News Cheap Logitech F710 controller may have contributed to Titan submersible implosion, lawsuit alleges

[Admin]

A wrongful death lawsuit after the Titan submersible implosion prominently features the cheap game controller as a contributing factor to the tragic accident.

Cheap Logitech F710 controller may have contributed to Titan submersible implosion, lawsuit alleges : Read more

 

[jp7189]

This type of craft is not easy to build. There must have been some truly brilliant engineers working on this. How could it be possible that any engineer wouldn't have redundancy on such a critical component. Besides that who would choose a WIRELESS method of control in such tight quarters where cable routing couldn't have been a major challenge.

At least tell me they packed a spare set of batteries.

 

[Amdlova]

Next time build with a orinal ps2 controller build to last forever

 

[Gururu]

I guess it is unclear if loss of controls led to sinking deeper than intended resulting in implosion. Or the craft simply imploded due to fatigue at correct depth.

 

[CelicaGT]

The link between the controller and the disaster is tenuous at best and, iirc from earlier reading on other, more technical sites, is only being used as an example by the legal team to establish the kind of mentality the design team (Rush) had. In regards to the disaster in general I encourage anyone actually interested in something more than idle conjecture to read the following. It's long, and on Wired, but worth the read. It's contributed by Mark Harris (Not that Mark Harris) whose contributions are typically of much higher quality than the normal Wired clickbait.

https://www.wired.com/story/titan-submersible-disaster-inside-story-oceangate-files/

 

[Pierce2623]

The idea that divers knew better about construction materials and expansion coefficients than the engineers that designed this thing is ridiculous. As someone with a double major in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, it’s virtually impossible to get an engineering degree without being EXTREMELY competent at maths.

 

[ravewulf]

Choosing to shape it like a tube instead of a sphere is another big factor. The wealthy and their hubris...

 

[gondor]

I guess it is unclear if loss of controls led to sinking deeper than intended resulting in implosion. Or the craft simply imploded due to fatigue at correct depth.

Nothing unclear about that - Titan has made successful dives )without implosion= to Titanic before. It was due to dive to Titanic again )which happens to lie on the bottom of the ocean). How could it "lose control and sink deeper than intended" when it cannot go any deeper than the seafloor where Titanic lies?

 

[Makaveli]

"At some point, safety just is pure waste."

This quote is going to destroy them in court.

 

[Vanderlindemedia]

Controller had nothing todo with anything.

Fatigue caused the implosion. There's several people explaining how the thing violently made gun sound noises while diving. That's carbon fiber crackling up - the thick 5 inch tube made it to at least a couple of dives before it gave in. The pressure at -3500m is so violent there was zero chance for any of the occupants. Instant death.

You don't build a vessel with anything other then Titanium, Metal as those materials can expand and such without losing it's strength. Carbon fiber is good at pulling but not compressing. The whole design choice was considered out of the order and went in untested.

If it was made out of steel, it would have added at least couple of thousand of extra kg's and a overall larger vessel to counter the weight and such. The silly owner thought he could get away with cutting corners, and thought it was a good idea to use acoustic sensors, as if that gave any time at all when carbon fiber was giving in.

For those who are interested - the transcript was fake and not real (that's out there).

 

[Notton]

The idea that divers knew better about construction materials and expansion coefficients than the engineers that designed this thing is ridiculous. As someone with a double major in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, it’s virtually impossible to get an engineering degree without being EXTREMELY competent at maths.

Rush was a bachelor of science for Aeronautical Engineer, but his masters was for Business Administration.

When I looked up what you needed for designing a submarine, it was Naval Architecture, and Maritime Engineering. Structural Engineer and a good understanding of hydrodynamics is only partially helpful.
IDK if you need to have a masters in the above two, or if bachelors suffices for 4000m depth.

And then when you go and look at the design history of the Titan (Cyclops 2), and how Rush operated the entire company... it is... fraught

 

[ex_bubblehead]

The carbon fiber cylinder may have survived if, and only if, there had been metal ribbing on the inside of the tube to add rigidity. This is how the Navy's submarines are built and they handle the depth just fine. Though there is a calculated lifetime for the pressure hull (number of excursions to test depth) that once reached requires immediate retirement of the boat.

 

[cryoburner]

It seems unlikely that the controller had anything to do with the implosion. It was most likely just a matter of the main structure of the sub being unsuitable for the repeated stresses from taking it to those depths multiple times. Once they realized there was a critical problem and the hull integrity alarms were going off, there was likely little that could be done to get them to a safer depth in time. There were undoubtedly some poor design and testing decisions that went into the submersible, but the controller itself probably didn't play any significant role in the incident that occurred. And while a wireless controller is likely not the best choice for reliably piloting a potentially dangerous experimental vehicle, at the very least there shouldn't have been any major radio interference down there.

