Here's a comment I found about it.
2 hours ago +48 / -0
I was on submarines for awhile. This was bound to happen. There is a video of their CEO saying he doesn’t hire ex submariners, because 50 year old white guys are not inspiring. That idea alone explains why this happened. Typical lefty rich guy idiocy.
The list of problems I saw in these videos is endless. Many of the talking points they use are theoretical. Its max depth is theoretical. It’s never been down to its advertised max. And you are supposed to have reserve depth. So if they claim 4K meters as max operating depth, there should be 500 meters to max crush depth. To give you a reserve. And that should be tested. They should have sent one down and see how far it can actually go before failing.
The life support was a joke and never tested. They didn’t put 5 people in that thing for 96 hours to see what happens. It’s not just a matter of oxygen. You have to scrub air, remove gases. It’s a balancing act. If you get too much oxygen, the air literally explodes into flame from any minute electrical spark. Like one of the Apollos.
It’s carbon fiber with titanium hood bonded onto it. How many times can that cycle between depths before failure? They have no idea. It’s never been done. Usually these super deep vehicles are total spheres, made of metal. This wasn’t a sphere, meaning the pressure is applied unevenly. All it takes is a dent in the carbon weave to create a weak point and it will crush like a Coke can.
They don’t have emergency transponders. This is lunacy. There should be a fail safe transponder that much be reset manually every hour or so. If someone doesn’t reset the thing, it automatically begins sending a signal that can be picked up on the surface for locating. So if the gases get diddlyed up and everyone passes out, or they lose comms and electrical, the surface ship will get an emergency signal.
They have zero contingency plans in case a sub disappears. No backup sub. No plans. Just praying the inevitable never happens. They don’t even have a contract plan with another company that has DSRV, to establish some sort of within 24 hour response time. Anything. Any kind of plan on what to do when a sub disappears.
Apparently they lost comms all the time. This wasn’t solved. Why? That’s lunacy as well. If you can’t rely on your comms, when bad toejam does happen, people are just gonna assume the best. It’s gonna cost you an entire day of rescue time because the people up top are gonna assume it’s just bad comms. Not an emergency. There are plenty of ways to keep comms going. If the system they had didn’t work, they should have spent the money to get one that does.
They lost comms 90 minutes in as the sub reached the bottom. I’m assuming it suffered catastrophic hull failure and everyone was vaporized instantly. They will struggle to ever find this thing. It’s tiny, made of carbon that isn’t a great reflector of sound waves, and it’s almost 3 miles down in the endless chasm of deep ocean.
Now they will pass regulations for these things. Regulations the Navy already learned from the Thresher and Scorpion. That’s why you hire sub veterans. Because we already paid the price in blood. It’s always the same for humans. We never learn. We always think we are smarter than the other guy. This fancy carbon fiber shiny vehicle built by college students.
Regulations are always written in blood. It never changes.
