Titan: From Inception to Implosion

[Music] on Sunday the 18th of June 2023 ocean Gates support vessel loses contact with Titan their carbon fiber PlayStation submarine the five-man crew including Ocean Gate CEO are never seen again and while the world spins on what happened I think we're missing the bigger picture why was Ocean Gate rushing to break ground on developing inexpensive technology to reach the ocean floor and who stands to benefit the most [Music] in 1774 John day became the first recorded death in a submersible day was a carpenter and so he used his skill set to build a wooden box and loaded it onto a ship Laden with sandbags they invited the Navy and media to come down and watch as he submerged in his submarine hoping to win a contract to build more when he surfaced 12 hours later a tugboat crew pulled the boat out of the harbor at Plymouth England he climbed inside the box and ordered the crew to sink the ship with the Box attached as the ship sank the box was crushed by the water pressure and he died 30 meters below the water line at the time the conventional material in shape for any kind of submersible vessel was a wooden bell that operates more like today's modern dive Bell rather than a submarine on the 16th of June 2023 the polar Prince support vessel leaves the port of and John's in Newfoundland Canada heading for the site of the Titanic wreck 370 nautical miles south Southeast there have been multiple delays due to weather and so this will be the only expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic for the year Ocean Gate have come a long way since they start in 2009. Richard Stockton Rush is a Jet Pilot and aerospace engineer after leaving University he works as a test flight engineer on F-15 Eagle Jets he goes back to school to get his master's degree in Business Administration from 1989 he's chair and director of remote control Technologies at a company called Blue view Technologies who manufacture Advanced sonar systems for the Navy Coast Guard and for underwater remote operated vehicles or rovs from a young age Rush has channeled his ambition into fast Jets technology and space exploration unable to realize a childhood dream of flying to Mars Rush turns his attention to the deepest places on Earth in 2006 he applies his years of training and experience in Aerospace technology to building a mini submersible based on the blueprints from a U.S Navy submarine Commander the depth is limited to 30 feet and Rush wants to dive deeper he searches out privately owned submersibles but there are few in private hands and none immediately for sale an idea starts to materialize and in 2009 Ocean Gate is founded by Rush and Guillermo sunline Guillermo is an Argentine American Technology entrepreneur in 1998 Guillermo starts a voice recognition software company called Milo which he sold in 2001. he continues to invest in technology startups and teams up with rush to start ocean Gates the philosophy of ocean Gates is as disruptive as a Silicon Valley startup use Innovative technology and materials to lower the cost of deep water ocean exploration for commercial and research purposes Rush wants to make his mark on the world he knows that the oceans have a huge impact on the world's population and yet most of it is inaccessible to study by lowering the cost of getting to the places we need to study he believes he can contribute to science and build a business taking clients to the depths of the ocean wealthy clients get to go places nobody else can researchers get to study previously inaccessible locations in the oceans and Ocean Gate makes a profit everybody wins Rush has studied business and so he knows that to build a high-tech company that can scale he needs to develop his expertise and attract the right people and this is where I can see some incongruencies between the story Ocean Gate puts in the media and their path to achieve that a business model taking wealthy clients to the seabed is the same as the travel industry if American Airlines wants to fly passengers around the world they buy Jets from Boeing or Airbus if a company wants to build and sell planes they build a product from the ground up ocean Gate's first expedition is to document scan and retrieve artifacts from the steamship AJ Goddard AJ Goddard lies in 10 meters of water in Lake Laberge Canada Rush puts together a crew of Citizen scientists and archaeologists it's not clear if citizen scientists are paying clients but a report on the study specifies certain people as volunteers and others are listed as members of Ocean Gate while ocean Gates website lists them as citizen scientists I get the impression this is the first instance that Ocean Gate starts to create a gray area blurring the lines between paying clients and crew the AJ Goddard Rick is a shallow dive and so the Expedition relies on scuba diving rather than submersibles the group racks up 130 Dives between them but on scuba even shallow Dives are limited in depth and time a scuba diver must take a supply of air in a tank and at 10 meters there's two times the pressure compared to standing on the beach there are two things a scuba diver needs to understand the first is that a diver absorbs nitrogen which then needs to be expelled from their body when they come back up this video is not about nitrogen you can find out more about gas in your body in this video about the buy for Dolphin accidents more important for this story is to understand the difference between pressure at the surface and underwater the relationship between water pressure and how air is compressed as you descend is brilliant we can calculate precisely how air responds to water pressure if you're interested in math matics and how the world around us is