Submarines general topic

SpaceNut · 2023-05-26 20:28:46

Much like all of the topics on the forums we talk about many things contained within lots of topics but sometimes we just need a topic set aside for other areas that one might contain.

Many nations have these of many shapes, size capacities and fuel energy sourced.

The local paper reminded me that I have one to be viewed by the general public.
Of course, this can bring back for many strong emotions of the past.

One man finds closure after long-lost WWII US submarine found off Japanese coast

f_webp

USS Albacore: Once the world's fastest submarine, now a museum, marks 70th anniversary

5b4e8400-2eec-4272-b82f-0d76aa14baa8-sub1.jpg?width=660&height=479&fit=crop&format=pjpg&auto=webp

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-26 21:18:51

For SpaceNut re new topic ...

Thanks for providing the personal history in your link about the submarine lost in World War II.

This is the first I'd heard of the organization dedicated to finding all the service personnel lost at sea in submarines.

The vessel used as an historic site has a similar name. Is it a copy named in honor of the one lost, or another vessel given the same name?

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-27 02:21:27

The topics of Submarines has come up a few times before. There were discussion of Submarine designs to explore the liquid seas of Titan and Europa. NASA has often partnered marine science explorers or with deep-ocean explorers to develop tech for Europa mission. NEEMO is one project where they use manned habitats in the Ocean floor, they also use robots or some type of autonomous submarines would roam above the ocean floor. I have not seen any other space agency with submarine designs but the Chinese have express interest in the Moons of Jupiter. One discussion in a newmars topic was in regard to people in confined spaces together, the psychology of the wrong person and events of 'mental illness' and a guy who went to jail when he set fire to rags aboard a nuclear submarine he was contracted for work but suddenly did not like sailing aboard ships. Water might still flown in some region of the red planet and even on Mars where they might be some sub surface lake.

While the Japanese Navy had impressive huge monstrous looking ships I think media and people doing history underrate the German Navy, it was very advanced because of the U-boat, ships continued being sunk in 1943, 1944, 1945 and many lost in the early years of the Battle of the Caribbean. The 'snorkel' was introduced in 1944, a new torpedo type five was designed to hunt down engine noise. The German U-Boat was a feared weapon of war in 1942 German U-boat attacks hit merchant ships off New York along the Eastern Seaboard of North America they would sink everything and and often within sight of shore, there were stories of it operating on US shores right up to the end of the war in 1945, hundreds of ships sunk and thousands killed, they planned to go down to Latin America and as far as the Indian Ocean. Losses in the Caribbean in year 1942 were huge something like 300 + ships, 1.5 Million Tonnage to the Bottom of the Sea. When American merchant ships began to sail in trans-Atlantic convoys with continuous sea and air escorts, attacks fell dramatically, Bell Island was the only location in North America to be subject to direct attack by German forces in World War II. the U-boats continued to operate up until the end of the war in Europe in May 1945. Although Germany is known for its crimes and the holocaust but the Leader Admiral Karl Donitz seems to have been respected in some ways, a lot of people wanted him still rotting in jail he once thought he could win the war with 300 vessels, released from prison. He lived out his life in some obscure village, Donitz was released on 1956 and retired to a small village, he always said he 'Did Nothing Wrong' and was ignorant of Hitler's crimes, many argue about his true role. In the Atlantic 3,500 merchant vessels sunk, a German submarine U-234 surrendered to USS Sutton, on the 14th day of May 1945, U-234 also was carrying about 1200 lbs (560 kg) of unenriched uranium oxide, intended to help out with Japan's rather fledgling nuclear weapons research program the German boat surrendered to the Americans, but I read the Japanese naval officers committed suicide maybe tearing out their own guts with a sword in some kamikaze harakiri seppuku or something? Winston Churchill later wrote after the War "The only thing that really frightened me during the war was the U-boat.

Here is a link to the 'Uranium' report

Had the uranium reached its probable destinations, Osaka and the Riken Laboratory in Tokyo, enrichment via thermal diffusion might have been attempted.

Given the effort devoted to coordinating the shipment of so much uranium, this was probably the intention. However, a few days before the U-234 set out on its journey, the Riken Lab was destroyed by Allied bombing. What would have been done with the uranium had it reached Japan is unknown.

