Lion ponderings

  Most striking for lions was how the foam ballast was haphazardly stuffed in with no shaping to save space.  Maybe that's how it's always done.  Obviously, the carbon fiber is no more.  The batteries must have been the orange cases.  Everything is randomly thrown together. Some blurry transcoding of transcoded CBC footage shows other bits.  The front window area was intact.  The front window was obviously blasted out when the carbon fiber imploded.

    Here we find out the reason for carbon fiber was to increase buoyancy.  He thought traditional titanium spheres didn't have enough buoyancy & all the foam they carried was to compensate.  Manly Scott seemed to think carbon fiber provided too much buoyancy. Whatever the reason, lions believe he went with carbon fiber because it was cheaper to manufacture than a titanium sphere & it was easier to handle on a smaller boat.  He emphasized using the submersible raft instead of a crane.  It was all about saving money. Kiwipedia had some nuggets on Oceangate. Their 1st 2 subs were Antipodes & Cyclops 1. They both used a steel hull & were bought used from elsewhere. The 1st one they built themselves was Titan/Cyclops 2. It wasn't an incremental design based on anything else they did. It was not a collaboration with any universities. The collaboration was for a carbon fiber concept of Cyclops 1 but it was abandoned. No university physi...