calculated then you might be interested in the sponsor of this video brilliant more on them later the Earth's atmosphere has pressure like a weight above the water line you have one atmosphere of pressure as you descend underwater the pressure increases for every 10 meters you descend you add one more atmosphere of pressure that's because water is 800 times more dense than air at 10 meters you have two atmospheres of pressure one atmosphere of air pressure plus another atmosphere of water pressure let's say you blow up a balloon at the surface and take it down to 10 meters because the pressure has doubled it compresses the air in the balloon into half the volume it occupied at the surface it holds the same amount of air in the balloon but it's compressed to half its size that means the air is twice as dense same number of air molecules but packed closer together of course a balloon is flexible and it transfers the water pressure to the air inside the balloon when a scuba diver breathes air from a tank at 10 meters it takes twice the amount of air to fill his lungs compared to what he was breathing at the surface to put it another way if you breathe from a tank at the surface for one hour that same tank at 10 meters would only last 30 minutes so divers are limited by the amount of air they can take with them a dive to 20 meters is equal to three atmospheres and so the same tank would only last 20 minutes the deeper a diver goes the less airtime they have based on the amount of air they can carry they also absorb nitrogen which means they need to release that nitrogen from their body which is where decompression time comes in again the buy for Dolphin accident explains that in more detail now Rush wants to go deeper and stay down for longer and he wants to use submersibles to make that happen Ocean Gate buys antipodes a five-man submersible capable of diving to 300 meters deep and sustain gaining life for 72 hours a submersible is a vessel that can operate underwater but needs the assistance of a support vessel a submarine on the other hand doesn't need a support vessel it's completely self-sufficient in that the crew can eat sleep and live in the vessel and it can travel on its own from one location to another when they buy antipodes it's already been tested and certified by ABS the American Bureau of shipping it's tested to a pressure equivalent to 380 meters deep and rated to a dive depth of 305 meters the test pressure is 20 percent more than the vessel is certified to dive one way to test a submersible vessel is to put it inside a hydrostatic chamber like the one at the national Hyperbaric Center in Aberdeen Scotland which tests submersibles the chamber is filled with water and pressurized to make sure that the submersible can withstand the forces of a deep sea dive the engineering exists to test vessels like this and it's available to companies to put their vessels through the verification process even if there aren't existing standards to certify them that's the brilliant thing about engineering you can build test and verify your designs if you want to understand more about how this works I found this brilliant course about classical mechanics which takes you through these pressure calculations and so much more what I like about brilliant is that I can find the topics I'm interested in then work through a course at my own pace and Brilliant guides me step by step and they've got some amazing courses like visualizing data so if you have to present information to your colleagues at work then you can learn about that data and how to visualize it which is a very practical skill set to have you just log in and find a particular stream you like and Brilliant will guide you from start to finish and reward you for completing each section to try a brilliant free for 30 days visit brilliant.org forward slash waterline stories or click on the link in the description the first 200 subscribers will get 20 percent of brilliant's annual premium subscription a submersible vessel is designed to withstand the pressure of the water the design calculations include the shapes and the materials used in the construction a perfect ly round shaped like a ball or spear is stronger than a shape like antipodes which has a tubular hatch protruding from the top of the structure which introduces a possible point of failure and it has an elongated tubular design which means the vessel has some straight lines which are weaker than rounded shapes different materials have strength characteristics forged steel and titanium are commonly used in the construction of submersibles and submarines these materials have highly predictable performance characteristics antipodes has had an interesting life it's originally designed as an underwater taxi for saturation divers working on the oil rigs in the North Sea and there's a big difference between the way antipodes is originally designed and used as an underwater taxi compared to how it's used as a submersible for deep sea tourism antipodes original design is both a dive Bell and a submersible it has two Chambers with different pressures inside each chamber one dry chamber for the pilot has one atmosphere of pressure from above the water line and another wet chamber to transport divers which is pressurized to the same pressure the divers are working below the water line this system was only used for a short period in the mid 70s divers don't really need to be transferred from one underwater project to another although there is one famous example of a ship that sank the cook survived for three days in an air pocket and had to be transferred to a dive well I'll leave a link to that video here by now you're wondering why I'm making such a big deal of this submersible