This type of craft is not easy to build. There must have been some truly brilliant engineers working on this. How could it be possible that any engineer wouldn't have redundancy on such a critical component. Besides that who would choose a WIRELESS method of control in such tight quarters where cable routing couldn't have been a major challenge.

At least tell me they packed a spare set of batteries.

Realistically, they almost certainly had full control over the craft using other interfaces on the computer system as well, like a keyboard, mouse or touchscreen. The controller was likely just something added to make it more comfortable to navigate with, particularly when handing the controls off to someone less familiar with the control system. And I also suspect that they would have had a second controller available for redundancy, as it's not like it would have taken up any significant amount of space or added any meaningful cost.

Rush was a bachelor of science for Aeronautical Engineer, but his masters was for Business Administration.

When I looked up what you needed for designing a submarine, it was Naval Architecture, and Maritime Engineering. Structural Engineer and a good understanding of hydrodynamics is only partially helpful.
IDK if you need to have a masters in the above two, or if bachelors suffices for 4000m depth.

He obviously didn't design and build the sub by himself. There was an entire team of engineers working on it. He likely contributed to design decisions that ultimately led to the craft's failure, but he wasn't alone in making those decisions.

As for the lawsuit from the estate of this Nargeolet guy, it seems rather questionable, as he really should have known better, and he was knowingly putting himself at risk every time he visited the Titanic site. He had apparently been down there 37 times, including a number of prior trips on the Titan submersible, and was a former navy officer and an expert at exploration of the Titanic, so it's not like he wouldn't have been aware of the risks involved, or the conditions aboard that sub.

Suing for $50 million just sounds like the family and lawyers are trying to cash in on the death of a 77 year old man who had been regularly going out of his way to take life-threatening risks for decades. I would consider an argument that the tourists onboard may have been duped into thinking that the expedition was safer than it really was, but not so much him.

 

[Bob Niland]

… How could it be possible that any engineer wouldn't have redundancy on such a critical component. Besides that who would choose a WIRELESS method of control in such tight quarters where cable routing couldn't have been a major challenge. At least tell me they packed a spare set of batteries.

Redundancy is on point. Spare batts I'll bet they had.
Wireless was most likely because they wanted the hull penetrations to be as few as possible, possibly zero, and what was being controlled was mostly external. At those pressures, cable feeds are far from a simple problem. I'm also wondering if part of the reason for the {iffy} carbon fiber hull choice was because it's radio-transparent.

 

[Sippincider]

"At some point, safety just is pure waste."

Bad anywhere, but esp. inside an environment possibly more unforgiving than space??

Going to be hard to defend this one.

 

[bit_user]

The carbon fiber cylinder may have survived if, and only if, there had been metal ribbing on the inside of the tube to add rigidity. This is how the Navy's submarines are built and they handle the depth just fine.

Are you familiar with the hemispherical domes at either end of its cylinder? Do those Navy vessels have any analogous design features?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(submersible)
​

As far as I understand, those are regarded as problematic due to a disproportionate amount of stress placed on the seam where the domes meet the cylinder.

Also, I heard the large window was a similar cause for concern. It was a prominent and tourist-oriented feature of the craft, as your typical deep sea pressure hull has just a tiny window in the hatch. For instance, note the diminutive size of the window in James Cameron's Deep Sea Challenger (pilot sphere's interior diameter is just 3.58 feet):

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger
​

 

[bit_user]

Wireless was most likely because they wanted the hull penetrations to be as few as possible, possibly zero, and what was being controlled was mostly external. At those pressures, cable feeds are far from a simple problem. I'm also wondering if part of the reason for the {iffy} carbon fiber hull choice was because it's radio-transparent.

Interesting points.

Regarding the RF transparency issue, consider that an optical communication system could utilize the window as a transit point. It probably wouldn't need to be very fancy, as high bandwidth wouldn't be required just for control of the craft.

 

[Kondamin]

Who’s sueing and what for?

 

[Pierce2623]

The carbon fiber cylinder may have survived if, and only if, there had been metal ribbing on the inside of the tube to add rigidity. This is how the Navy's submarines are built and they handle the depth just fine. Though there is a calculated lifetime for the pressure hull (number of excursions to test depth) that once reached requires immediate retirement of the boat.

Virtually all structural carbon fiber has metal support. Look at carbon fiber monocoque road cars or race cars. The carbon fiber monocoque is full of structural metal bits. There’s a zero chance it was all carbon fiber with no metal reinforcement. Even if there isn’t visible metal there will be metal honeycomb reinforcing the carbon fiber from the inside.

 

[Notton]

He obviously didn't design and build the sub by himself. There was an entire team of engineers working on it. He likely contributed to design decisions that ultimately led to the craft's failure, but he wasn't alone in making those decisions.

Yeah, he was boasting about working with NASA, Boeing, and University of Washington to design and test the carbon fiber hull.