https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/ … u-234.html

The first attack by a submarine occurred in 1776, by the American submarine Turtle in an unsuccessful attack on the British warship Eagle. The first sinking of an enemy ship by a submarine occurred in 1864. The Japanese also had a Sub that was America and a war fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1905 over rival imperial ambition. Submarine warfare in World War I was primarily a fight between German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats and supply convoys bound for the United Kingdom, France, and Russia while the British and Allied submarines conducted widespread operations in the Baltic, North, Mediterranean and Black Seas and Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps German arrogance thought unrestricted submarine warfare and newspapers around the world reporting blood and scenes of war would also open another front and meant war with the United States but calculated that American mobilization would be too slow to stop a German victory on the Western Front, they were wrong. American cartoonist Winsor McCay spent nearly two years making The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), at the time the longest animated film, and the oldest existing animated documentary. RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War. Of the 139 US citizens aboard Lusitania, 128 lost their lives, and there was massive outrage in Britain and America, The Nation calling it "a deed for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed, and a Barbary pirate apologize" however Woodrow Wilson initially promoted a non-interventionist foreign policy, in year 1917, Wilson became a war-time president. Japanese submarines originated with the purchase of five Holland type submarines from the United States. The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) acquired its first submarines during the Russo-Japanese War December 1904 they were purchased from the relatively new American company, Electric Boat, a subsidiary of General Dynamics Corporation they were sold to Japan a year later made ready by 1905 but hostilities with Russia were nearing its end by that date, and no submarines saw action during the war. The USS Holland design was also adopted by others, including the British Royal Navy, the midget submarine or mini submarine is any submarine under 150 tons, operated by a crew of one or two but sometimes up to six or nine, with little or no on-board living accommodation, in civilian use, midget submarines are generally called submersibles. The Largest submarines today are able to accommodate comfortable living facilities for the crew of 160 when submerged for months on end, the "shark", NATO reporting name Typhoon a class of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines designed and built by the Soviet Union for the Soviet Navy. Ohio Class US Submarines are the world's third-largest submarines, behind the Russian Navy's Soviet-designed Typhoon and 24,000-ton Borei class. SLBM's are submarine-launched ballistic missile, a ballistic missile capable of being launched from submarines first developed by the Germans near the end of World War II involving a launch tube which contained a V-2 ballistic missile variant. Zaporizhzhia was the only submarine of the Ukrainian Navy seized by Russian forces in 2014, it could stay submerged for 575 hours or more than 23 days. The Korean War, Indo-Pakistani War of and the Falklands War, and the 'War on Terror' after 911 Terrorist Attacks have involved limited use of attack from Submarines. Japanese has a Self-defense force but is against Nuclear proliferation, it is working on a Non-Nuclear Hyper Velocity Gliding Projectile, development of a submarine-launched version is under consideration, reportedly.
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/politics/20221130-OYT1T50278/

Here is a link to a NASA Titan Submarine Explorer from 2015

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20150014581

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-05-27 08:50:21)

kbd512 · 2023-05-27 03:32:20

tahanson43206,

The submarine shown in the photo (AGSS-569) shares the name of a submarine (SS-218, a Gato class boat) we lost during WWII, but in all other respects AGSS-569 pioneered most of the technologies that modern submarines use, with the exception of nuclear power and propulsion.

If America had properly tested the torpedoes we used during WWII, it's highly probable that the Imperial Japanese Navy would've ceased to function by about two years into the war. Despite the horrendous failure rates of our torpedo designs during the first three years of the war, due to improper testing or utter lack of testing, our submarines still accounted for over half of the total tonnage of enemy ships sunk during WWII in the Pacific Theater of Operations.

The teardrop hull of AGSS-569 was not a particularly new or unknown design, dating as far back as the late 1800s in torpedo designs, but the thinking of the time was that submarines would primarily run on the surface powered by their diesel engines, so the hull shape was optimized to run well on the surface. Surface stability in bad weather or heavy swells will be better with a planing hull, but that's about the only clear-cut design advantage I can think of for submarines. You'd think submarine hulls would look like larger versions of the torpedoes they were firing, which is certainly the case today. The snorkel, another case of "what's old is new again", mostly negates the inclement weather advantage by running almost entirely under the surface, apart from the breathing tube for the engines.

If we had a fleet of subs with the same hull form of AGSS-569 and properly tested torpedoes, a healthy chunk of our naval build-up required to retire the Imperial Japanese Navy would likely have been superfluous. We'd still need amphibious ships and naval artillery to support our island hopping campaign. However, a great many of the sailors killed by enemy ships and carrier aircraft, that we otherwise would've sunk several different times over with our torpedoes, would likely have lived to see the end of the war. The much stronger HY-80 steel used by AGSS-569 was a post-WWII development, but not required for the shallow diving depths typical of WWII. Improved steel provided a meaningful difference in diving depth to evade the improved sonars and homing torpedoes of the post-WWII era.

I'd wager that the opportunity cost of not properly testing torpedoes and using submarine hull designs optimized for surfaced operation was very significant. The personalities who ran the bureau of naval ordnance, much like army ordnance, were prone to believing that their designs were far better than they actually were. Unfortunately for our military, they put more stock in their favored design choices than they did in proper testing. Worse still, they refused to admit when something wasn't working as intended. A few had to be fired before the problems were addressed.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-05-27 05:56:28

Isle of Wight is an island in the English Channel and a foreign underwater ship, people wondered what they were looking at when they seen a 'Dutch Walrus-class vessel'.

Boats have been in service since 1990 and are all named after sea mammals, part of Holland's Naval Force the Royal Netherlands Navy, the Dutch Minister of Defence announced plans to replace the Walrus-class submarines.

VIDEOS show submarine off the Island and what we know
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/videos-show-s … 41884.html

GD Electric Boat Scores $1B for Submarine Modifications
https://www.marinelink.com/news/gd-elec … ine-505340

news from last year

Macron says submarine offer to Australia still ‘on the table’
https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanue … the-table/

The Attack-class submarine was a planned class of French-designed submarines for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), expected to enter service in the early 2030s with construction extending until 2050

On 16 September 2021, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the cancellation of the contract with Naval Group and the creation of AUKUS, a trilateral security pact between the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, that will help Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines
https://web.archive.org/web/20210927191 … d-security

Two years ago a highly rated documentary film was released 'Becoming Cousteau'. Before James Cameron there was Jacques Cousteau making film, he died in 1997 at 87 years of age. Fabien Cousteau, the grandson of Jacques Cousteau, is in the process of constructing a community of ocean flooring analysis stations.