and what it has to do with ocean Gates Titan submersible but it really helps to explain why a submersible is so useful and how water pressure affects air we also need to draw a line between the decisions that bring Ocean Gate to developing their own submersible rather than ordering one for their billionaire Adventure business saturation divers can work for weeks Under Pressure let's take the 300 meter depth that the antipodes is certified to dive at a depth of 300 meters that's 31 atmospheres of pressure the gas a saturation diver breathes is compressed 31 times compared to the surface because of how Gas Works in our bodies these divers can't go directly to the surface without decompression that can take days and so they're locked at the same pressure they're working and they live under pressure for almost a month whether they're at the surface in the ship's habitat or down at 300 meters deep the pressure is the same 31 atmospheres when they go to work they descend in the pressurized dive Bell to 300 meters because the air pressure inside the dive Bell is equal to the 31 atmospheres of water pressure they can open the hatch of the diaphal and swim out to go do their work they can open the hatch of the diabell and it won't flood because it's got compressed gas inside the bell and so the pressure inside the Bell is the same as the water pressure at that depth so there's no difference in pressure but the gas in the Bell is 30 times more dense than the air we breathe at the surface understanding this pressure differential called Delta p is key to understanding how a submersible works when they take the dive Bell back to the surface they lock the bell and seal the high pressure gas inside the belt if that belt opens at the surface like it did in the Byford dolphin accident then that air would expand to 31 times the volume of the dive belt at the surface there's a difference in the pressure between inside and outside the Bell but it's the opposite for the pilots of the antipodes or other submersibles the pilot is locked into a pressure chamber with the one atmosphere of pressure from the surface the pilot needs to descend with the submersible but he doesn't need to go into the water to work when he comes back up to the surface he needs to be able to open the hatch and get out of the submersible as if he hasn't done a dive at all while a dive Bell locks in the 31 atmospheres of pressure from a depth of 300 meters then brings that pressure to the surface the submersible is doing the Opposites and locking in one atmosphere of pressure at the surface then diving down to 300 meters but when it takes the surface pressure down it has to hold back the water pressure the submersible is not flexible like a balloon if you take a balloon down to 300 meters the air inside the balloon will be compressed into a space 31 times smaller than it was at the surface if the pilot of a submersible opens his hatch at 300 meters the air inside his chamber would immediately be compressed into a space 31 times smaller than his chamber a scuba diver has limits on their depth because of the gas they breathe and how much gas they can take down with them scuba divers and saturation divers are exposed to the pressure of the water the longer they stay down the longer it takes to decompress on the way back up a recreational scuba diver is limited to 40 meters so that he doesn't have to worry about decompression time that's fine because the tanks he takes down will only allow for a short dive anyway saturation divers are supplied with gas from the surface that's pumped down to them which means they're not limited by time but a dive to 300 meters will take days to decompress the deepest saturation divers have gone is around 600 meters and that's incredibly dangerous because your body doesn't do very well at such depths and it can take almost a week to decompress at 600 meters deep the gas a diver breathes is compressed 61 times more densely than it was at the surface the gas is so dense that it feels like you have to swallow the gas rather than breathe it physiologically this is about the deepest a diver could go and to get there they need a large amount of training and a surface supplier of breathing gas connected via and umbilical to the support ship on 17th of June 2023 Hamish Harding a passenger on the Polar Prince posts a message on his social media to say they're going to attempt to dive to the Titanic tomorrow Sunday the 18th of June social media is something that Rush has built into the business he wants to have people on board with a large following and over the years he's hosted several influences in his submersibles Rush wants to build a tech company and a tech company needs to attract attention investors and citizen scientists need to be aware and they need to be excited to go places that few people have gone and it's fair to say that Rush lacks the attention before Ocean Gate buys antipodes it's already been converted to be used only as a submersible with one chamber Rush is first and foremost interested in research and so he starts taking non-paying scientists to locations for research while he's working out which direction to take the business Ocean Gate documents their dive sites and partners with sponsors like National Geographic and his previous employer blueview Technologies Rush is starting on a path to help solve some of the questions that science have says about the oceans and its resources in 2010 Ocean Gate uses antipodes to take researchers and scientists to explore Catalina Island over the course of two weeks they document sites around the island and they host events with local schools to inspire and educate school children about the underwater world and the Sciences used to explore them