Message from Titan submersible before implosion: "All good here"

[stevev]

@bcsizemo

The only way I see a material like carbon fiber potentially surviving repeated pressure cycles like this is in a spherical shape.

An engineering analysis of the Titan submersible disaster pointed out that carbon fiber composite has excellent tensile strength, but little compression strength. It might be good at containing a volume of high pressure surrounded by low pressure, but it’s insane to use it to protect a volume of low pressure surrounded by high pressure.

[Otherbrother]

@stevev

carbon fiber composite has excellent tensile strength, but little compression strength

Yeah, I was going to say that using it in a compressive application rather that a tension-based application is like pushing rope, but apparently that analogy has taken on another meaning…

[stevev]

Are we still doing “phrasing!”?

[Elmer]

Some new footage just released a few hours ago. Dramatic stuff. I wouldn’t have expected so much of the cylinder to have (apparently) remained intact.

Coast Guard releases more video of Titan submersible wreckage at bottom of ocean

[wazroth]

They, uh… shoulda taken that Coast Guard submersible.

[Brainspore]

@Elmer

I wouldn’t have expected so much of the cylinder to have (apparently) remained intact.

That’s really stretching the definition of “intact.”

@wazroth

shoulda taken that Coast Guard submersible

The Coast Guard one was an ROV. Which is really the only sensible way to visit the Titanic anyway. You get a much better view from a high-definition video camera than you’d get from the tiny viewing portholes in a crewed vehicle, plus you don’t have to piss inches away from your fellow passengers.

[Kilkrazy]

I suppose that as soon as a crack appeared in the carbon fibre shell, the ingress of super high pressure water flooded the hull so quickly that the passengers were reduced to slurry and the cylinder had enough residual structural integrity not to be crushed flat.

[Otherbrother]

@Kilkrazy

the cylinder had enough residual structural integrity not to be crushed flat

I think that the cylinder did get crushed flat though. The titanium domes on each end survived as well as some bits of the white external cowling that wasn’t part of the pressure vessel, but I’m not seeing much of the carbon fiber cylinder intact…

[Kilkrazy]

Yes, it doesn’t look good. But there still is some structure to it; it’s recognisably the wreckage of the Titan, and some element of the carbon fibre looks to have come through the implosion, rather than being reduced to fibrous fragments.

[Elmer]

I expected nothing recognizable except for the titanium hemispheres and the bit of fairing we saw when they raised it last year, and a much wider debris field. It ended up being relatively intact.