What Makes Us Think There is an Ocean Beneath Europa's Icy Crust?
https://europa.nasa.gov/why-europa/evid … -an-ocean/

Becoming Cousteau Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Ph5ntmWGI

tahanson43206 · 2023-05-27 06:20:22

For Mars_B4_Moon re two posts .... thank you for the large view of submarine history and personalities.

Thanks to kbd512 re detailed history of two vessels that shared the same name, and for the perspective on the progress of the war.

Thanks again to SpaceNut, for creating this topic. There is a rich history to be explored when relevant to the Mars mission, and on it's own.

For SpaceNut ... how far is that museum display from you? A personal report of a visit would be interesting to me for sure, and perhaps to others as well.

(th)

kbd512 · 2023-05-27 13:33:10

The newer AIP (Air-Independent Propulsion) boats are technically interesting, but mostly as a carrier battle group defensive screening force or as littoral patrol vessels than they are for the offensive blue water operations that the US Navy engages in. The most obvious advantage of AIP is that such boats can be deathly quiet and remain submerged for weeks at a time, as compared to the quietest nuclear powered boats or diesel-electric boats, which have water pumps running to cool their pressurized water reactor(s) or frequently surface to recharge their batteries.

Lithium-ion batteries have finally made their way into AIP and diesel-electric submarine design, but require a level of design verification and rigorous testing that technologically mature Lead-acid batteries need not be subjected to. All AIP (Stirling engine or fuel cell), diesel, and battery powered boats are subject to fires from the chemical or electro-chemical energy storage they use for power and propulsion, hence the emphasis on exhaustive testing and regular maintenance to avoid catastrophic fires and explosions while submerged.

None of these emerging conventional power and propulsion technologies are particularly cheap since all of them tend to be bespoke designs optimized for individual classes of submarine. It's probable that a mass manufactured small modular reactor would be cheaper after total service life fuel and maintenance costs are considered, plus the ability to stay submerged until the food runs out. Obviously if the conventional boat is ever lost to fire from its propulsion system, then the nuclear boat immediately became cheaper by virtue of not having to replace an entire boat and her trained crew.

The US Navy tends to use rather large and powerful boats (Russia built a lesser number of even larger attack and cruise or ballistic missile boats, but in general the US Navy submarines tend to be the largest / heaviest around) with large crews and expensive heavy-weight weapons like the Mk48 torpedoes, Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles, a variety of anti-ship cruise missiles, and very large ICBMs. This approach works rather well as it relates to the pure offensive striking power of any single submarine, but greatly restricts the total number of boats at sea at any given time, to the point that there were around 100 boats or fewer, even during the height of the Cold War. Today we have around 50 attack submarines and 15 or so ballistic missile submarines, IIRC. They're all highly capable, but their numbers are so strictly limited that it's hard to see how they could meaningfully affect the course of a non-nuclear war. Only half of those boats can be at sea at any given time, because all vessels require routine maintenance. That means the silent service will always be stretched rather thin and combat losses will be painfully felt within the community.

One concept or approach I've not seen explored, so that our existing submarine force can focus purely on high-end offensive operations against high value targets (mostly shore-based targets or enemy aircraft carriers and submarines), is the possibility of using bio-mimicry to develop a new type of "submarine" that outwardly resemble a whale, but can be economically used to protect surface ships through sheer numbers. This new type of submarine would be crewed by a single sailor who is encased within a bathysphere, enabling said vessel to out-dive virtually all metal tube type submarines. During periods of crew rest, the lone sailor would dive his or her vessel straight to the bottom of the ocean and sleep there while other sailors in "submarines" of the same type assume the watch. Alternatively, they could be carried in modest numbers by large surface combatants, especially amphibious ships or aircraft carriers.

Endurance of these mini-subs would be relatively short, perhaps a week at most, prior to refueling and crew replacement. They would still use a form of AIP fuel cell technology to deliver electricity to the artificial muscles providing propulsion. This would be more akin to a "sugar battery" than a fuel cell, but it's a form of enzymatic fuel cell. Sugars have about 10 times the energy density of a Lithium-ion battery, and this entire "synthetic organism" needs a bio-mimetic power source that can supply the energy required. I looked at hydrocarbon fuels, but "burning them" creates bubbles and high temperatures, so that's not very practical for a vessel that's supposed to mimic a whale. A surface ship would supply the fuel and a fresh replacement crew member. After their "week of service", the prior crew member would spend several weeks recuperating from their confinement within the bathysphere. There are various surveillance, screening, mining, and direct action missions these mini-subs would undertake, in conjunction with the battle group they're attached to. They would be slower than the fastest nuclear or conventional subs, but they would be able to reach depths that no metal submarine could reach in a practical manner, launch miniature torpedoes to disable enemy subs (hunting the hunters), deposit demolition charges directly onto the hulls of enemy surface ships to force them to return to port for repairs (large enough to cause serious damage, but probably not large enough to outright sink the ship with proper damage control). The primary reason to have such mini-subs would be to create enough of a deterrent to enemy submarines attempting to infiltrate carrier or amphibious battle groups to force them to use stand-off attacks that aircraft and defensive missile systems can more effectively counter.