between 2010 and 2014 Ocean Gate racks up Dives and Expeditions with antipodes all around the US their contributions to science and research include taking filmmakers to depths That Couldn't easily dive testing a 3D camera from Google to map the reefs creating high resolution 3D scans of sites using Sonar technology documenting the condition of Aging shipwrecks evaluating the health of ecosystems and studying invasive species of fish and they regularly take part in community outreach programs to inspire school children to follow stem programs in in their education now Rush is growing restless and frustrated because there are two limitations that he wants to overcome the surface support vessel and crew to maintain an operator submersible are incredibly expensive Rush knows that in order to develop their subsea capabilities he needs money from paying clients this was always part of the plan antipodes is only rated to dive to 305 meters and many of the dive sites Rush wants to go to aren't accessible because of the step limits not that it matters because the passenger vessel safety act of 1993 has a law that prohibits submersible tourism deeper than 45 meters it's a law that Rush disagrees with and says it needlessly prioritizes passenger safety over commercial Innovation under this law he's able to take researchers and scientists as non-paying crew to deeper depths but as soon as someone pays he has to limit the depth but in a way he's not really worried about that law because it only applies to commercial activity in U.S Waters if Ocean Gate offers Expeditions in international waters those rules simply don't apply and dive sites like the Titanic are in international waters so the only problem he really needs to solve is depth at o400 on the 18th of June 2023 some 370 nautical miles into the Pacific Titans launch and Recovery platform Lars is lifted from the deck of the Polar Prince by the ship's crane it swings over the side of the ship and sets down in the water the Titan is lifted and placed on the floating platform almost 30 years earlier in the mid 90s James Cameron made the same Voyage into the Pacific the Russian mere submersible that Cameron used to make almost 33 Dives followed a tried and tested form using a metal Sphere for a pressure Hull in order to reach the depths of the Titanic a submersible must resist the 380 atmospheres of pressure diving to a depth of 3800 meters James Cameron climbs in then he and the submersible pilot locked the spear behind them as the mirror Dives the surrounding water pressure increases but the one atmosphere of air that's locked inside is protected by the metal sphere when the mirror reaches the Titanic the surrounding water pressure is 380 times greater than the one atmosphere of pressure inside the submersible the two things that are fighting back the crushing pressure are the spherical shape and the thickness of the metal the mere submersible was groundbreaking for its time instead of welding two halves of the sphere together which introduces a weakness to the metal the two halves of the sphere were machined and bolted together they also used a metal alloy with a higher proportion of cobalt giving the pressure Hull a slightly better strength to weight ratio and this is where it starts to become quite interesting because we have to commend The Innovation that rushers bring into the industry if you take a large block of metal and throw it in the water it will sink if you take the same block of metal and press it into the shape of the hull of a ship it will float because it displaces more water than its weight when you create a submersible pressure Hull out of thin metal it can possibly float this is because of its weight to buoyancy ratio but to hold back the 380 atmospheres of water pressure at the Titanic you need to have a thicker metal which is heavier even though it's only displacing the same amount of water and so it will sink below 2000 meters is where the weight to buoyancy ratio of metal is no longer viable there are two ways to manage this issue of buoyancy you can either add material that is buoyant in order to counteract the weight of the thicker metal or you can make a lighter pressure Hull provided it's just as strong from 2013 to 2015 Ocean Gate starts to develop cyclops one Rush makes use of facilities at the University of Washington and publicizes his relationships with NASA and Boeing all three organizations have now distanced themselves from these claims I expect over the years to come lawyers will unpick the details of those relationships in my mind they could range from purchasing materials to shaking hands with someone who once worked there in developing the technology for cyclops one Rush introduces the idea of carbon fiber as a material for its strength to buoyancy ratio you see the cost of sending is submersible to such great depths comes in four categories the cost of the pressure Hull the cost of the equipment to operate the submersible lack the controls the cost of the buoyancy to offset the weight of the pressure Hull and the cost of the support vessel if he can reduce each of these costs by making a smaller lighter submersible then he can attract the customers he really wants in a way Rush is thinking like Elon Musk and working from a first principles approach Rush won't go to Mars but at least he can think like someone who's aiming in the same direction these are innovative ideas that he's able to migrate from his background in aerospace engineering in order to make it as safe as possible Rush develops sensors to monitor the structural Integrity of the carbon fiber as an early warning for possible points of failure they test models to destruction which helps us to see the delamination in the carbon