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A sub is lost with five souls on board
bpost
Member Posts: 32,669 ✭✭✭✭
Two and a half miles down, it does not sound good for the crew.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-submarine-missing-rescue-mission-underway-newfoundland-canada/
Comments
It costs, or, it used to cost, $250 Grand for a tourist to see Titanic on this submarine.
I wouldn't have gone down there if they offered to pay me me $250 Grand. Too many things to go wrong at 13,000 feet. Think of the incredible pressure.
How in the world do you send a rescue vessel to that depth?
I hope they were carrying a "boatload" of life insurance. No way I'd go there just to see what I could see for free on the interweb!
It is said to automatically surface if there's a malfunction. If it has not come up yet, it never will.
If you drop $250K for a ride on a sub-orbital rocket, at least you get a 100% guarantee that it will come back down.
That's the kind of thing that happens when you don't let the dead rest in peace. I say leave them be, not any better than grave robbers IMPO.
"Never do wrong to make a friend----or to keep one".....Robert E. Lee
Better to go out on an adventure than die of old age with that money in the bank.
The passengers likely never even had a moment to know they were in trouble.
I was going to hit the thumbs up button on your posting, but considering the subject matter, doing so seemed inappropriate.
The only better alternative to your scenario is to die broke at an old age after surviving many adventures. Bob
"David Pogue, a CBS reporter who travelled in the Titan submersible last year, told the BBC about the issues that both the submersible crew and the land crew are likely to be experiencing, saying that there is currently "no way" to communicate with the vessel as neither GPS nor radio "work under water".
"When the support ship is directly over the sub, they can send short text messages back and forth. Clearly those are no longer getting a response," Mr Pogue said.
He added that because the passengers are sealed inside the vessel by bolts applied from the outside, "there's no way to escape, even if you rise to the surface by yourself. You cannot get out of the sub without a crew on the outside letting you out."
Wow. That would be terrifying. Assuming, of course, that it wasn't a catastrophic implosion event.
Seems like they'd want some type of tether on the darn thing so it could be raised up in a situation like this.
Wouldn't you think?
No. If you do think, you'd realize that any tether strong enough to lift that thing from 12,000 feet down would weigh as much as the sub itself. Not to mention making the sub virtually unable to maneuver due to drag.
The report says that if the support vessel is directly above, they could send short text messages back and forth. Is this by Iphone? That's weird.
If they were attached by cable, not only could the cable retrieve the sub, but it also would provide secure communication.
It'd be a sonar "phone" A lot like just banging on the hull and the other guy listening.
I just saw some photos and read a description of how that thing is made. Two words: death trap.
The only two possibilities at this point are that it imploded or it got tangled in the Titanic wreckage. Either way, they're dead.
I don't think they got very far, I read the descent takes 8 hours and they lost contact in less than 2 hours. Well, it sounds like they have about 70hrs left, assuming the sub didn't outright implode, to think about how stupid it was to go on a for profit risky submarine trip to see in person what I can go on youtube and see for free(not that I even care to).
The unmanned subs that they sent down initially were tethered and it seemed to work. I realize that this sub is much, much heavier but the sub could reach neutral buoyancy making it weightless and thus could probably be brought to the surface with an extremely small cable.
Not an engineer so subject to being completely wrong just mho.
And, I do think ...........
You clearly do, good sir. I would not assume neutral buoyancy, however. If a sub can't surface on its own, it is because it is not buoyant. In other words, flooded.
This thing is made of two half domes of titanium with a carbon epoxy center section. That alone is eyebrow-raising. But the fact that there's no escape hatch and one of the ends has to be bolted on for access and egress is criminal. A minor electrical fire inside would be very quickly fatal. Even a minor leak would get exponentially worse as depth increased.
As I said: death trap.
im torn between wishes for survival and a quick death. The worst would be to sit on the bottom and just run out of air. I suspect we will never know
I also believe that the vessel ruptured, I know that it has been down deep before but schmitt happens and it seems more plausible knowing that the construction was of mixed materials. I hope that there is some type of recovery so they can at least determine what failed (besides logic and good sense).
Paying a quarter of a million bucks to kill yourself two miles deep in pitch blackness is just stupid, now flying to the ISS, that's a different story ................. I'd go tomorrow.
I also wonder why they couldn't pick the sub up on sonar (unless the sub moved out of the search area somehow).
What a horrible, lonely, isolated way to go.
Davey Jones' locker.
I'm not sure that the mother ship has the kind of sonar used to detect and localize things.
Both the US and Canadian Coast Guards have dropped sonobuoys to listen for anything. So far, nada. That tells me there's no life aboard. If they were alive, they'd be banging on the metal hull parts.
