The risks of exploration, unknown!

[Robert D]

Yes that's correct. In fact speaking of the hull... apparently there was a major design flaw. At such depths, the industry standard is supposed to be somewhere around 7 inches or more. In this particular case with the use of exotic materials, carbon fibre and titanium, the hull was just 5 inches... so that itself was a disaster to begin with.
And the list goes on... like one member stated, a laundry list but it was never followed, and the consequences were quite obvious.

I read or heard somewhere that it was 6 inches I think. I don't think any hull could withstand that kind of pressure indefinitely. Even one 10 inches thick would probably eventually fail. It would probably just last 2x as long, for two times as many trips.

 

[Lurch490]

It’s usually not the first or second ascent that is the danger. It’s 10th or 14th time (in this case), because each dive is putting more pressure on the damage from the previous dives and pushing it until there is a catastrophic failure. This company had no way of knowing how compromised the hull was until it was about to fail.

Read about the De Havilland Comet back in the 60s. They learned a lot of hard lessons about what pressurization does to the fuselage of a plane. And then those planes were taken out of service.

 

[BigGuy]

It’s usually not the first or second ascent that is the danger. It’s 10th or 14th time (in this case), because each dive is putting more pressure on the damage from the previous dives and pushing it until there is a catastrophic failure. This company had no way of knowing how compromised the hull was until it was about to fail.

Read about the De Havilland Comet back in the 60s. They learned a lot of hard lessons about what pressurization does to the fuselage of a plane. And then those planes were taken out of service.

There are methods, e.g., ultrasonic, that are used to analyze for stress cracks, etc.

This article by James "Titanic" Cameron is very enlightening particularly with regard to safety record of research submersibles..."no major incidents since the 60's".
https://abcnews.go.com/US/james-cam...tragedy-titanic-sinking-im/story?id=100314415
It is too bad the people unnecessarily lost their lives due to Stockton Rush's vanity and stupidity.

 

[Robert D]

There are methods, e.g., ultrasonic, that are used to analyze for stress cracks, etc.

This article by James "Titanic" Cameron is very enlightening particularly with regard to safety record of research submersibles..."no major incidents since the 60's".
https://abcnews.go.com/US/james-cam...tragedy-titanic-sinking-im/story?id=100314415
It is too bad the people unnecessarily lost their lives due to Stockton Rush's vanity and stupidity.

Hadnt thought of using ultrasound on it. Thats interesting. I wonder too about doing tests on it with a seismograph. That might show something. The hulls definitely should be tested if the sub is going that deep. From what I could find online, the deepest that most US military subs go is about 900 feet. Some military subs go down quite a bit deeper, but it seems uncommon. This thing was down to 12,500 feet. Surely the military has ways to test hull integrity?

 

[Robert D]

I mentioned rollercoasters as a big risk, and this one just made the news. A customer noticed a large crack in America's tallest and fastest giga coaster. They luckily shut it down before a major tragedy happened. Staff hadn't noticed it!!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/tallest-...mporarily-closes-visitor-notices-scary-defect