I'm under no illusion that such bio-mimetic mini-subs would be all that cheap to own and operate. The advanced bio-mimicry power / propulsion / sensor technology would likely make each one about as expensive as a stealth tactical fighter jet ($50M to $100M per copy). However, the very modest crew requirements and low weight make them a force multiplier in sufficient numbers. An inordinate amount of resources must otherwise be devoted to ASW systems aboard surface vessels, many of which are every bit as costly, and then some, to own and operate. To my knowledge, nobody else has this sort of technology, and it would take some time for them to develop it. This is an entirely new type of submarine, primarily intended to protect our high-value surface ships from enemy submarines, all other roles being useful secondary capabilities that our conventional steel hull submarines would then be free to pursue. Anyway, it's just an interesting idea, and one with potential applications in our space program once we start exploring icy moons with vast subsurface oceans of liquid water. Think of it as "dual-use" technology.

SpaceNut · 2023-05-27 20:18:18

Yes, tahanson43206 submarines do have a rich history dating even back to the civil war even.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine)

The display is in Portsmouth NH.

https://www.ussalbacore.org/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-21 15:20:53

Titan Submarine Search: Sonar Detects 'Banging Sounds' Near Titanic Wreck
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/titan-s … 52057.html

Authorities were notified about the incident at 18:35 ADT. The submersible had up to 96 hours of breathable air supply for its five passengers when it set out.
Parks Stephenson, director of the USS Kidd Veterans Museum and Titanic researcher, commented on the disappearance of the Titan via Facebook: "No matter what you may read in the coming hours, all that is truly known at this time is that communications with the submersible have been lost and that is unusual enough to warrant the most serious consideration." He added: "I am most concerned about the souls aboard."
Concerns about the safety of the vehicle had previously been raised. Search-and-rescue efforts are being led by the United States Coast Guard, United States Navy, Canadian Coast Guard and Canadian Armed Forces.

People aboard -Shahzada Dawood, British-Pakistani businessman (of the Dawood Hercules Corporation) and a trustee at the SETI Institute. Suleman Dawood, 19-year-old son of Shahzada Dawood. Hamish Harding, British businessman, aviator, and space tourist. Paul-Henry Nargeolet, former French Navy commander, diver, submersible pilot, member of the French Institute for Research and Exploitation of the Sea (IFREMER), Stockton Rush, submersible pilot, chief executive and founder of OceanGate, Inc. Aircraft from the Royal Canadian Air Force and United States Air National Guard, as well as a Royal Canadian Navy vessel are also assisting in the search.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230621015 … ar-prince/

‘Banging’ noise detected in search area for missing sub near Titanic, but still no sign of vessel
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 … g-sub-nea/

Video: Canadian Air Force searches for missing Titanic sub at sea
https://metro.co.uk/video/canadian-air- … a-2964559/

'Banging' picked up by sonar in search for missing Titanic submersible, source says
https://abc7.com/missing-titanic-sub-un … /13408947/
Submarine crews unable to communicate with the surface are taught to bang on their submersible's hull

Terraformer · 2023-06-21 15:46:33

Not sure carbon fibre was really the best material for something intended to repeatedly go far below the crush depth of regular submarines...

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-22 07:00:00

Missing Titanic sub: experts raised safety concerns about OceanGate Titan in 2018

https://news.yahoo.com/missing-titanic- … 37992.html

CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.”

What a strange thing to say, so he was very political or he didn't like Whites or Ex-Military? He wanted to crew his ship with a diversity quota of brown yellow Lesbian Gay black islamic transexuals?
https://geo-matching.com/content/interv … ckton-rush

Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller. “When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have, uh, gentlemen who are ex-military submariners and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush told Teledyne Marine in a newly resurfaced undated Zoom interview.

Our team had the privilege of catching up with Stockton Rush, CEO and Founder of OceanGate via a Zoom interview. Stockton is a fascinating and bold explorer that’s taken his talents to create OceanGate, where he’s built a series of innovative manned submersibles for charter and exploration travel. Learn more about this organization, their future plans, and how Teledyne Marine’s technology is helping them achieve their goals.

interview quote

Um, so, anybody can drive the sub. And we also want our team to have a variety of different backgrounds.

https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-u … 20bbaa5ca7

Maybe this could go in one of those Darwinism Idiocracy threads or

'When Science becomes perverted by Politics'

https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=7626

Inside the missing submarine that explores the Titanic — each ticket worth $250K
https://nypost.com/2023/06/19/inside-th … e-titanic/
Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, the submarine is known as the Titan submersive and holds only up to five people

Missing Titanic sub hours from running out of air as search intensifies

https://www.aol.com/news/missing-titani … 08370.html

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-06-22 07:00:56)

SpaceNut · 2023-06-22 17:20:27

The mini sub has been found in pieces after a ping was detected as it imploded. Even if it had been found intact the crew would have most likely passed as the amount of air would have run out.

