Missing Sub - Bad News

This is my personal opinion of what's going on with the last submarine.
link to engineering film - building a submergence vehicle

[NobbiesGnomeRescue]

I used to be involved in the private submersible industry, so i decided to reach out to a few old colleagues on the east coast. They told me an engineering horror story of a carbon fiber pressure hull (limited duty cycles) and port lenses made from plastic seated on a flange instead of a Corning glass lens, machined to fit perfectly into its matching tapered housing (I still have drawings of our 14” thick lenses and housings).
The fact is there was scant effort paid to testing the assembled pressure hulls, and even less attention given to safety systems or essential systems having redundancy.
A very sad and avoidable outcome for all involved.
Thanks for addressing this tragedy Professor Holland.

[gordonlawrence]

I used to work on submarines (civilian contractor, senior design engineer) and the lack of competence is astounding. It is very easy to make a fail safe system. IE say 6 solenoids with weights that need to be active to not drop the weights. So if your electrical system fails you drop the weights and surface, switch the solenoids off, it drops the weights and heads for the surface, battery low, it drops the weights and heads for the surface, switch the main power contactor, and it drops the weights and heads for the surface. To also make sure you have something like a sodium chlorate oxygen generator which will last longer than the batteries. They take in CO" and react with it to make calcium carbonate water, hydrochloric acid and oxygen if I remember correctly. Take this last with a pinch of salt as I'm not a chemist.

[justinmobile]

Yes, it's ridiculous if this didn't have an emergency sonar ping device with its own separate power.

[bluemoon]

Even if they find the missing submarine they don’t have a way to rescue it from 12, 000 ft. down in Davy Jones locker .

[DaydreamNative]

The pressure hull is mostly made from carbon fibre, with titanium rings used to secure it to the end pieces. An insane design, especially considering there’s no way to NDT carbon that thick for microscopic cracks or defects which would weaken with every pressure cycle (at least that’s what they told their former director of marine operations, who they fired for ‘disclosing confidential information’ when he tried to raise his concerns about this aspect).

[TheChipmunkt]

I remember hearing, that the US Navy, had changed from steering their vessels by Touch Screen. Back to the Wheel. There had been too many collisions with their Ships.

[gordslater]

Of course it's all run by a game controller - because he hired kids to build it. Instead of, of lets say, standard dress guys with 1000hrs+ of bell time, ROV pilots with 30 years of experience, or similar professionals.

The first thing that struck me in that promo vid is that I don't see any huge levers - or more important - huge lump hammers or 18inch shifters to hit the huge levers when it's absolutely necessary.

Compare/contrast that to ANY commercial diving bell run vids on youtube.

I'm not sure if this thing is a tourism operation or a burial at sea funeral plan scam.
The enquiry is going to be sad reading, that's for sure.

Comms? Meh. " We'll just use text ! " Deployment skid on the tender vessel? Nah let's just drag it out on a barge - it's cheaper. Pinger? Nah - what could possibly go wrong? Ops normal calls via thru-water speech? Nah - too distracting

Bloody fools

[incorporeal]

It does have an emergency surfacing system comprised of weights that are meant to automatically detach if the sub becomes inactive for some time.

[bestinvestorcraig]

Thanks for your research, I noticed that no details are given about how those people could be recovered, the movie "The Abyss" showed that it would take a miracle, very unlikely.

[TheDARTHSPANKY]

you would think someone who has the means to pay for the 250k trip would be smart enouph to know this wasnt the safest or smartest thing to do.

[Antony_Jenner]

This looks like a job for INTERNATIONAL RESCUE. But seriously Simon who in their right mind would go down without some sort of redundancy system. I'm sorry for the people involved and their families but play stupid games win stupid prizes. Each frontier has it's dangers but I've all ways said it's easier to build a spaceship than a submarine, keeping 14.7psi in at 400klm above sea level is easier than 5800psi out at 4000m below.

[QANews]

_In a hypothetical scenario where the submersible resurfaces after a power loss, it is important to note that the passengers are confined within due to 17 externally secured bolts. It is uncertain whether provisions exist for acquiring external air upon resurfacing. The situation represents a life-threatening dilemma of significant intensity, and the hope remains that all individuals will be found in a state of vitality._

*Onboard:*
_Paul-Henry Nargeolet, _ 73
_Stockton Rush, _ 61
_Hamish Harding, _ 58
_Shahzada Dawood, _ 48
_Sulaiman Dawood, _ 19

_In such circumstances, individuals may be forced to make critical decisions to maximize their chances of survival, which can include weighing options like rationing or sharing available resources, prioritizing individuals for potential rescue, or considering extreme measures to prolong oxygen supply._

[ony]

I've been complaining at the never ending que of so-called experts that are telling us absolutely nothing of value, all they do is speculate, one channel even had a cave diver on to share his opinion.

I've learnt more from this video and you're not even claiming to be an expert in subs, so thank you very much.

[jupiterlegrand]

"Deep dive". Ouch. That kind of humor gives me a sinking feeling.

[basfinnis]

The hysterical newspaper headlines over this sub and it's occupants is distasteful. A boat in the med just went down with hundreds of women and children probably killed but because they're not billionaires they're of no interest.

[thedudegrowsfood]

Might as well build a nuclear reactor with a "Speak-n-spell" for a controller.

[jimgraham]

Thanks Prof, agree, it looks like a pretty dodgy operation.

Apparently submwrsibles slip through the requirements of safety and licencing required for commercia surface vessels.

[martinjones]

Watching your video on this yesterday and you. Did talk some sense and a couple of hours later the news came out what happened like always sir another great video 👍

[kenwhitfield]

Nice to see one of your videos again. Yes, what a tragedy. It is starting to look like they are going to run out of tome to find them before their oxygen runs out. As you say though, sending a submersible down 13, 000 feet below the surface without adequate safety equipment and recovery procedures is ridiculous. It makes me wonder how they got insurance for the business! Also, as you said, we don’t know enough about the project to know how much preplanning went into the design and the operations plan. We can only guess that it might not have been enough.

[JinKee]

3:42 Stockton Rush wanted to enjoy his submersible ride in peace so he refused to install any kind of umbilical or sonar modem to allow the surface tender to hail his submersible by voice and he did install a sonar pinger which could exchange short text messages, but it was only supposed to ping once every 15 minutes and frequently lost connection.