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TRITON campaign canceled. Refunds promised. WE DID IT? (self.shittykickstarters)

exclamationmarek が 投稿

Did they actually do it ?! The update text (screenshot) was full of shit, including how their technology suddenly is based on "liquid oxygen" (THEY put in in quotes, as if it was some magic), and that Triton requires cartridges that need to be changed (presumably, after every dive) which contradicts their previous claims.

HOWEVER, with that stated, they decided to start a new campaign and stop the current one, promising to issue refunds to everybody.

Refunds? They canceled? I think we did it! We saved the world of one scam!!

Now we have a new one to stop! The new Triton!

EDIT: we did not. The new campaign is practically identical and is currently scamming the very same people out of their money, AGAIN, but now with a BS disclaimer about liquid oxygen.

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[–]exclamationmarek[S] 133 ポイント134 ポイント  (58子コメント)

MATH TIME:

Of course AGAIN triton is scientifically IMPOSSIBLE.

Liquid oxygen has an expansion ratio of 1:861. That means that 1 cubic centimetre of liquid oxygen, when decompressed to normal atmospheric conditions, will have a volume of 861 cubic centimetres. Without going into the oxygen requirements of a human, we can try to compare that to the "compression performance" of standard diving tanks.

  • Triton 'liquid oxygen': 1:861
  • Standard compressed air tank: 1:200 to 1:240

That means that AT BEST the "Triton" has the equivalent capacity of a tank just FOUR TIMES BIGGER than it.

So it will have more or less the breathable-air-capacity of the SPARE AIR 170, which is rated for no more than 30 breaths

And all this is even BEFORE we think about the problems with dealing with liquid gas. Problems resulting from the cryogenic temperatures that the process of bringing such liquid oxygen to the gaseous state, like extreme material fatigue, which does not play nicely with miniaturisation.

Therefore, AGAIN, their claim to have a working prototype is a lie, and their new campaign will be a deliberate scam.

[–]tomcmustang 94 ポイント95 ポイント  (13子コメント)

In fairness to Triton they are not using liquid oxygen they are using "liquid oxygen" which are really nothing alike at all.

[–]UpsetChemist 16 ポイント17 ポイント  (12子コメント)

I wonder if they are actually trying to use a chemical which releases oxygen. For instance, when exposed to a platinum catalyst hydrogen peroxide will decompose into hydrogen and oxygen. That would explain their quotes around "liquid oxygen". I don't really think this would work and could potentially be dangerous but it is a possibility. These compounds tend to be highly reactive.

[–]dWintermut3 53 ポイント54 ポイント  (8子コメント)

The problem is H2O2 doesn't just turn into water and oxygen, the reaction is crazy exothermic: it turns into oxygen and superheated steam. There's a reason they used that reaction to power torpedoes.

I have a personal policy of not putting torpedo propellants in my mouth, and aside from having to pass on a very lovely Otto fuel II and cranberry cocktail the other day, it's never steered me wrong.

[–]gurenkagurenda 12 ポイント13 ポイント  (1子コメント)

So just do a combination of peroxide decomposition and LOx depressurization, and the heat problems will cancel each other out!

[–]TheHumanParacite 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

He he, I like the way this guy thinks.

[–]skepticalDragon 17 ポイント18 ポイント  (2子コメント)

So what you're saying is you could have a torpedo boat and ventilator in one?

[–][deleted] 16 ポイント17 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Triton 2 - now with propulsion!

[–]dWintermut3 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Only with a swim cap stuffed with Torpex, or if you don't want to pay for an explosive designed for underwater use, you could use regular hexogen.

[–]Russ_Dill 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_submarine_Kursk_(K-141)

[–]TTT12367 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

Acctually you have, in the US torpedos were originally fueled with ethanol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torpedo_juice

[–]dWintermut3 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I meant German and Russian, but that is true! Cognizent of the dangers I don't think the US ever used h2o2 catalyst propulsion.

