Inquiry into the Titan disaster reveals new footage and documents, including sub's wreckage. Scott Manley gives his thoughts on why it failed.

The US Coast Guard has just begun its public inquiry into the Titan Submersible accident, and in the process has released a number of documents, including, critical footage from a remotely operated vehicle showing the wreckages on the ocean floor. The spaceman looks at the available material and gives his own thoughts on why the sub failed.

Key takeaways from the video:

• ROV footage was released showing the wreck. Apparently it's only the pressurized section that caved in as the footage shows the unpressurized tail-end containing electronics to be mostly in one piece

• Full communications transcript has been released. It does not indicate that either crew was in any way aware of the vessel failing

• Despite what many people (including on here) said, carbon fiber and titanium have apparently been successfully used for submersible design by US navy, the significant difference being that it was for an ROV

• The footage shows the pressure hull having imploded unequally, instead a lot of material was being pushed into the tail-end. Judging off this, it is likely that the structure failed at head-end, potentially on the interface of the titanium end-ring and the carbon fiber, which lead to buckling further down the line and collapsed the whole structure

• Previously the most circulated idea was that point of failure occurred in the center of the vessel, where it is exposed to peak stress

• There is also footage from OceanGate promotional videos showing the installation of said end-ring, where they glue it in place (which coincidentally is what the US navy did for their ROV as well)

• The failure at that section might have been caused by mismatched moduli of compression of the two materials, causing extra stress between carbon fiber and titanium as they were compressed under pressure. That is however a wild guess by the author of the video with nothing to back it up, and he himself admits that it could've been a variety of other factors involved in cutting costs, like using low-quality carbon fiber

• The prototype for the atmosphere scrubber on board was a sealed plastic box with the absorbent... and a single PC fan blowing over it

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