fiber these tests are not designed to test the strength of the materials under repetitive Dives but rather to test the senses that monitor the sounds that the models make under stress the sensors register real-time stress on the hull but there are no sensors that measure deformation over time based on the factory ready pressure Hull to my mind if the hull has some wear and tear on one dive and the next dive adds to that wear and tear the sensors only pick up what happens during the current dive but not the cumulative effect of stress over time the only way to monitor that is through non-destructive tests like X-rays and ultrasound to verify the Integrity of the pressure Hull he also takes the approach of using commercial off-the-shelf equipments and of course Rush is not shy when it comes to Media so the world learns how he's approaching this problem the studies capture the attention of military and energy clients who are always looking for ways to further their capabilities at a reduced cost it seems to me that Rush runs out of patience for the testing process and wants to capitalize on the interest from potentially lucrative clients in 2015 Ocean Gate buys a steel Health submersible named Lula and retrofits Commercial off-the-shelf components this is the first time that Ocean Gate uses a PlayStation control system and Commercial off-the-shelf technology in a way that improves the Pilot's experience and reduces the cost of development the submersible is named cyclops one they don't fit the carbon fiber technology they've been working to develop it can reach a depth of 500 meters with a crew of five for eight hours while this might seem like a marginal improvement over antipodes cyclops one is the test bid for future models it has a 72-hour backup life support system on board are oxygen cylinders gas monitoring systems and rebreather technology as the crew breed carbon dioxide increases and oxygen decreases filters in a rebreather system and scrub the carbon dioxide as it passes through a soda lime mixture containing sodium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide this removes the carbon dioxide which is captured by the soda lime mix Compressed Gas cylinders then add a small amount of pure oxygen back into the air supply to maintain a 21 oxygen level in the air the pressure Hull from Lula is already certified and Rush doesn't push it past its limits instead he uses it to Showcase ocean Gate's ability to innovate to further research with scientists and to identify First principles related to the support vessel at 0730 on the 18th of June 2023 five men climb into the Titan pressure Hull the outer Dome is bolted shut behind him divers then Purge the buoyancy chamber on Lars the launch and Recovery platform the platform descends around 10 meters deep as large descends Titan is able to use its thrusters to separate from laws Stockton signals the final okay to divers through the porthole window at 0800 Titan then starts its descent in two hours time they'll be at the same depth as the Titanic on its own Titan is neutrally buoyed and so it has ballast weights attached to the frame in order to help it sink ballast is a weight that can be moved or removed it's used to balance the weight of a watercraft and ditched to increase buoyancy deepsea Challenger is a submersible commission by film director James Cameron at an estimated cost of 10 million dollars it's built in Sydney Australia by the research and Design Company Akron projects in 2012 Cameron used this submersible for a solo dive to challenge a deep in the Mariana Trench the deepest point in the world's oceans at 10 935 meters at over a thousand atmospheres that's well over double the pressure of the Titanic much like the mere submersible deepsea Challenger has a spherical pressure hole made from metal its orientation is vertical as opposed to horizontal which assists in Rapid descents in a sense but the rapid Ascent has no effects on the crew because the one atmosphere bubble inside the pressure Hull is not affected by the changing water pressure buoyancy is created by a material called syntactic foam it's a custom-made foam called isofloat which was specifically designed for the deepsea Challenger project this foam contains and small Hollow microspheres suspended in an epoxy resin the glass microspheres provide buoyancy because there are essentially tiny sealed bubbles of air the epoxy resin provides enough strength to withstand the extreme pressures that depths up to 11 000 meters deep syntactic foam was chosen because it doesn't compress under extreme pressure the submersible's buoyancy remains consistent at all depths this syntactic foam has an excellent weight to buoyancy ratio it's lighter than water and strong enough to resist the crushing pressures of the deep ocean making it ideal for deep sea exploration the majority of the submersibles volume is taken up by this syntactic foam but there is a big difference between the foam supporting microscopic bubbles of air and the pressure Hull that has to support a large bubble of air you couldn't use a foam like this to hold back the water pressure with an air bubble large enough to hold a person for that you need a pressure held strong enough to hold back the pressure of the water deepsea Challenger has metal plates clipped on at the bottom of the vessel these weights are designed so that the vessel is negatively buoyed when they're attached so it sinks when they reach their dive depth they drop some weight so that they're neutrally buoyant they neither float nor sink at the end of the dive they drop more weights to be positively buoyanced and they float up now the deepsea Challenger is only designed and tested to make a handful of Dives and then it's retired