this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023

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James Cameron says the Titan passengers probably knew the submersible was in trouble (www.npr.org)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The Titanic director has made 33 dives to the shipwreck and visited ocean depths in a submersible he built himself. He compares OceanGate to the Titanic in that both ignored safety warnings.

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[–] [email protected] 48 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Pressure hulls should be made out of contiguous material like steel, titanium, ceramic or acrylic, he explained, in order to do modeling and finite element analysis to "understand the number of cycles that it can take." That's not the case with a composite material, like carbon fiber, made of two different materials blended together.

"And so we all knew that the danger was delamination and progressive failure over time with microscopic water ingress and ... what they call cycling fatigue," he added. "And we knew if the sub passed its pressure test it wasn't gonna fail on its first dive ... but it's going to fail over time, which is insidious. You don't get that with steel or titanium."

[–] rigatti 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Damn, I didn't realize Ja knew so much about materials science.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Apparently he built the sub he used to go to the titanic and into the Mariana trench. Dude must be intimately familiar with this sort of thing with that experience.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

He honestly seems like a fairly accomplished and responsible citizen scientist compared to the Oceangate clown (RIP).

[–] c2h6 0 points 2 years ago

Now that you mention it I think Ja Rule filmed one of his music videos in Challenger Deep!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

Like, I don't trust carbon fiber for my bicycle frame and stick to steel because that shit cracks easily. I can't believe this guy rolled the dice with carbon fiber on a fucking deep-sea submarine.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

Okay, but what does Ja Rule think?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

feels like they probably knew that in their heart the moment they see the $30 Logitech controller...

[–] kabe 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

I know the controller seems corny, but it turns out that even the US Navy have used Xbox controllers.

The real red flags here were the carbon fiber hull and the fact that the Titan wasn't even certified or properly tested to ensure it could survive the stress of repeated dives to such extreme depths.

It's kinda insane that OceanGate got away with taking paying tourists down in that thing for as long as they did.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago

To be fair the Xbox controllers are probably more reliable.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Cmdr. Reed Koepp told USA Today at the time the controllers were cost-effective and came with an added bonus — young sailors already knew how to handle them.

At least two major weapons systems that the US military is focusing on utilize Xbox-style controllers, Task and Purpose reported in March.

Girguis said making fun of the gaming controller in the submersible was appealing because it's "an easy target" but that a lot of undersea vessels "use similar controllers."

It's a question of quality control. Military grade equipment is not the same as consumer grade equipment. That's why we have grade in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

"Military grade" is not a statement of high-quality... it's a statement of specified minimum capabilities and characteristics to satisfy a contract. It's quite common for off the shelf commercial equipment, even stuff targeted at home consumers, to meet or exceed MIL-STDs.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

What do you think quality means? Go pick some IC's and you will see that the best quality is kept for military grade operations like operations in very low temperature for example. An IC designed with a high swing in operational temperature will require much more thinking than a consumer IC.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Thanks for providing an example supporting what I said.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Cool...I'm glad that you understand better what quality means. Now if you have a different definition of quality that's a different story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

At least one of us does.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Well, sorry to disappoint you but if a circuit endures higher temperature swings than another then it is of a better quality than the other one. This attribute is part of the quantification of quality. But feel free to explain yourself.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

"Military grade" does not necessarily mean higher quality. It just means it meets the requirements of the military for a specific purpose. Could actually be pretty shit quality. But you'd already know that if you had read RoboRay's initial comment.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Yeah, it wasn't the video game controller that failed...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

I believe the Navy uses xbox controllers for controlling periscopes, not the entire submarine.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Using a game controller is not that unusual.
but it was wireless, that is bad.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 years ago (1 children)

What was the controller commanding btw?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The thrusters on the outside. The goal was to minimize hull penetrations for cabling and things.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thank you, so the signal went through the water a little bit. We had a struggle about it in a different thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

Probably not, actually. carbon fiber is opaque to blue tooth. Even a single ply carbon shell is enough to block it. My DLG r/c airplane uses an arramid section for the antenna.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah. It's not unusual, for example:

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

I’ve heard of this. Out of curiosity (because I don’t actually know), do you know if the controllers used in military applications are literally “off the shelf” or if they’re “Xbox-like”, which is what most descriptions about them say.

In other words, I suspect the military(s) using these type of controllers are not just ordering them off Amazon and using them as-is, whereas it sounds like that’s exactly what OceanGate did.

[–] itsjustallergies 1 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Glad to see James Cameron weighing in because James Cameron knows the people need James Cameron's opinion

[–] [email protected] 45 points 2 years ago

I think if you read the article you’ll find he’s actually an expert in this, on multiple levels. I had no idea previously.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

James Cameron's not faking expertise in deep sea diving. He did a solo dive to the deepest-known point on Earth back in 2012.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 years ago (1 children)

In a submarine he built himself. Cameron has every right to comment on this event, he's legitimately a subject matter expert.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

afaik, he piloted it, he did not build it. He brought cameras.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago

He was part of the team that designed and built it according to this Science.org article.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

And yet not 2 posts up you quote Cameron in a way that makes him sound like he has significant knowledge about the structural integrity and construction of a high pressure tolerant vessel.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I pulled an extract of the article. The extract doesn't say that he built the sub, he is educated on the subject, that's it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

It's not clear what you are trying to say. He obviously funded it and piloted it and had to be intimately involved in its construction, including oversight and planning. He took the thing down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Are you arguing that he doesn't know as much about the construction of the sub as a guy welding a joint or tightening a bolt? I'm pretty sure that most people would say that if you could name one person that "built" the sub it would be him. He is arguably the world's expert on this topic.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 years ago

More than we need some armchair commenter trying to diss someone who's an expert in this field because...?

[–] faltuuser 0 points 2 years ago

I mean he is the greatest pioneer!

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