Pieces of the submersible are seen for the first time after being recovered from the Atlantic.

  • @Zebov
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    11 year ago

    Agreed on all accounts, except the perfectly intact dome. If it was attached super tightly to anything, like the hull, when that thing crushed it would’ve deformed the dome just as much I would think. This is all semi-educated guessing though.

    I think if it like a pop can - tube with domed ends. If I crush the can as violently as the math suggests happened, the ends are going to be deformed. Right?

    • @SteWi
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      61 year ago

      Not if they popped off…

      Since there are no fragments of the carbon hull stuck to the tutanium parts it seems the bond wasn’t that strong.

      • shiftenter
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        fedilink
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, I’ve read how experts stated that the point where the dissimilar materials meet would be the most likely location of the failure. Titanium and carbon fiber will certainly behave differently under that pressure.

        I think it’s far less likely to be the root cause, but I do wonder if the 380mm acrylic viewport had anything to do with the failure. It wasn’t rated for anywhere near that depth.

        At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (“PVHO”) standards. OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.