kbd512 · 2023-06-22 20:18:20

Left says OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush deserves to die on Titanic sub because of politics

...
It still shows how progressives routinely accept the idea that being on the wrong side of the political aisle means you merit a grisly death.
And it’s not just TNR.
Lefty MSNBC legal commentator Elie Mystal tweeted of the affair: “Next time some rich white person wants to take Sam Alito on an expensive trip, please take him to see the Titanic.”

kbd512 · 2023-06-23 00:36:04

Article from 2010 about the composite submersible ordered for Steve Fossett before his untimely death in a light aircraft accident:
Composites World - Deepsea submersible incorporates composite pressure capsule

Article from 2017 about the design of the Cyclops and Titan CFRP submersible that Stockton Rush, et. al., recently lost their lives in:
Composite submersibles: Under pressure in deep, deep waters

Both submersibles had their composite pressure vessels manufactured by Spencer Composites Corporation of Sacramento, California. The hull of the Titan submersible was almost as thick (at 5 inches) as the hull of the submersible (at 5.15 inches) that Steve Fossett had built for him, which was intended to descend to inordinately greater depths in a bid to explore Challenger Deep. Both employed Titanium alloy end caps / domes and large viewing ports. Had Steve Fossett survived his plane crash and undertaken his intended exploration of Challenger Deep, then the hull of his craft would've likely imploded just the one that killed Stockton Rush and his passengers.

CFRP does great in tension, but not so great in compression. The slightest defect when subjected to the compressive forces found where Titan imploded near the Titanic, or especially Challenger Deep, would've resulted in a near-instant implosion at the speed of a bullet. The end would not have been painful, as it would've been over in milliseconds and those aboard liquefied by the force of the implosion.

The stated reason for using CFRP versus high strength steel was to achieve natural buoyancy, so as not to have to use syntactic foam. There must have been some economic benefit to doing that, but I'm not sure what that was. CFRP is not all that cheap. Steel and syntactic foam are not that expensive. Deep Sea Challenger used EN26 steel in its bathysphere, but that was only 43" in diameter. IIRC, the early bathyscaphes used large gasoline tanks for buoyancy instead of syntactic foam.

Terraformer · 2023-06-23 03:59:12

Even if it survived one trip, as I understand it cycling it through high and low pressure would cause damage to the hull that wouldn't be visible? As soon as I heard they'd used carbon fibre I remembered all the times rocket designers have tried to use composite fuel tanks and then given up and gone back to aluminium...

James Cameron, unlike Stockton Rush, is still alive. And the reason why I think really demonstrates what GW Johnson is talking about when he talks about suspenders and braces:

“I had insisted to the electronics guys that we NOT control the ballast system that allows me to come back to the surface through the PAC computer, and they wanted me to do that because it would free up penetrators going through the hole by controlling it by serial data protocol,” Cameron recalled. “So I said, ‘No, I want that on its own dedicated circuit,’ and it’s a good thing I did, too, because otherwise I’d be still sitting down there.”

https://decider.com/2023/06/21/james-ca … feet-deep/

tahanson43206 · 2023-06-23 07:43:08

As a follow up to Terraformer's post, I asked Bing to compare materials used for submersibles.

In particular, I wondered why anyone would try a carbon hull, when metal has been proven to work reliably. The answer appears to be weight. The paper at the link below goes into some detail:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio … bmersibles

(th)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-23 08:21:00

Hamish Harding was a British businessman, aviator, and space tourist. Harding also visited the South Pole several times, accompanying Buzz Aldrin in 2016, as Aldrin became the oldest person to reach the South Pole at 86 years of age. Hamish Harding had descended into the Mariana Trench, sailing had beat feats in the 16th, 17th and 18th century, then flying came the first aerial circumnavigation of the world was completed in 1924 by four aviators from an eight-man team of the United States Army Air Service. Hamish Harding also had feats he had recently broken the Guinness World Record for a circumnavigation of the Earth. The aircraft was made by Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation is an American aircraft company and a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics. He seems to be involved in Ex-Pat stuff or perhaps might have changed his citizenship to UAE or Dubai or Arab Emirates?
https://web.archive.org/web/20220627083 … in-rocket/
Hamish Harding worked with an international aircraft brokerage company with headquarters in Dubai, UAE. He was involved in world life nature causes and the reintroduction of the cheetah to India project of the Indian Government and the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia (CCF). Harding was inducted into the Living Legends of Aviation. Harding was on the board of trustees of the 'Explorers Club' and was chairman of its Middle East chapter. He traveled on Blue Origin's fifth crewed flight, and twenty-first overall to reach space with Evan Dick, Victor Correa Hespanha, Jaison Robinson, Katya Echazarreta, Victor Vescovo. Victor Vescovo studied economics and political science and has master's degree in Defense and Arms Control Studies, he visited the deepest points of all of Earth's five oceans during the Five Deeps Expedition of 2018–2019. Echazarreta is a post-graduate student at Johns Hopkins University who has done work on the Mars 2020 and Europa Clipper missions. Hamish Harding had many experiences and work that would indicate he could be involved in this Deep Sea Dive work.

Blue Origin topic
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=8911

NS-21 sub orbital flight 2022 using the New Shepard rocket.