[–]CANTgetAbuttPREGNANT 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

You forget that their entire team is a business guy, a marketing guy, and a graphic designer with a phd in google. They're not trying to do anything other than scam people from their money. The scientific minds of Reddit have put more science behind anything the Triton team has tried to do.

[–]Toddsci 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm in no way inclined to give them any benefit of the doubt.

[–]MercurysMessage 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think they are just using mini air tanks. Super shady group of people for lying about what's going on twice.

[–]horseradishfistfight 15 ポイント16 ポイント  (25子コメント)

So I was just sitting here, typing you a reply saying that I believe you but I don't know how they faked their latest video that appears to show a guy sitting underwater for 12 minutes straight. Then I realized; he's SITTING underwater for 12 minutes. Unlike their other videos where they're swimming around, this guy is just sitting there for 12 minutes. If they're faking it, I still don't know how but I feel that little detail is telling.

Edit, their latest video from the same youtube acct. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrT_KtdGFa8

[–]nechronius 30 ポイント31 ポイント  (3子コメント)

Piece of cake, actually. Digitally erase hoses. Notice how low res the video is? Notice how plain and empty the background is? How little actual movement of the actor with a static camera? Much easier to digitally manipulate video when there's so little detail in the background.

[–]horseradishfistfight 22 ポイント23 ポイント  (0子コメント)

I mean, they could even do it by stringing the hose around the right side of his face, obscured by the "gill", down his back, under his butt and off screen. But again, the no movement is such a stark difference from their other videos.

EDIT: and I just remembered this dude is a design major, of course he's going to know how to remove a pipe from a video.

[–]Toddsci 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

They might actually be dumb enough to try that, they'll be caught for sure though.

[–]thephoenics 20 ポイント21 ポイント  (1子コメント)

You said it - the guy is just sitting there and they cut to the end without him getting up from that location. Never show what's behind the guy - it's a cheap magic trick, the guy could easily hide an oxygen tank behind him for all you care :).

[–]horseradishfistfight 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Very true. Man, these guys are sheisty.

[–]exclamationmarek[S] 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (11子コメント)

my guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_z7mQjdIsA&ab_channel=MarkFry

[–]Russ_Dill 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (8子コメント)

But why bother when you can just tape it to the side of his face? The fact that he doesn't move his head, pretty much at all, especially not turning it, is quite telling.

[–]exclamationmarek[S] 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

Oh, you mean a hose taped to his righthand side of the face and entering the 'triton' from behind? Yes, this makes sense. And then the hose can go behind him, and towards the camera along the bottom of the pool, completely out of sight. Good point!

[–][削除されました]  (6子コメント)

[deleted]

    [–]Russ_Dill 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

    I think that's just a compression artifact.

    [–]GuyMontagz 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    I'd watch the clip from 1:06 to 1:09, it's pretty clear that a hose appears and is quickly edited out.

    [–]BallC420 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Here is the relevant clip. Looks like they missed a bit of the editing from when he moved his arm over where the tube was.

    https://gfycat.com/SnivelingGentleDutchshepherddog

    [–]GuyMontagz 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    That's what I saw as well until some said that it's probably just a compression artifact because it only shows up on the 480p and nothing higher.

    [–]Russ_Dill 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Yes, it is very evident at 480p, but vanishes if you watch it at 1080p60

    [–]GuyMontagz 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Just did the same thing. I'm a dumbass.

    [–]horseradishfistfight 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I feel like I learned something today. Which is sad because I went to film school.

    [–]THedman07 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Why would they take so long to release this video? If the video was undoctored, it would take like an hour to make this and upload it.

    [–]harmenator 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    They said they needed to rent the pool.

    [–]dWintermut3 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (3子コメント)

    Even without digital trickery, which as others have mentioned would be trivial, there are plastics with a diffraction index close to that of water.

    Narrow plastic tube that won't bend light much, against a static plain background, with creative positioning, low rez video, a friend with good lung capacity and highly physically fit.... Not impossible.

    Another way would be a pepper's ghost illusion to hide the tubes behind a reflection of the floor of the pool, or at least make it less visible.

