> But instead they left Titan winter on the parking lot in Saint Johns where it was not protected from any exposure because that was cheaper.
This came up in the hearings. It's standard practice to do this but it's probably different leaving say the metallic Antipodes [1] outside than carbon fiber.
The report here more or less outright says that leaving it outside was a major factor in the incident. The incident on dive 80 was adjudged to be partial delamination of the carbon fiber layers, and leaving it outside subjected it to freeze-thaw cycles that propagated the delamination into near-total delamination, which promptly failed the next time the hull was pressurized. Although there is also the aborted dive 87, which subjected to the submersible to a lot of percussive damage via wave action.
One wonders if any of these people have ever heard the term, "Don't poke the bear."
Reading this is like watching someone gamble their life savings away because they know the next round/hand is gonna be the one where they win it all back.
This came up in the hearings. It's standard practice to do this but it's probably different leaving say the metallic Antipodes [1] outside than carbon fiber.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antipodes_(submersible)