Paul-Henri Nargeolet was praised for previous professionalism with other companies his current company ran by CEO Stockton Rush criticized, a former French Navy commander, diver, submersible pilot. In 2022, he published Dans les profondeurs du Titanic 'In the Depths of the Titanic', which recounts his expeditions.
https://web.archive.org/web/20230621083 … 49d20f46a4
Nargeolet was “widely considered the leading authority” on the Titanic shipwreck. 'Remembering Paul-Henri Nargeolet'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Atz1sN-wM
Court has since held that Titanic Ventures, now known as R.M.S. Titanic, Inc. (RMST), continues to have the right to salvage the wreck but does not own it or any artifacts recovered from the wreck site unless and until the Court specifically grants title to the recovered artifacts.
Titanic Artifacts Caught in International Tug-of-War
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/scie … rchaeology
'In 2016, that company, RMS Titanic, Inc., and its owner Premier Exhibitions filed for bankruptcy, and the artifacts it recovered from the shipwreck face an uncertain fate. '

The now deceased CEO 'Stockton Rush' seems have been involved in California identity politics and perhaps seems to be criticized a lot, Pogue's December 2022 report for CBS News Sunday Morning, which questioned Titan's safety, went viral on social media after the submersible lost contact with its support ship in June 2023. In the report, Pogue commented to Rush that "it seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyvery jerry-rigged-ness". He noted that a $30 Logitech F710 Bluetooth game controller with modified control sticks was used to steer and pitch the submersible, and that construction pipes were used as ballast. 2018 Lawsuits? In 2022, reporter David Pogue was onboard the surface ship when Titan became lost and could not locate the Titanic during a dive
https://web.archive.org/web/20230621191 … fts-design
Reporter David Pogue, who completed the expedition in 2022 as part of a CBS News Sunday Morning feature, stated that all passengers who enter the Titan sign a waiver confirming their knowledge that it is an "experimental" vessel "that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death"
https://web.archive.org/web/20230619230 … a-65934887
Rush's experience and research led him to believe that submersibles had an unwarranted reputation as dangerous vehicles due to their use in ferrying commercial divers, and that the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993, a United States law regulating the construction of commercial vessels, "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation".
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovati … 180972179/
In a 2022 podcast with CBS reporter David Pogue, Rush discussed his attitude toward what he perceived as excessive safety precautions
'....if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car....'

You know, at some point, safety just is pure waste

https://www.newsweek.com/stockton-rush- … on-1807992
It's one thing to kill yourself doing something stupid but he took other lives with him.
His wife who also runs the company Wendy Weil Rush 'Director of Communications' is a great-great-granddaughter of Isidor and Ida Blun Straus, both of whom died in the sinking of the Titanic.

Shahzada Dawood in online twitter linked articles seems to have been a member of the world economic forum and ran one of the richest Pakistan companies, he brought his son along, ran a Pakistani publicly listed investment and holding company headquarterd in Karachi, once linked to the Hercules Powder Company following and the elite globalist DuPont family, French Revolution royalty that flees to bcome richest families in the United States expanding wealth through chemicals. The Pakistan business man was also a trustee at the SETI Institute,
https://web.archive.org/web/20230619211 … a-65953941
he had a MSc in global textile marketing from Philadelphia University, the Pakistan business man he worked for a charity founded by Prince / King Charles III the current King of Britain, he seemed to have many passports and was also a Maltese citizen. The US Navy has Coast Guard concluded that the passengers aboard the Titan — Dawood and his son, as well as Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush — had all died.

OceanGate in year 2021 had begun taking paying tourists in the Titan to visit the wreck of the Titanic, in year 2023 the company seems gone and its Founder/CEO dead. It does have another guy listed an Argentine Germanic name 'Guillermo Söhnlein' he emigrated to the United States in 1972 but he left the OceanGate company a decade ago, he is an 'entrepreneur' and has other interests such as the commercialization of outer space.
https://www.sohnlein.com/

I wonder if he could foresee safety troubles coming with the OceanGate company?

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-06-23 09:16:14)

kbd512 · 2023-06-23 12:15:23

Mars_B4_Moon,

Rush's experience and research led him to believe that submersibles had an unwarranted reputation as dangerous vehicles due to their use in ferrying commercial divers, and that the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993, a United States law regulating the construction of commercial vessels, "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation".

This is the crux of the problem. Submersibles are seen as dangerous because they are dangerous. Passenger safety is us learning from our own mistakes, and those lessons were written in blood. A lot of otherwise very smart guys don't seem to appreciate that there's normally a good reason why we do things the way we do them. ASME Boiler Code is another good example. We had enough people die in steam explosions that we decided there needed to be rigid engineering standards adhered to for boiler pressure vessels. Composites work great for structures in tension. Compression? Not so much. The fibers buckle inside the resin matrix. That's why most aircraft landing gear are made from steel. The composites work for light aircraft landing gear, right up until they don't, and then they snap like a glass rod without much, if any, warning.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-06-24 15:50:50

Robots instead of People in Space

A swarm of swimming robots to search for life under the ice on Europa
https://phys.org/news/2022-07-swarm-rob … uropa.html