    [–]YRYGAV 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Yes, you can make a piece of solid plastic 'invisible' underwater.

    But if he's actually using it to breathe, it has to have air inside it, not just solid plastic. And air is not the same diffraction index as water, so you would see the air messing up the diffraction.

    Anyways, the video is ripe for doctoring, he could just have the tube connected on the right of his face, obscured by the triton. Or they could just install after effects and digitally erase it, the plain homogeneous smog behind him is criminally easy to erase anything on.

    [–]dWintermut3 9 ポイント10 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    It gets worse, as always. LOX is a cryogenic liquid, and reacts violently with anything organic...

    Even just compressed gas at that pressure expanding would freeze your lungs solid through adibiatic cooling, LOX would either blow you up or freeze you solid...

    [–]gurenkagurenda 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (5子コメント)

    The cryogenic temperatures thing is definitely a good point. It is possible warming the air is part of the purpose of the battery, but I have serious doubts as to that being feasible. And at this point I feel that the creators of the project have zero credibility, so it is extremely likely that this is still a scam.

    But I'm pretty sure your volume estimates are totally off. I'm not sure where it goes wrong, but I went at it more directly.

    According to wikipedia, LOx has a density of 1.141 g/cm3. This estimate for breathing rate in mg seems reasonable although I think when you take rebreathing into account, it's probably a lower bound. Let's be conservative and double it, saying you need 30 breaths per minute.

    And we're going with their claim of 45 minutes. That gives us:

    (32mg * 45 minutes * 30/minute) / (1.141g/cm3 )

    Which is 37.9mL, or as WolframAlpha helpfully informs us, 60% of the volume of an iPhone 4.

    Edit: After researching some more, it seems that the critical temperature of oxygen is about -118℃, above which you can solidify it through pressure, but not liquify it. Solidifying it requires tens of GPa of pressure, so I'm going to go with "no".

    [–]dWintermut3 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (3子コメント)

    A battery wouldn't do it. It's a simple matter of thermodynamics.

    Let's pretend they have found a way to compress air infinitely, to an einstein-bose condensate or something. So they can store an arbitrary amount of air in that thing, we can assume it to be infinite.

    The average tidal volume of an adult male is 500ml, so you are expanding the gas 500 times over, if you expand one ml to 500ml.

    Breaking out the ideal gas law: pressure * volume = a constant * moles of gas * temperature.

    So if volume goes up 500 times over and all else stays the same, the temperature will be divided by 500. Using 80* F water (300* K, a nice round number, the temperature would drop to .6 Kelvin... The specific heat of Oxygen, in that range, conveniently, rounds to 1, meaning we need about 500 joules of energy... Happy rounding there!

    Unless they're running this thing off a nuclear fission reaction, there's no way they're generating that.

    And that passes the sanity check because we said up front you'd need power output like a nuclear sub to do this practically.

    [–]gurenkagurenda 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Yeah, no matter how you slice it, this isn't going to work.

    But I think the most damning thing is that liquid oxygen simply doesn't exist at the temperatures they're talking about. If you were to fill a little 38 mL tank that could fit in that device with LOx, and then warm it to room temperature, I'm am 99% sure it would rupture the vessel. The pressure would just be immense.

    Well, that and the fact that nobody involved with the project has anything like the experience to bring about even one of the breakthroughs necessary to make this happen.

    [–]Lampwick 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    If you were to fill a little 38 mL tank that could fit in that device with LOx, and then warm it to room temperature, I'm am 99% sure it would rupture the vessel. The pressure would just be immense.

    The Texas A&M liquid nitrogen dewar incident is a good example of what happens when you do that...

    [–]gurenkagurenda 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Yeah... so what they're claiming to have built is basically a bomb attached to your face. Not that it would survive long enough to actually get onto your face.

    Who knows though, maybe they've developed some amazing super-material that can compactly contain that pressure. I'm sure a designer, a marketer, and an "entrepreneur" are totally up to that engineering challenge.

    [–]exclamationmarek[S] 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Your math is correct. I just had different assumptions.