around the same time that ocean Gates is gearing up to start work on their carbon fiber Hull they have an interview with Fast Company Rush outlines Ocean Gate strategy get wealthy clients to buy tickets funding the developments and proving the technology to oil and gas companies who spend 16 billion dollars a year on remote operated vehicles and when talking about using wealthy clients as a stepping stone to mining oil gas and minerals on the ocean floor he says these things are going to happen one way or the other we're not going to be involved in oil production we're just going to be involved in inspection repair and maintenance and the cheaper you can make that the more you'll do it perhaps you learned from Odyssey Marine that the past two fortunes is not with shipwrecks but with mining mineral resources Odyssey Marine started as a treasure hunter scouring the oceans for shipwrecks but when that business model fell apart they turned their attention to mining the seabed here's a video about the 500 million dollar treasure that changed their business model in early 2017 Ocean Gate orders their first titanium Hull after taking delivery the hull is wrapped in carbon fiber using a computer program pattern to ensure the carbon fiber strands are evenly distributed around the hull the fibers overlap each other but they don't intersect at varying angles embedded into the hull are the sensors that will measure and alert the pilot to any anomalies in the structure in theory this should allow the pilot enough time to ascend before the hull deforms from the pressure of the water at the end of 2017 Ocean Gate glues the titanium end caps onto the carbon fiber pressure Hull of their new Ultra deep submergence vehicle Titan this submersible is assembled and in January 2018 it's handed over from engineering to operations for them to inspect and test in late 2018 Triton submersibles launched Triton 36 000-2 at a cost of around 37 million dollars also known as the limiting factor it's a two-man Ultra deep water submersible capable of reaching the deepest points of all the oceans Triton submarine specializes in the design manufacture and operation of submersibles for researchers explorers and super yacht owners limiting factor made history as the first manned commercially certified full ocean depths submersible it was used in the five deeps Expedition led by Explorer Victor viscovo in 2018 and 2019 making multiple Dives to the deepest part of all five of the world's oceans the pressure Hull is a sphere made of titanium with 90 millimeter thick walls able to withstand the 1000 atmospheres of pressure at over 11 000 meters deep a single 12 1200 centimeter viewport or acrylic window is also designed to resist the extreme pressures first the materials of the hull are tested for their strength and resilience under high pressure small samples of the material are put in a hydraulic press to determine their breaking points during and after the fabrication process non-destructive testing methods like ultrasonic testing and x-ray Imaging are used to check for any defects or weaknesses in the hull then the hull is hydrostatically pressure tested the hull is put in a pressure chamber filled with water the pressure is slowly increased to simulate the conditions the submersible will face at its maximum operating depth limiting factor is tested to a pressure of 1200 atmospheres which is 20 percent higher than the pressure of the deepest part of the ocean the pressure Hull passes the test without deforming or failing it's then certified by the American Bureau of shipping as safe for use to its intended depth the hole then has to have regular inspections and tests to ensure it stays safe and maintains its certification this is the type upper vessel I would expect a high-end Adventure tourism company to buy the buoyancy of limiting factor is made from syntactic foam similar to James Cameron's deep sea Challenger the biggest difference between deepsea Challenger and limiting factor is that limiting factor is designed and engineered to make ongoing repetitive Dives to these debts it needs to be inspected and tested at regular intervals but it will remain in service and this is where the use of metal is important metal is flexible it can contract under pressure and expand as the pressure is released Rush continues to use cyclops one for expeditions until Titan is ready for sea trials in 2019 Cyclops 1 makes weekly Expedition Dives to possession sound five miles Southwest of Port Everett Marina where Ocean Gate has its headquarters this is the final series of expedition Dives where cyclops one is on Center Stage but it also marks a first Ocean Gate regularly has citizen scientists engage in their research Dives but this series of dialects marks the introduction of mission Specialists the Dives range in depth from 115 meters to 150 meters these Dives are in U.S Waters which we already know has a depth limit of 45 meters for tourist Dives it's not clear to me if these are paying clients but I feel like Russia is starting to test the limits of the law to see where it pushes back between 0800 and 0945 on the 18th of June the Titan and polar Prince exchange communication every 15 minutes text messages are sent back and forth to confirm debts check systems are functioning and that the crew are well communication in the limiting factor and James Cameron's deepsea Challenger use acoustic modems that send signals through the water this is the same type of system used in the Titan communication underwater is notoriously difficult and submersibles expect to lose communication from time to time and underwater modem takes a piece of data and converts it into a data package to transmit that data package is decoded by another