An article on crime from 2019 - Stopping a drug smuggling operation

'U.S. Coast Guard Boards Suspected Narco-Sub In High-Speed Chase'
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/74107097 … peed-chase

The craft was reportedly holding more than 17,000 pounds of cocaine, valued at about $232 million

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2023-06-24 15:53:35)

SpaceNut · 2023-06-29 22:46:23

The Dark Descent: USS Thresher's Tragic Nuclear Submarine Implosion

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-07-02 09:21:45

Mexican Navy Chases Down Giant Cartel Cocaine Sub
https://funker530.com/video/mexican-nav … caine-sub/
The Mexican Navy just chased down the largest ever narco submersible ever captured (85') and found it to be packed with over 7,000 pounds of cocaine and operated by a multinational crew of smugglers in the Pacific Ocean.
The chase involved multiple ships, boats, and helicopters of the Mexican Navy, and continued until Mexican operators were able to drop onto the rapidly moving narco vessel and physically detain the crew.

SpaceNut · 2023-07-02 13:56:30

Not the first to be caught...

more news on the OceanGate celebrated a patent for its carbon-fiber hull monitoring technology just months before that hull likely failed

just seems odd that it would be ignored which brings into question

OceanGate's approach to engineering was 'ad hoc' and 'ultimately inappropriate,' says former consultant

The parts are slowly being brought up but the answer is clear....

Time seem to want to forget but Scientists ‘unearth’ submarine buried under naval town’s park

kbd512 · 2023-07-02 16:03:33

SpaceNut,

I notice a lot of "we told you so" Monday Morning Quarterbacking going on against someone who is no longer with us to defend his approach to submersible engineering. It's a bit like attacking the actions of the men aboard the Thresher or the various Russian submarines lost. The fact of the matter is, we simply don't have definitive answers about what happened at this point in time.

The nonsense about using video game controllers to operate Titan and sewer pipes for weights to release as "evidence" of "being a cheapskate", tells us nothing. Nobody uses CFRP or giant Titanium forgings to save money. I can 100% guarantee that a 5 inch thick steel tube is cheaper to make and buy than a 5 inch thick CFRP cylinder with forged Titanium end caps. Nobody uses CFRP or Titanium to "save money". Airline services save money on fuel because CFRP is much lighter and inordinately stiffer / stronger than steel, on a per-weight basis. The company that made the airliners spent inordinately more money to make airliner pressure vessels out of CFRP, than they otherwise would have if they'd used Aluminum or steel. The sewer pipe is a just an Iron / steel weight that the submarine is going to drop on the bottom of the ocean. Does it really need to be a purpose-built Iron or Lead weight, or can we accept that weight is weight and money is money? The cheaper the disposable weight is, since they're discarding it anyway, the better.

In fact, I would expect the 'real' submersible controller to have a reliability of about one thousand times that of the games handset...

Oh, really? A 1,000X more reliable than a video game controller?

Today, nearly all the armed services use game controllers to operate hardware.

That the U.S. military is adopting control systems based on commercial off-the-shelf video game consoles should not come as a surprise, though. The Navy has adopted the off-the-shelf Xbox 360 controller for use on its Virginia-class submarines in recent years, and the Army has been exploring the use of these same controllers to operate small unmanned ground vehicles to carry out explosive ordnance disposal missions for more than 15 years.
Indeed, this trend isn’t limited to the U.S military: The British Army flaunted a Polaris MRZR all-terrain vehicle operated by an Xbox-style controller in 2017, and as recently as 2020, Israel Aerospace Industries showed off a brand new Carmel battle tank featuring a similar controller for all manner of systems, from steering and propulsion to the weapons turret mounted to the top of the armored vehicle.

Virginia class submarines use video game controllers. Why? Because they're cheap, readily available from hundreds of suppliers, and they are, in point of fact, pretty darned reliable. They're at least reliable enough to use on one of the most expensive and sophisticated nuclear powered fast attack submarines in the entire world. Every country with sophisticated military hardware uses video game controllers because they work.

Does it occur to anyone else that absolutely nobody has attempted a deep-diving CFRP hull submersible before, and the way you acquire new and potentially better technology is to try new things?

Could it have been and should it have been much more extensively tested prior to putting any humans inside it?

Sure. They could've and should've done 100 or so test dives with nobody onboard to see how well the vehicle held up. In this case, OceanGate's approach didn't pay off. That said, their submersible completed about a dozen successful dives to depths that would crush the steel hull of any military submarine like an empty beer can. If they were all just a bunch of cavalier idiots, then how the hell did they even make it that far?

The part or parts that appear to have failed are the bond line between the Titanium end caps and the composite cylinder and/or the plexiglass porthole. That seems to indicate that the attachment method was faulty, rather than some inherent danger to using CFRP vs steel. Bonding metal parts to composite parts is notoriously difficult, because they're dissimilar materials with dissimilar rates of expansion and contraction under heat and pressure.

Could we have predicted that this would fail ahead of time?

Not without actually trying it. There were no existing computer models or other sources of actual knowledge to indicate that it was a non-working idea, because nobody had ever tried it before. If they did, then they kept the results a secret from everyone else. That should've been a sign to Stockton Rush that an abundance of caution was in order. He clearly thought it was safe to operate, because he was aboard the vessel during the dives they made.