    1) I assumed no re-breathing

    That already changes the result dramatically. a 5% consumption becomes 100% consumption. While technically we should be giving them the benefit of the doubt, and we should not be shouting "scientifically impossible!" before exploring all options, I think assuming an open-loop (no rebreathing) scenario is fair since (a) their new video clearly shows a LOT of bubbles exhaled and (b) they never mentioned that the triton recycles air.

    2) I took my estimate for air-need from scuba sources. This accounts for the increased physical activity while diving. I still took the smallest number I could find.

    3) I compare this to an actual pressure tank, and those tend to have pretty thick walls.

    So, we're both right, but I believe I'm more right, since I prove triton to be more wrong? :)

    On a side note, I love how wolfram alpha gives tangible meaning to some units of measurement. 37 mL may be not very informative to a lot of people, but everybody had an iPhone in their hand at some point. Maybe expect hungry kids in sub-saharan Africa. I bet they would be thrilled to hear what 500 backers are doing with $200,000 of their money right now o_O

    [–]blimo 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    The subaqueous gentleman in the video exhales his 30th breath at just under 3:30 into the video's nearly 13 minute running time. The sheer volume of gas he lets out of his mouth in the first couple of minutes seemed egregious enough without watching 11 more minutes.

    But hey, I wanted to believe!

    [–]spiry2s 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    , current TRITON statement is more ridiculous than the original one , it's not possible to store liquid oxygen in room/ambient temperature(as they claim) so i suppose those black gills are just are removablecom oxygen tanks (co2 tanks?)that will be empty in couple minutes while moving i guess you can stretch it to 12 minutes while not moving in water that shallow , you would be far better of with regular small scuba tank that you can fill up almost anywhere with regular air , medical grade oxygen(that you would need to refill those cartridges with ) is hard to come by additionally you can't take compressed containers on air plane (unless it's medical equipment)

    [–]marinuss 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    30 breaths would mean at an average of 2 minutes per breath you could stay underwater for 60 minutes! -___-

    [–]derphurr 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (3子コメント)

    I called it. I knew they had compressed air containers in it.

    [–]exclamationmarek[S] 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    I don't think they do.

    It's just a piece of plastic. Both videos are faked, the first one by the diver holding his breath (very few visible bubbles throughout the clip), the second by an external air supply (diver and camera stationary, so an air hose can be easily position out of view).

    [–]BallC420 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Might be a compression artifact but there definitely looks like a "tube" coming from the left "gill" right after he moves his arm over it.

    https://gfycat.com/SnivelingGentleDutchshepherddog

    [–]GMU_TheHulk -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Not only that, oxygen is only liquid at temperatures below –297°F (–183°C).

    [–]thesprawl2 3 ポイント4 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    That's not quite true; phase is heavily dependent upon atmospheric pressure.

    [–]gryffon5147 82 ポイント83 ポイント  (12子コメント)

    Liquid Oxygen... do they mean the stuff at −218C that can instantly freeze-kill any living organism?

    [–]Spraymon 75 ポイント76 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Did you know that if you remove some letters, add a few and keep an open mindset, "liquid oxygen" is an anagram of "complete bullshit"?

    [–]obscuredread 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I'll invest in that leap of logic!

    [–]Eggmont 18 ポイント19 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Ooh let's inhale that because some cheap valve broke

    [–]DiaboliAdvocatus 13 ポイント14 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Any personal injury lawyer would be tumescent at the idea of average consumers playing with LOX.

    I also love the "we had to commit fraud to hide our super valuable IP", lol.

    [–]Ekaros 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    Also I wonder about storing accerelant in most places. Oxygen makes stuff burn so much more easily, even if it itself isn't flammable...

    [–]DiaboliAdvocatus 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    LOX makes many things spontaneously combust.

    And if it isn't LOX and is instead some magic chemical mix that can break down water it is going to be caustic as fuck.

    [–]DedicatedColdAlpaca 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (3子コメント)

    I think they may be referring to fluorocarbon emulsion, a breathable liquid which is used in NICUs for premature babies who cannot breathe air yet. But that's giving them too much credit.

