I am not Sherlock H.
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Yikes @ch_13 …. that is amazing. And portions of it frightening perhaps IMO? In light of the context of deep sea exploration in crafts constructed from differing and dissimilar materials. And in particular this piece:I've been listening to today's testimony.
The first witness was Guillermo Sohnlein, the co-founder who left in 2013. Mostly his testimony was a lot of self-justification and claims about the value of OceanGate's mission. Nothing of any real value.
Second was Roy Thomas, a naval engineer who works for ABS, one of the classification agencies. I was very impressed with him. He did a presentation on submersibles and went through the issues with building one with carbon fiber. He obviously knew this stuff backwards and forwards. He was able to recite all kinds of scientific details just from memory.
Third was Phil Brooks, the former OceanGate Director of Engineering. He joined OG with a degree in computer science and no previous experience in marine engineering. He was involved in building the acoustic monitoring system, but it's clear that he had no idea how to interpret the sounds, and basically relied on what Rush told him. Nor did he know anything about sub building, a stark contrast from the previous witness. He told a ridiculous story about snapping a mechanical pencil to test the viability of the carbon fiber acoustic monitoring.
I think Brooks was basically Stockton Rush's patsy. It kind of reminds me of Hannah-Gutierrez Reed, the armorer for Rust. The production team just needed someone to fill the armorer role to tick a box, and they didn't care if she was competent. Same here, with the Director of Engineering role.
“He told a ridiculous story about snapping a mechanical pencil to test the viability of the carbon fiber acoustic monitoring.”
Qualifying that I am not current or familiar in the field now days but have some chemistry background and industrial experience. I strongly expect that any processing and heating temperatures, times, duration, and cycling of them is quite different for a mechanical pencil lead - contrasted with synthetic carbon fiber (produced from polyacrylonitrile (PAN) fiber).
A quick search comparison shows IMO considerable differences likely between their conditioning and processing. Just as in the far reaches of space exploration one would expect to utilize carefully controlled, monitored, and reproducible quality control and specification conditions. The same should apply at the depths of the sea IMO. MOO