.

Whatever. The fact that someone believes the earth is flat despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary makes me question their decision making in all aspects of their profession and life. It is my understanding that it is more of a religious thing for these folks.

 

[Eufalconimorph]

It's just non-religious faith. Faith (belief held without evidence or in the face of evidence to the contrary) shows up all over the place, not just in religions or flat-Eartherism. E.g. I'd bet Rush had faith that Titan's design was safe, and that faith contributed to him ignoring the warning signs that it wasn't. Faith is a pervasive and dangerous vice, and like all vices it can be fun to indulge in! In limited amounts, carefully controlled, its psychological benefits can even outweigh the costs. But sometimes it leads to the destruction of the faithful.

 

[LittleInch]

I think fanatics are more what some of these people turn into and there is no way you can win any argument or change their opinion in any way.

 

[XR250]

I'd bet Rush had faith that Titan's design was safe, and that faith contributed to him ignoring the warning signs that it wasn't

That is hubris, not faith.

 

[thebard3]

This Thread is going seriously off topic.....

Has anyone else managed to see the documentary?

I am waiting to watch the documentary. I would rather see the accident report (from the Coast Guard, I think) before I watch anything else, as I would expect that there may be some things added or left out to make the story more sensational. Maybe not, but I won't base my opinions on the documentary first.

 

[LittleInch]

There was quite a bit of input from that investigation in the program, but the details will be very interesting...

 

[RVAmeche]

Netflix is releasing a documentary as well this Wednesday; not sure if it'll be significantly different or tell it from a different perspective.

Josh Gates putting together all the BS Stockton was selling like we've done 53 dives (49 were on the other hull) and getting so upset after the test dive/pitch meeting went so poorly was really eye opening. Credit to him for not just making an episode, glossing over the issues, and potentially giving Oceangate more credibility.

 

[LittleInch]

From the trailer it looks a bit more focussed on Stockton and the cult he created in the company rather than the actual implosion itself.

This looks like a decent review.

‘Titan: The OceanGate Disaster’ Review: A Surface-Level Netflix Documentary About the Submersible Implosion Heard Around the World

Mark Monroe's documentary never feels exploitative, but it never feels particularly insightful either.

www.indiewire.com

 

[Tomfh]

I just watched the Netflix one. It wasn’t bad. Lots of condemnation of Rush as you’d expect.
The acoustic monitoring system was interesting. Lots of creaks and bangs happening all the time, with every dive, indicating cumulative damage. The hulls never “settling down” so to speak. Seeing the test hulls popping at 3000m was pretty scary.

 

[LittleInch]

A review here.

‘Absolutely shocking’: Netflix documentary examines how the Titan sub disaster happened

New film Titan: The OceanGate Disaster looks back at the many bad decisions that led to the devastating 2023 tragedy

www.theguardian.com

 

[Brian Malone]

The Netflix documentary is quite condemning of Stockton Rush. It definitely appears he normalized the risk of implosion and ignored the very sounds of the hull failing. He solo piloted the Titan to 3939 meters on its first test dives and with all the sounds of the hull popping around, he survived. No sensitive microphone was needed to hear the popping sounds! The submersible survived so all sounds were 'just rattles of the car going down the road'. After successful dives the engineering data appears to have been ignored/improperly analyzed and the sounds ignored. Crazy - with the lack of material properties data for fatigue under compression and no analysis of strain verses depth, each dive was a crapshoot. Stockton got rid of anyone who was critical of the design but none of them had any engineering data to do a predictive analysis - they were going on gut-feel of impending failure as much as he he was going on gut-feel of continued success. The team had insufficient data and methodology of analysis to predict when the sub would fail. I wonder if even if OceanGate had put the design through a classing certification if that would have caught the potential failure mode? If this was a fatigue failure would the classing dives have been sufficient to force a failure or a mode of prediction?