    [–]dWintermut3 11 ポイント12 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    The problem is PFCs are for dissolving oxygen, they carry more O2 than blood but that's not exactly a high target. If you had cylinders of PFC that size and could diffuse the gas out you'd get a miniscule amount of oxygen.

    An actual LBA would need to keep up high flow, and oxygenate the fluid, and keep it contaminant-free, and warm it so you don't lose body heat, and avoid dehydration via osmosis. And get the CO2 out somehow... All the same problems gas breathing has plus the problem of massive fluid flow to keep up the supply plus exchange membranes.

    Oh and the HUGE problem: trying to breathe a liquid stresses your diaphragm, to the point mice eventually die when liquid breathing is tested. The only practical way is to paralyze the diaphragm, probably with a full body muscle relaxant like a curarine derivative (I don't know what they use these days for intubation, I know they stopped using turbocurarine, maybe pancuronium?) And then mechanically ventilate you.

    Needless to say scuba diving while completely paralyzed isn't much fun, and mechanical respirators (technically a mechanical oxygenator in this case) plus pumps and the rest is way bigger than this thing.

    and the fact we've studied PFC liquid breathing but the farthest we've gotten is misting PFC into damaged alveoli to improve gas exchange. Well, if you don't count suffocating rats in a variety of horrific ways

    [–]DedicatedColdAlpaca 7 ポイント8 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    suffocating rats in a variety of horrific ways

    and like, really, isn't that the best part of medical research

    [–]qupada42 17 ポイント18 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    It really takes the fun out of watching them re-launch their failed Kickstarter campaign on Indiegogo when they started on IGG in the first place.

    [–]blimo 11 ポイント12 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    The new campaign page still has several 'throwbacks' to the original design (dissection images, text and descriptions) that are accompanied by a couple of mentions to the mysteriously priced canisters of liquid O2, the boiling point of which is a balmy -297 degrees F.

    [–]Yreisolgakig 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    Is this April fools?

    [–]exclamationmarek[S] 10 ポイント11 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    It it not. At least I'm not joking, maybe they are.

    [–]sciencedenton 6 ポイント7 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I will say this, Triton is great at making one thing: karma.

    [–]brokenskill 4 ポイント5 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    It's like they decided their scam wasn't successful enough so lets make people buy refill canisters and then continue to milk them for years.

    [–]Enraiha 5 ポイント6 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    I think they realized the jig was sorta up. So they pulled the canisters to make it seem plausible to the severely naive. I mean...in the comments they even claim you can get two 45 minute underwater sessions.

    Hi Ryan, you can use them twice 2 x 45 miutes

    I'm not even sure how that works....does that mean you can actually stay under for 90 minutes then...since the capacity of a canister is 90 minutes?

    [–]amoytubig 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I'm guessing you wouldn't be able to do 90 minutes continuously, due to the limitations of their "modified" battery.

    [–]ekaceerf 2 ポイント3 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    April Fools?

    [–]korak-b 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    We did it!

    [–]SnapshillBot 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Snapshots:

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    [–]anclag 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    At this stage my only hope is that they're actually trolling/attempting to educate people about bullshit things like this, so they'll just cancel this one and refund before the deadline as well to make a point...

    But they probably won't.

    [–]tylercoder 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    I remember some japanese made rebreather thing from the 90s that used small pure oxygen cartridges and a long tube with CO2 scrubbers/filters on it so it basically replenished the oxygen in the air while removing the CO2, but it was way bigger than this piece of crap and its only advantage compared to scuba gear was a much lower weight and cost, though I don't think it worked too well because I never saw anyone using it IRL.

    [–]MercurysMessage -2 ポイント-1 ポイント  (2子コメント)

    /u/videogameattorney what are your thoughts on this?

    [–]FuckKarmaAndFuckYou 0 ポイント1 ポイント  (1子コメント)

    hahahahaha

    [–]MercurysMessage 1 ポイント2 ポイント  (0子コメント)

    What's up?