Also nothing found on the surface by at least two C-130s using radar and visual. Nor by a P-8 sub hunter aircraft.
The unconfirmed story is that they were two hours into the eight-hour descent when contact was lost with the surface ship. I conclude that if no distress was sent, whatever happened was sudden. I'd vote for fire or implosion.
They are done, 99% yes.
I have seen shows talking about and read stories of miners trapped and run out of air
leaving notes to the family saying there is only a coupe of us still alive and not for long we are running out of air please take care of the kids and I love you
At least if ithe sub imploded it spared them the suffering of what the miners or the astronauts traped in the rocket when it burned up early on
I have read also about pearl harbor and salors scribbling notes or pounding on the hull knowing they were lost
And none of the above paid 250k to chance dieing
The chances of that in this instance are very slim. They were descending when communications were suddenly interrupted. Not even an "Oh Crap" message.
News briefly reported that NASA helped in the design.
That usually means that the low bidder got the contract.
I've seen the results of low bidders being awarded contracts.
(I stayed at a safe distance away)
It imploded and they are dead. Otherwise.............like if they were entangled and could not surface.......there would have been some contact.
Now starts the waste of millions to recover a crushed can.
Sorry guys........just being realistic.
screw around, find out. ..sorry. They could just be tangled and suffocating
The round trip was to have been 8 hours. Maybe 3 hours down, 3 hours up and 2 hours at the Titanic. Maybe 4 hours up, and 1 hour at the Titanic. They were well over half way down when something happened at 1 hour 45 minutes. Maybe 8,000 feet.
It was explained this morning on tv that the upper layer ocean there is the Gulf Stream. Strong current going NE.
But the lower part of the ocean is the "return current" and it goes south. If the craft has somewhat neutral buoyancy, and is not on the bottom, it may be closer to the surface, and has travelled many miles to the NE. Or, if it is deeper, it has travelled a long way south. Coast Guard is looking over a huge area of open ocean.
Also this morning they said that a large number of "volunteers" from Canada and US are in their boats and headed to the open ocean, civilians hoping to find the sub floating.
Contact was lost 1:45 into the dive, long before it could have become entangled in anything. There are two possibilities: an electrical fire or implosion. Both would be fatal.
As of a few hours ago, there have been no surface sightings visual or radar, and no sounds heard by dropped sonobuoys.
Just read a story about a lawsuit with the company from an employee allegedly fired because he wouldn’t certify the vessel to the depth they wanted. Said the “viewing dome” was only rated for 1300 meters, but the tour company was insisting on taking it to 4000 meters.
Now, I ain’t an engineer…. but that sounds like a bad idea.
As I see it these deep water submersible are more or less just experimental vehicles. That’s the whole idea of experimental, to find the flaws. They choice to go into the danger zone in an experimental craft and it failed.
Imploding is not necessary. A pin hole leak at depth would fill and pressurize it before anything could be done.
Brad Steele
Wow! Here it is, start on page 9.
No engineer here also, but a 'viewing dome' seems like a bad idea at those pressures. I remember seeing a documentary about the Trieste, and diving the Mariana Trench. It had one portal of cone shaped plexiglass around 6 inches thick. Naturally, the smaller id of the cone towards the viewer so that the pressure pushes the cone towards the hull, in fact sealing it tighter.
Wow is right. Pretty damning. Why the heck do you hire an expert and then not listen to him?
I read this morning that they hear banging noises. I hope it’s not too late. I wonder if they still have the trained dolphins used for submarine rescue?. I saw a show on them once and they could locate and put a cable on it in no time.
Last I read they can not verifie or locate the noise the planes sonar picked up using the underwater equipment on site searching
Sounds like back to square one
At least theee billionaires two are father and son and another. reported to be part of the five on board
Even with kind of money I cannot image paying 250k for the claim and thrill? Of going to see it in person
just me the odds of dieing outweigh a possibe glimpse and that was a maybe
But every one has the right to choose how to spend their money
As for taxpayer part in recovery cost as some have brought up
I would wager its peanuts to the cost of the hundreds maybe thousands of shooting and violet crime in the big cities the taxpayers as in the wotking class fund and Pay out evey month
for hospital emergency services and police time spent not counting court cost and jail time and LEO life's
not to forget and all the illegals and welfare we have to support
Even if the sounds they are hearing are from the sub, they still have to actually find it and then come up with a way to affect a rescue. Except that there is only enough air for another day. Zero time is 8 am ET Thursday.
Dolphins can’t dive to such depths. Not even 1/10th what the sub was supposed to be going to.
I was hoping he was kidding about dolphins.
but imagine what 13,000 feet of cable alone would weigh.