Bingo. I would have been a whistle blower as soon as I found out that maniac was sending people down 12k feet in that thing. That is fucking deep. At least 10 times deeper than modern military platforms tend to go.

The compression at that depth must have been crazy. As you dive in a steel sub, it shrinks considerably. You can hear it. Stretch a line taught across bulkheads and then dive and it becomes loose. You start with a foot of free space outside your rack, and later you have 6 inches.

What does that do to carbon fiber and the bonding area where the titanium is literally glued on? They don’t expand and contract at the same rate. What if the titanium shrinks less than the carbon? Or more? We are talking inches here. It compresses that much.

My guess is they had a failure of the hatch, which the manufacturer plainly stated wasn’t rated for 3k meters, or a failure at the meeting area between carbon and hatch.

That’s why the deep subs are just usually big ass spheres of one metal. James Cameron’s sub he built for the Mariana Trench is a great example.

The utter hubris of this company. I really hope it was fast. Those poor saps that got conned into going on that death machine.