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.

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u/ZenRage 1d ago edited 1d ago

One of the really great things about steel is that it is ductile. It is not a brittle material. Steel can undergo very great detectable deformation before it fails.

If you have even been in a (steel) submarine you know that it SHRINKS measurably as it dives. (e.g., A tight string/wire across a compartment will go slack during a dive.)

That deformation translates to notice about a pending failure and TIME to remedy it. ("It should not be bending like that; stop going down and start going back up...")

That is just not the case with brittle materials like carbon fiber. They fail suddenly and all at once. Think of a glass canning jar: if you drop it, it either breaks/cracks or is unharmed; there is no in-between.

Making a PROTOTYPE submarine out of carbon fiber and riding it down on what is effectively a test dive is suicide.

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u/chefbobbyjay 1d ago

Which is why you leave engineering to engineers and not try to build your own home made sub. Well explained.

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u/Chemical-Elk-1299 1d ago

Don’t forget he bragged about getting the carbon fiber secondhand

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u/Fear023 22h ago

Everyone should watch the ocean gate documentary. He did so much shit wrong. When the dive season ended, he left it out in freezing temps because he wanted to save money on transport costs.

That's when I think their qa manager left. You're apparently really not supposed to do that with carbon fibre.

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u/Rico_Solitario 16h ago

And the guy came from old money. He was not hurting for cash he was just a greedy arrogant son of a bitch

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u/Disastrous_Visit9319 9h ago

Bro was the personification of late stage capitalism. Do everything cheap as possible to maximize profits who cares if it harms customers maybe just pay a fine or bribe the cheeto. He forgot he was putting himself in the same position as the customers.

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u/lazylazygecko 5h ago

I remember there was a comic about billionaires escaping to their own man-made island, but people still managed to infiltrate it cause they had cut so many corners on security. At the time I thought that just sounded too implausible, and then the submarine implosion happened lol.