modem because this equipment loses signal from time to time acoustic modems are designed to enter a sync and search mode when they lose contact it's expected to happen the further apart the two modems are the harder it becomes to maintain contact a set of procedures is put in place in case the signal is lost the polar print support vessel should wait until the expected time for the Titan to return to the surface before raising the alarm in 2018 David Lockridge inspects the Titan submersible when it's handed over from engineering to operations Rush has tasked him with the inspection to ensure the safety of the crew during Dives Lockridge is an experienced Marine engineer and submersible pilot with a background in submarine operations and rescue techniques with the Royal Navy so he has the knowledge and experience to identify potential problems after the inspection Lockridge sends his report which details a number of concerns and arrives at the conclusion that he cannot sign off the vessel in particular he points out that both non-destructive tests like x-rays or ultrasound and a destructive hydrostatic pressure test have not been done Rush has either opted not to pay for these kinds of tests or decided not to do them the Titan pressure Hull is not tested for strength or durability he's also concerned that Rush has decided to plan manned Dives without these tests the final nail in lockridge's coffin is when he disagrees with the company's decision to use a porthole window that's only rated to 1300 meters or 130 atmospheres the intended dive depth for the Titan is more than twice that at 400 atmospheres of pressure Lockridge is fired and sued by Ocean Gate for exposing Trade Secrets Lockridge counter Sues and the cases settled out of court of course we know that Rush has stated that he doesn't want to hire 50 year olds with gray hair he would prefer to hire 25 year olds who are more inspirational or perhaps less likely to raise concerns through the course of 2018 Ocean Gate performs a series of test Dives with Stockton Rush at the Helm of the Titan submersible descending to increasing depths on the 10th of December 2018 Rush descends to 4 000 meters he pauses several times as he descends to check the Integrity of the hull and make sure the hull monitoring system is working after 7 hours he returns to the surface as the second person in history to make a solo dive to 400 atmospheres Ocean Gate declared this as their validation dive when you design an aircraft you can do all the testing modeling and wind tunnel experiments you want but at a certain point the only way you can confirm that your design flies is to take off and fly I can see Rush bringing the same philosophy to this project Rush gives a talk at geekwire to share his successful dive and his Ambitions during this talk he focuses on what the broader Tech audience might like to hear but he also reveals some other parts of his thinking this slide shows that he's keenly aware of the potential for more oil and gas Rare Earth minerals and metals then land has to offer and the language that Ocean Gate uses on their website aligns with these principles with safe low impact to the environment's quality and cost efficient Solutions our goal is to deliver a crude submersible programs that allow our clients to make better connections and inform decisions related to their Deep Water Missions during the course of 2021 and 22 Ocean Gate makes four expeditions to the Titanic logging a total of 13 Dives it's incredible to think that the submersible they designed and built using Innovative Technologies borrowed from Aerospace and executed with inspirational young Talent actually works the Silicon Valley philosophy of develop fast break rules and run before you can walk delivered exactly what they set out to achieve but much like a tech startup the cracks start to appear long before the implosion successful Tech startups use this philosophy to find the cracks early and iterate in order to develop a sustainable product Ocean Gate ignores the cracks it's almost as if Rush doesn't want to see the problems he's invested so heavily in one thing being right that now it's impossible for him to backtrack it's impossible for a diver to reach the depths of the Titanic the deepest a diver has successfully gone is around 600 meters with almost a week of decompression the depths of the Titanic would mean any breathing gas is compressed so much that it's approaching the density of water that means the only way to reach the Titanic is in a submersible submersibles are designed to hold back the pressure of the water and protect a one atmosphere bubble of air from the surface in order to do that they make use of every Advantage available to them they use a sphere which is the strongest shape with no straight lines so that the pressure is uniform across the pressure Hull they use the strongest materials available materials that can withstand the shrinking and expanding that the pressure Hull will experience as it descends and ascends the materials are tested using X-ray and ultrasound then the pressure Hull is hydrostatically tested in a waterfall pressure chamber to 20 send greater pressure than what it will experience with its crew at 0947 communication between Titan and polar princes lost they lose both the text message chat with the crew as well as the regular ping from the onboard systems the crew on board the polar Prince wait until Titan's scheduled time to resurface at 17 15. they've been out of contact for nearly eight hours at 1740 crew on the Polar Prince contacted the Coast Guard to inform them that the submersible is overdue they give the Coast Guard the location of the Titanic wreckage 900 nautical miles east of Cape Cod and informed them