Except it turned out he wasn't and MacGyvered the hull from off the shelf components. He also ignored design and testing recommendations from the above three.
Rush even visted DOER to seek input about a carbon fiber hull, and DOER warned him not to do that.

The more you read into it, the more it seems like it was just him doing all the design. He didn't listen to anyone else, so I highly doubt there were other engineers with greater experience and knowledge working under him.

 

[Stevemeister]

The idea that divers knew better about construction materials and expansion coefficients than the engineers that designed this thing is ridiculous. As someone with a double major in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, it’s virtually impossible to get an engineering degree without being EXTREMELY competent at maths.

I agree - to get an engineering degree you need to be very competent at math - but as someone who has managed large engineering teams (80-90 PE's) including many folks with MSc's Ph.D's MBA's etc.) there are engineers out there who through inexperience, myopia or carelessness do get things wrong. There were several folks involved in the design of this thing who had expressed concerns about its design but they had been fired. In an effort to get to a design at a particular price point I have seen shortcuts taken that ultimately resulted in the thing being designed not being able to do what it was supposed to do. In this case I don't think it was the PS controller that was the project downfall - the hull simply could not withstand the pressure at those depths.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Are you familiar with the hemispherical domes at either end of its cylinder? Do those Navy vessels have any analogous design features?

​

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(submersible)​

​

As far as I understand, those are regarded as problematic due to a disproportionate amount of stress placed on the seam where the domes meet the cylinder.

Quite familiar with that design as that's how the Submarine pressure hulls I lived in are built. The outside pressure presses those domes into the cylinder. The cylindrical portion of Navy Submarines also aren't a perfectly straight cylinder from end to end. It varies in diameter (smaller where the ballast tanks live) with "I" beam ribs every4-5 feet. For the depth Titan was operated such ribs would have been no more than a foot or so spaced and been at least 12 inches deep (simply based on experience, I'm not doing the math). Now, the window is an unknown. However, the design is correct for the depths, smaller at the interior, tapering to a much larger diameter at the exterior which allows the windows to seat with pressure. As I recall the original Trieste had a very similarly designed window (made of multiple layers of Plexiglass). It did suffer failure in one of the layers (loud crack reported below 20K ft or so).

 

[edzieba]

The key failure in Titan was not the controller (you could have built a bespoke polished-gold console and it would have made no difference). Nor was it the domes. By all accounts, the problem was the fatigue failure behaviour of the CFRP barrel was not properly understood. It was expected that failure would be sufficiently progressive to allow the vibration and fibre detectors to identify crack development before crack propagation occurred. Either initiation to propagation was so rapid no warning was created, or the sensor system was inadequate to detect initiation, or the sensor system detected initiation but the result was overlooked or actively ignored. Titan made multiple dives to the Titanic prior to the failure, so either cyclic fatigue failure was the cause and there was a missed opportunity to detect it, or a new failure mode may be uncovered.

Plenty of CFRP submersibles have been operated before, of similar barrel-plus-dome construction. "You can't use Carbon Fibre for submarines!!1!" is a fairly worthless conclusion ,as not only does it ignore vehicles that operate without issue, but misses out on the opportunity to identify a new failure mode and prevent it going forward. CF has attractive properties for submersibles - not requiring large volumes of syntactic foam to be securely applied to allow for positive buoyancy - so it is worth further investigation.

 

[bit_user]

In this case I don't think it was the PS controller that was the project downfall - the hull simply could not withstand the pressure at those depths.

The conjecture I've seen is that damage accumulated from repeated dives, to the point that the weakened hull catastrophically failed. You might imagine that each time carbon fiber is flexed beyond a certain point, tiny micro-fractures begin to occur. As they accumulate, the amount of flex increases, adding a greater amount of damage than what occurred on the previous dive. Eventually, the degradation reaches a point where it can no longer withstand the same pressures it experienced before.

I can appreciate that titanium ribbing would help to limit the amount of flex. For it to accomplish this goal, I think the ribs would need to be of fairly substantial diameter and something that should be clearly visible in interior pictures of the vessel. According to the Wikipedia article (and sourced from an article about it, in Composites World), no titanium ribbing is mentioned. The only use of titanium appears to be the end caps, interface rings, and some outer skeleton of the craft. Take all of this with a grain of salt, as I'm someone with no domain expertise.

The wikipedia article also contains this lurid detail:

"The forward end cap was fitted with an experimental 380 mm-diameter (15 in) acrylic window,[3][7] shaped as a modified conical frustum 180 mm (7 in) thick. According to Rush, it would protrude into the cabin by 19 mm (3⁄4 in) during dives.[12] The viewport was rated only to 650 m (2,130 ft).[13]"
​

A somewhat horrifying discovery that recently came to light is evidence they had dropped some ballast. Since the failure occurred on the way down, this means they observed some distressing signs and tried to abort the mission.

 

[JTWrenn]

Issue isn't that it was a cheap controller. Issue was that it was wireless and had no manual backup.