June 29, 2023

B. Collision With Seafloor Destroyed Titan?

On June 26, 2023 I looked at "A. Mixture of Pressure Hull Materials Failed Titan?" in a spontaneous way. 

My alternate "B." way of thinking is that:

-  after an event happened while descending
-  like fire, perhaps with rapid gas release (too fast for the crew to put on their respirators) 
-  causing major interruption to steering
-  caused Titan to hit the seafloor
-  almost instantly distorting Titan's pressure hull
-  in turn causing the USN recorded implosion.  

Large portions of Titan are being retrieved from the seafloor in record time. These and smaller bits of Titan and even the remains of the 5 crew, may reveal why Titan failed. 

Under theory B. the cause might originate from battery management failure (especially from more fire prone Lithium-ion batteries) causing fire might be discernable due to burn marks on Titan parts and sadly on human material.

But as this video here (from 2:05 to 3:15) illustrates the beginning of compression of air (similar to a diesel piston) can cause sparking, fire and explosion in just a few milliseconds. At almost the same instant implosion of a submersible is proceeding. A few milliseconds later another explosion “pushes out” the implosion, scattering a submersible’s bits over a relatively wide area. This implosion-then-explosion was presumably the one event heard by the USN IUSS seafloor sensors.

All this complicates the job of examiners studying a Titan fire line of enquiry.

However, if enough battery material can be recovered, a study of its eventual chemical state and other Titan parts might reveal whether fire was caused by:

-  a runaway battery heat buildup and/or
-  a spark igniting a release of battery gas, or
-  igniting Titan's oxygen rich environment

all preceding Titan hitting the seafloor and then almost instant implosion. 

The carbon fiber (for all its possible technical pressure hull failure faults) might also be useful in revealing any prior melting that was different from any burn marks of flash caused be implosion. 

Yet, contrary to the hitting the seafloor theory - it is puzzling that such Large parts (like the part below) have been recovered rather than being imploded-exploded into tiny pieces. This may suggest a less rapid implosion occurred near the surface, say 500 meters down - and then the pieces sank to the seafloor. That would be more in line with theory A. Mixture of Pressure Hull Materials Failed Titan?" in a spontaneous way.


So this whole issue remains a contradictory intellectual challenge, that sadly involves loss of life.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pete,

NTSB to Investigate Titan Implosion with Coast Guard

"The National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the implosion that killed five people death aboard the Titan submersible as part of the Coast Guard’s Maritime Board of Investigation.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which served as the lead agency on the recovery efforts for Titan, opened a Maritime Board of Investigation June 25 to look into Titan’s last dive, which ended in the death of the five passengers aboard, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

As part of the NTSB’s investigation, it will determine probable cause and any applicable safety recommendations, according to a news release from the agency. The report is expected in the next year or two.

An NTSB investigator was in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, as part of the investigation. Members of the Coast Guard, as well as the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, also sent representatives as part of their investigations."


/Kjell

Pete said...

Thanks /Kjell

For https://news.usni.org/2023/06/30/ntsb-to-investigate-titan-implosion-with-coast-guard#more-104053

One part of that link, that gives me pause, is:

"The [National Transportation Safety Board] report is expected in the next year or two."

Added to the highly technical nature and novelty of Titan's destruction is the politicized nature of the US legal system. The Report will impact Big US Business with compensation implications.

All this may make the Report late, with ambiguous findings.

Regards Pete

Shawn C said...

There’s apparently a transcript of the Titan’s last communication with its mothership floating around on the interwebz. No idea if it’s authentic, but it does sound plausible.

This YouTuber goes thought the transcript. Apparently a retired Motorola engineer, but he doesn’t know much about search and rescue operations.

But he does have a point about safety margins - if you have a 4,000m ‘rated’ submarine, you don’t take it to 3,800m 20 times..

https://youtu.be/4Dj8IJbP41c

Pete said...

Thanks Shawn

With the alleged "transcript" released by "several TikTokers and a Pakistani Educational Youtube Channel"

it looks pretty thin.

I would tend to rely and actually comment on posts written by someone with years of looking at submarine disasters.

Beginning with https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2023/06/titan-submersible-likely-30-survival.html

and then https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2023/06/why-titan-submersible-failed-instantly.html

and then https://gentleseas.blogspot.com/2023/06/titan-parts-already-being-retrieved.html

Regards Pete

Pete said...

Thanks Anonymous at 7/07/2023 Billionaire Cameron's pontificating, other cheap American media trolls and now corporate advertizing have made this whole Titan issue a circus.

So https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/subway-faces-backlash-over-distasteful-sign-at-georgia-store-about-imploded-titan-sub/ar-AA1do88y is to be expected.

I haven't heard Trump's view, but its only a matter of time.

Cheers Pete

Pete said...

Sorry Shawn, Anonymouses, Gessler and /Kjell

For some technical reason when, over the last 4 weeks, I've been approving your comments and making comments myself the blogger/blogspot system has been issuing false positives on:

"Comment Published"

when the Comment does not actually appear under an article or actually disappears after it appears.

I'll pay more attention that the comments actually appear and stay there.

Regards Pete