r/interestingasfuck • u/ThugLeeVoguee • 1d ago

The implosion of the Titan submarine (OceanGate) was so rapid that the pain wasn't even registered by the brain. They didn't feel anything at all. Utterly instantaneous.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

51.6k Upvotes

90% Upvoted

3.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

631

u/Mecha-Dave 1d ago

Sure, but the fun part was when they lost power and drifted without thrust or depth control for up to 40 minutes before the implosion. They might not have even been in a "comfortable" orientation...

And then there's the cracking. As the depth increased, the carbon fiber would be crackling like rice krispies prior to failure. There might even have been some decent "bangs."

So pain? No. Panic? Almost assuredly.

33

u/brownhotdogwater 1d ago

Carbon fiber does not do well with tons of load then no load. It will develop cracks that will fail. It’s why the nice subs are all titanium and steel. It will flex but not crack.

11

u/Mecha-Dave 1d ago

Especially compression. Carbon Fiber is made for tension. You can get it to work in these applications... kind of... but it will be as stable as compressing a piece of spaghetti from the long end.

4

u/toybuilder 1d ago

And tension in space would just be 1 atm. Not compression of 400 atm.

9

u/superawesomeman08 1d ago

the carbon fiber doesn't flex under pressure, it just fails

steel and titanium flex and deform under pressure, but don't fail as drastically

not sure it was mentioned, but the submersible was basically a carbon fiber tube with a titanium cap to the front (and back?)

so the titanium cap flexed during pressure changes, the carbon fiber didn't...

... there's a reason why pressure hulls are usually all made of the same material.

5

u/SmoothConfection1115 1d ago

I think you meant to say “intelligently designed subs” instead of nice.

It’s not like subs are new technology. We generally know what does and doesn’t work. And there’s a reason nobody, until Rush, used carbon fiber for a deep sea submersible hull.

1

u/mythrilcrafter 1d ago

That's the biggest thing above all other factors. Submersible design isn't exact and there are places where there are openings for improvements... but there are other things that are pretty well figured out in terms of knowing what you can and can't get away with at those pressures.

Rush was just simply one of those "how could a person poorer than me know better than me?" types, hence why he only hired young college grads who were still in the career phase of "This is my first job and I need this for my resume; I'll just say yes, do what the boss says, and brute force it until the numbers makes him happy".

1

u/InevitableKitchen943 1d ago

Forged titanium.