Oceangate Titan: analysis of an insultingly predictable failure

REUPLOAD WITH IMPROVED AUDIO HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eNm8vnKZ38 A few corrections. I'll try to keep these updated as and when more info becomes available: > The audio quality is terrible. Sorry, I'll fix that going forward. > On reflection, I’m not sure whether my statement that the CBS reporter was ‘not at fault’ is true. I should not have presented that as a fact. Whether it was a case of negligent or irresponsible reporting is a matter for the viewer to decide. > There is a video clip circulating of Stockton demonstrating smoke hoods. So at least there was minimal contingency in case of fire and contamination of breathing gas. They look quite similar to the ones issued on offshore oil platforms and those provided 15 minutes of filtration. So emphasis on 'minimal'. > Some more recent footage shows the Titan with protective cowlings around the thrusters. There are still exposed cables but the entanglement hazard may not have been as dramatic as presented here. > I don't know why I insist on trying to say 'inhomogeneous' when most people just say 'heterogeneous'. I've always used the former for some bizarre reason. > Steel is correctly referred to as an 'alloy' not a 'metal'. > It appears the Challenger Deep did have an externally sealable hatch. As this is an entirely different 'class' of DSV, I did not consider it directly comparable. > There are typos on the last slide: 'Thrusters' and 'navigation'.

the CEO literally said that safety is needlessly prioritized over innovation and then he proceeded to innovate himself and others to death

This idea that "safety certification is not necessary because accidents are so rare" is peak survivorship bias.

The reason why ,most failures were due to operator error is because rigorous testing prevented mechanical failures.

As someone who literally drove a military submarine, we do not use game controllers. There is a whole system in place that includes an emergency function

James Cameron said it best: "Now there's a wreck lying next to another wreck for the same damn reason."

I'm glad you mentioned the Challenger disaster because that was the exact parallel I thought of, particularly Richard Feynman's admonition that "for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

theranos also hired young/inexperienced engineers. One older engineer they did hire famously had issues with the way the company was being run. RIP Ian Gibbons.

Your point about the cheap fins you used is a great life lesson. The risks are not always obvious; the seemingly innocuous can be linked in a chain of events too.

The part about getting to 4k depth and then realizing that their thrusters were on backwards gave me chills. That should’ve been a wake up call to the CEO and everyone else that they need to have higher standards for safety and testing. It’s like jumping out of a plane and realizing that your parachute is on upside-down.

I worked at Boeing up until I retired a couple of years ago. One thing I noticed was a trend of placing and ever decreasing amount of value on experience. The idea was to send people to lots of classes for a few weeks and they would come out ready to show people with decades of experience how planes really gets built. It was a philosophy of "think outside the box" without understanding the box, what's in the box, and why the box is the way that it is. This tragedy as well as other things seems to show this is in far to much of the business world.

Stockton Rush once said "safety is just pure waste" I nominate this man for a Darwin Award!

There's always a tension between the development engineers and the safety engineers. The kind of resentment that Rush felt is typical in R&D environments. This is a story about a development engineer being allowed to operate without adult supervision.

Engineer: “But sir, it’s impossible to test for such defects in carbon fiber composite” Rush: “Great, let’s use that then.” And that’s exactly how that conversation went..

100% correct, this narcissist hired young people because he didn't want 50-year-olds talking back to him.

I like to work with epoxy as a hobby, and I can tell you as a matter of fact that if you do not use a special pump in the process to remove bubbles and just heat it, there will always be bubbles left. They thought that building such a big pump would be to expensive, so they just heat it. (This is my second language, please forgive me if I made any mistakes)

One of my college professors worked at the company that built the rockets for challenger. When they got the parts of the rockets back to analyze, they realized that the o-rings (specifically the joints of the rockets around them) had failed drastically. Last year when he was lecturing about his experience, he was one of the people most angry about what happened. Allegedly, there had been concerns from the engineers and scientists building the rockets that the launch day should have been pushed back as the day/evening prior it had gotten cold enough to have ice form on the launch pad. This would have heavily impacted the performance of the o-rings. However, the thought is that NASA went ahead (even after being told of the issues) as Reagan’s state of the union speech was supposed to be on the same day as challenger and he wanted to brag at it about successfully launching challenger. I got me quite a little emotional watching my professor talk about bc you could tell what happened was still with him even nearly four decades later.

I distinctly remember learning about fatigue thresholds and why carbon fiber engine parts are only good for race engines which are rebuilt quite often. Carbon fiber is a miracle material, but only in certain circumstances and with proper maintenance. When I saw how the pressure vessel was made, and learned how many dives they had done seemingly without repair, I knew exactly why it failed.

A note on the "Thruster Installed Backwards" incident: the issue was identified before the dive. In the same documentary you used clips of, you can see one of the support divers talking about how one of the thrusters was was behaving abnormally moments after the launch. They apparently shrugged it off and did not think about it again until after the vessel reached target depth and the problem reappeared.

The first thing I thought when hearing your fictional blow-up preventer story was "Wait, but if the shear ram is considered a last resort on normal BoPs, why is he putting so much emphasis on it being the only necessary part in his design?" And then immediately after "This is going to be one of those 'hubris in engineering' anecdotes, isn't it?" I'm happy it was fictional because that could have been an epic fail otherwise.