Why OceanGate Sub Was Not A Bad Attempt in Engineering
While many people have criticized the failed attempt of Titans OceanGate Expedition that took the life of a few souls. We should not forget that its easy to laugh at other people's failure and alot of good efforts were made in the engineering of this submarine.
My opinion might be an underdog and I want to highlight a few good points achieved by OceanGates. I will look at some of the common criticism given by the public.
Criticism 1:- OceanGates was controlled by a game remote control
When the public heard about this, it was a huge shocker to many. It's understandable since many people will associate using a game console to run an advanced submarine as a cost-cutting measure.
However, game console has been used a lot in the military due to their user-friendly design.
“The U.S. Army has used Xbox controllers to maneuver bomb disposal robots. The British military has developed a driverless all-terrain vehicle controlled by an Xbox controller. In Israel, there’s a tank that uses an Xbox controller.”
The circuit of the joystick is a simple potentiometer that changes its resistance based on the mechanical position. Whether you buy 50$ or 1000$ joystick, the mechanics and the circuit will be more or less the same.
Also how many times did a game console ever fail you during gaming? This proves its reliability.
Criticism 2:- Submarine was made of Carbon Fiber
A lot of critiques attacked the choice of materials used by Stockton Rush to design the vehicle. One of them was using carbon fiber material for the submarine shell.
I have worked in a composite manufacturing company for 2 years. One of the tests we did was to put a 2cm thick pure carbon fiber block under a hydraulic press machine.
The carbon fiber part was so tough that it broke the machine. Hence, the strength of composite parts shouldn't be underestimated.
For the OceanGates project. One way of engineering is to make the shell in metal like Titanium and have carbon fiber reinforcements on the top of it for additional thickness and strength.
Criticism 3:- There Were No Safety feature
Stockton knew the risk of this exploration so he made an effort to install safety features using vibration sensors to detect the cracking. It's possible that their safety feature gave them a warning and they tried to move up.
But it seems they were too late. Many online opinions claimed that the submarine imploded in just 1 mili seconds. That is absurd since when you go under the sea, the pressure build-up is gradual in nature.
You don’t get a few tons of weight all of a sudden on the submarine out of nowhere. Hence, the safety feature should have worked but they were too late.
There were other safety features like automatic sand bag dispatch after 16hr, propulsion thrusters and 3 inspection check after every test dive. Its a shame that after taking a decent amount of precautions there was still a disaster.
Conclusion
I am not claiming that OceanGate Engineering was good by any chance. Like any good product, it needs to be tested to the limits to measure its safety factor. Maybe that was the reason the Titan's team never went through the rigorous testing process to avoid spending money on making a new improved submarine.
Let this story be a lesson to all inventors who are venturing in extreme sports.
In Macoma Tech, we have to test the mechanical and electronic system multiple times to make sure it's reliable before giving it to the customer. Making products for the first time is always challenging regardless of the scale.
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Sultan Morbiwala is the Co-founder of Macoma Tech. It is a manufacturing company which is specialized in 3D printing. We make custom products like Sculptures, Scaled Models, Engineering parts & Corporate Awards.
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