that there are five Souls on board carbon fiber is a strong material but it's also a rigid material you can compare carbon fiber to fiberglass the glass strands give strength to the resin and carbon fiber strands are even stronger the problem I can see is that the resin is the part that binds these materials metal can withstand some flexibility because it's a single piece of metal it's not prone to breaking apart within its own structure layers of carbon fiber are rigid and so as it's compressed under the extreme weight of the water it will be prone to small fractures within the layering not because the carbon fiber is not strong enough but because the resin is not flexible enough this delamination can cause weakness the sensors used to monitor the hull can only pick up what happens during one dive it doesn't monitor the cumulative effect of multiple Dives Titan's cylinder holds almost 40 000 liters of air at 380 atmospheres of pressure that air should occupy a volume of a hundred liters in less than an instant the water pressure overpowers the cumulative weakness and implodes unfortunately Rush only had to fail once at that depth the true philosophy of a tech startup is to fail multiple times along the way I think Rush did innovate he succeeded to reach the Titanic with a neutrally borne vessel that was potentially less expensive to build than its predecessors I couldn't find a figure for the actual cost perhaps the future of ultra deep water submersibles does lie in carbon fiber perhaps a spherical shape combined with carbon fiber would mean that the layers of fiber could overlap in alternating directions perhaps the carbon fiber should be encapsulated inside a second titanium sphere maybe it just needs to be thicker maybe a new type of resin would work one that's strong and flexible enough to withstand these forces in combination with a spherical shape and carbon fiber we don't know because it hasn't been tested people needlessly paid with their lives because the steps of testing and confirming and iteration were ignored in favor of rushing to get to the end goal I think Rush wanted to be right with that one idea instead of finding the right solution over time you see it all the time in businesses where the owner has an idea and works purely to prove their idea is Right rather than making changes until the final product works when John Day died in his wooden box it wasn't the end for submersibles since then submersibles have even been made from wood I don't think the question is what went wrong I think it's quite easy to see in hindsight what went wrong the more important question should be what went rights and how can we innovate on that in a way that builds on these successes how how can testing materials help to improve submersibles in the future on the 19th of June search and rescue efforts begin with spotter planes and underwater detection AIDS deployed across an enormous search area news coverage defines an estimated 96 hours of oxygen available to the crew of the Titan the Coast Guard deploys a C-130 Hercules and p8 Poseidon aircraft with underwater search abilities to scour the area on the 20th of June France deploys the Atlanta research and Survey vessel to assist with the rescue mission they start to detect sounds from below the surface at regular intervals but with the number of rescue vessels arriving on the scene this could simply be an anomaly created not by the Titan but by the rescue itself U.S Navy submersible curve 21 joins the search with an operational depth of 4 000 meters one of the few that can reach the depths of the Titan the curve 21 is a remotely operated vehicle or ROV that is controlled via a fiber optic umbilical cable and has multiple high definition cameras and manipulators for carrying out intricate tasks on the 21st the Atlanta arrives on the scene and deploys an ROV called Victor 6000 it runs a 6 000 meter cable from the Atlanta and is described as Titan's Last Hope the 22nd of June is the deadline for Titan's oxygen capacity later that day the Titans debris field is found around 500 meters from the wreck of the Titanic the U.S Navy then revealed they heard what they would describe as the sound of an implosion I imagine they waited until they had confirmation before disclosing that information if they disclosed that earlier it would have added to the media frenzy and the search would continue regardless it's almost impossible to identify a location from sound underwater so there's no advantage to the Rescue Mission in disclosing that information by not disclosing what they heard if the sub had been found intact they would have been wrong wrong in my mind revealing that information earlier would have added nothing but fuel for the media it's purely a distraction one thing is absolutely clear in my mind the race to mind the Ocean Floors is on Odyssey Marines scrapped their treasure-finding business model to mine the oceans oil exploration and Mining at the seabed will drive Innovation out there right now millions of people are thinking this accident will deter others from making the same mistake but in reality someone is inspired by what rush accomplished they'll see the opportunity to explore the depths of the ocean and innovate on Ocean Gate's design I can see a clear correlation between This Disaster and the race to mine the ocean floor the question we should be asking ourselves is what disasters will that mining bring thanks to brilliant for sponsoring the math science and engineering in this video you can use the link below to sign up for a free trial foreign

Channel: Waterline Stories

Views: 1,191,288

Keywords: Ocean Gate

Id: 9AjIEnSPar8

Length: 49min 24sec (2964 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 27 2023