If it turns out that the plexiglass failed first and blew the damn thing apart, then it wasn't the CFRP or bond line between the CFRP and Titanium at all, it was merely Stockton Rush refusing to adhere to basic engineering principles in the design of the vehicle. Then we can lambast his engineering decisions, ad nauseam. That said, he broke no laws. He operated an experimental craft in international waters, that was specifically stated to be experimental in nature, and mentioned the possibility of serious injury and death in the waiver the passengers signed, many many times.

This is literally no different than a failure of any of the numerous kit-built experimental aircraft used in other parts of the world for carrying passengers, because they can't afford to purchase or maintain type certificated aircraft.

Vans Aircraft has sold many thousands of kits to people who wish to build experimental aircraft. You're relying upon the engineering expertise of his staff, any time you fly one. Maybe they got it right, and hopefully they did, but there's no piece of paper from the FAA indicating that they did. Even if Vans Aircraft did have the magic paperwork, does anyone else here remember the students who were killed when the wings came off the type certificated Piper at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University? So far as we know, they were flying it like a normal / utility category airplane for basic flight training.

How about the Boeing 737 Max 8 failures that killed 300 or so passengers, or the early Airbus accidents that claimed numerous lives because they hadn't worked out the bugs in the completely new electronic flight control systems?

Those are both very well-established aeronautical engineering companies.

Where was all the media vitriol directed at the CEO of Boeing, or the FAA type certifying the 737 Max 8 without proper testing?

Those crashes killed a hell of a lot more than 5 people. They sure as hell weren't considered experimental in nature. None of the passengers signed waivers indicating that they were aware of the experimental nature of the 737 Max 8.

Why is so much anger being directed at one man who's engineering choices killed far fewer people than the decisions made by the CEO of Boeing and the FAA?

SpaceNut · 2023-08-05 16:14:44

The World's First Nuclear Submarine And Its Incredible Trip To The North Pole

kbd512 · 2023-08-05 16:46:25

SpaceNut,

I still have no answer on the extreme over-abundance of pompous Monday-morning quarterbacking of the decisions made by Stockton Rush. He was a certified aerospace engineer who went to a prestigious engineering school, he had a successful engineering career, and yet all that education and supposed intelligence couldn't overcome basic physics, so he and 4 other people died. An honest engineer told his boss, Stockton Rush, not to do what he did, and was then fired or quit. The correct engineering decision was made by the one person most capable of evaluating the engineering details of the Titan and Cyclops submersibles.

Boeing killed 300+ people with a design that required work input from dozens if not hundreds of engineers, many of whom knew their design was faulty in no uncertain terms, but there was nothing approaching the backlash against Boeing or the FAA for certifying a faulty design, as compared to Stockton Rush. Even the FAA couldn't comprehend what Boeing did, but certified it anyway. This was not decades ago during the infancy of commercial flight operations, either, we're talking about modern day bad engineering practices that dozens to hundreds of engineers chose not to walk away from or talk to the FAA about.

So, why is that?

This issues is at the heart of so many other bad engineering ideas, like trying to power human civilization using photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, and batteries. Someone tried to force something into existence that everyone who is not mathematically illiterate or ideologically mentally disabled, knows is a bad idea that won't work at all at the scale being attempted.

That old saying, "none of us are as dumb as al of us", is factually incorrect. There is someone out there with the correct idea, someone who makes correct decisions when lives are counting on it, and then there are a slew of people who don't for financial or ideological reasons, and large numbers of those factually incorrect people still think their ideas are workable anyway, despite all the evidence to the contrary.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2023-05-26 20:28:46

Submarines general topic

#2 2023-05-26 21:18:51

Re: Submarines general topic

#3 2023-05-27 02:21:27

Re: Submarines general topic

#4 2023-05-27 03:32:20

Re: Submarines general topic

#5 2023-05-27 05:56:28

Re: Submarines general topic

#6 2023-05-27 06:20:22

Re: Submarines general topic

#7 2023-05-27 13:33:10

Re: Submarines general topic

#8 2023-05-27 20:18:18

Re: Submarines general topic

#9 2023-06-21 15:20:53

Re: Submarines general topic

#10 2023-06-21 15:46:33

Re: Submarines general topic

#11 2023-06-22 07:00:00

Re: Submarines general topic

#12 2023-06-22 17:20:27

Re: Submarines general topic

#13 2023-06-22 20:18:20

Re: Submarines general topic

#14 2023-06-23 00:36:04

Re: Submarines general topic

#15 2023-06-23 03:59:12

Re: Submarines general topic

#16 2023-06-23 07:43:08

Re: Submarines general topic

#17 2023-06-23 08:21:00

Re: Submarines general topic

#18 2023-06-23 12:15:23

Re: Submarines general topic

#19 2023-06-24 15:50:50

Re: Submarines general topic

#20 2023-06-29 22:46:23

Re: Submarines general topic

#21 2023-07-02 09:21:45

Re: Submarines general topic

#22 2023-07-02 13:56:30

Re: Submarines general topic

#23 2023-07-02 16:03:33

Re: Submarines general topic

#24 2023-08-05 16:14:44

Re: Submarines general topic

#25 2023-08-05 16:46:25

Re: Submarines general topic

Board footer