Missing Titanic tourist sub

[Ryaja]

34 minutes ago, tater said:

First, USCG report "debris field," so implosion.

Knowing they would be suffocated by now that is probably the best way to go.

[lajoswinkler]

14 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Or ex. But will never know.

There is nothing in such situation that could cause an explosion. Pressures of the environment are just too high.

I just hope the vessel got crushed in a fragment of a second at some great depth. Situation where vessel is sinking uncontrollably and slowly getting crushed would be so horrible.

Considering a debris field has been found ("tail" and base), it most likely occured suddenly, otherwise there would be very little reason for the submarine to produce a debris field. I'm pretty confident pressure vessel will be found nearby, looking very flat.

[Kerbart]

5 minutes ago, Ryaja said:

Knowing they would be suffocated by now that is probably the best way to go.

Suffocation is not a bad way to go. You just get tired, go to sleep and never wake up.

Our bodies don't get stressed out over a lack of O₂. They get stressed out over elevated CO₂ levels in the blood. Keep that low, and a dropping lack of oxygen in your blood just makes you pass out. That's why carbon monoxide is so dangerous; you won't feel a thing. I understand they had enough CO₂ scrubbers on board.

If you mean the psychological stress about impending death, yeah probably.

[magnemoe]

1 minute ago, lajoswinkler said:

There is nothing in such situation that could cause an explosion. Pressures of the environment are just too high.

I just hope the vessel got crushed in a fragment of a second at some great depth. Situation where vessel is sinking uncontrollably and slowly getting crushed would be so horrible.

Considering a debris field has been found ("tail" and base), it most likely occured suddenly, otherwise there would be very little reason for the submarine to produce a debris field. I'm pretty confident pressure vessel will be found nearby, looking very flat.

Military submarines can get into the later problem not something as small as this at the depth there they lost contact. Except if you have an small leak who would be bad but guess the huge front window start moving back at supersonic velocity. 

Seen some critic that they did not want military submariners on the project, Now it makes some sense as military submarines are much larger has long range but can not dive a faction of that required. 
And doing stuff like dropping ballast to level out and raising might be safer at these depths. 
But they have an safety culture who IT people can not understand as IT people don't all dies then an system flops. 

[Kerbart]

36 minutes ago, lajoswinkler said:

There is nothing in such situation that could cause an explosion. Pressures of the environment are just too high.

I just hope the vessel got crushed in a fragment of a second at some great depth. Situation where vessel is sinking uncontrollably and slowly getting crushed would be so horrible.

Considering a debris field has been found ("tail" and base), it most likely occured suddenly, otherwise there would be very little reason for the submarine to produce a debris field. I'm pretty confident pressure vessel will be found nearby, looking very flat.

Looking at videos of railroad tank cars imploding, one second everything is fine, then next thing the whole thing looks like a crumpled beer can. And that's only less than 1 atmospheric pressure. It seems to me that any decompression would be a very violent and sudden event, and with large parts of the hull (from what I understand) being carbon fiber, it wouldn't fold like metal but shatter. Which in turn would explain a debris field (assuming the debris field is indeed the missing submersible). The bigger parts would be outside tubing and parts.

[Ryaja]

37 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Suffocation is not a bad way to go. You just get tired, go to sleep and never wake up.

Our bodies don't get stressed out over a lack of O₂. They get stressed out over elevated CO₂ levels in the blood. Keep that low, and a dropping lack of oxygen in your blood just makes you pass out. That's why carbon monoxide is so dangerous; you won't feel a thing. I understand they had enough CO₂ scrubbers on board.

If you mean the psychological stress about impending death, yeah probably.

Ya, but dying in a dark room slowly is worse than imploding quickly and mostly painlessly.

[Geonovast]

Confirmed, catastrophic implosion. https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/news/2023/06/19/search-is-underway-for-missing-submersible-that-takes-people-to-see-titanic

Quote

Officials said that several major pieces of debris were discovered, including the vessel's nose cone. Mauger also said the debris discovered was "consistent with a catastrophic implosion of the vessel."

 

[Nuke]

james cameron was just talking about it on the news. i missed half of it. 

2 hours ago, lajoswinkler said:

There is nothing in such situation that could cause an explosion. Pressures of the environment are just too high.

I just hope the vessel got crushed in a fragment of a second at some great depth. Situation where vessel is sinking uncontrollably and slowly getting crushed would be so horrible.

Considering a debris field has been found ("tail" and base), it most likely occured suddenly, otherwise there would be very little reason for the submarine to produce a debris field. I'm pretty confident pressure vessel will be found nearby, looking very flat.

carbon fiber works up to a point and then fails catastrophically. with the number of rotor blades ive destroyed trying to fly rc helis, i know. 

Edited June 22, 2023 by Nuke

[Gargamel]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Requiring insurance for such cases seems completely reasonable

Again, who does the requiring?     The international sea police?  Country of flag?   Ok I’ll just switch registry’s to a different country that didn’t sign that international treaty, cause they knew they would get a huge boost to their coffers via registration fees if they didn’t sign.   
 

All these companies that put to sea like this have insurance.     The insurance company is the one responsible for making sure there’s enough coverage available, and that the proper risk assessment has been done.    And then the insurance companies for the individuals going should do their research.   If they don’t, they’ll lose money and won’t be in business very long.  
 

Emergency Response Management is not something that should make a profit, or even attempt to break even.    Ever.    You go do the job, you send a bill, if it gets paid, it gets paid, if not, you move on to the next operation.     Source: That was my degree of study.  
 

It’s a financially losing business, and will always require outside funding to maintain.  
 

2 hours ago, tater said:

This was NEVER an "emergency response" unless the thing was sitting on the surface

This is absolutely not yours, mine, or anybody else’s call to make.    This is exactly the attitude we don’t want in the emergency services.    One thing I always taught my students was that it might not seem like a real emergency to them, but somebody sure thinks it is, so we need to treat it as such.   You put forth your best response until proven otherwise.     Not the other way around.   
 

 

 

 

[tater]

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

Again, who does the requiring?     The international sea police?  Country of flag?   Ok I’ll just switch registry’s to a different country that didn’t sign that international treaty, cause they knew they would get a huge boost to their coffers via registration fees if they didn’t sign.   

Any navy that feels like it.

Something like:

"We will of course perform any and all surface search operations to aid and save human life on the high seas. We will not, however risk our men and treasure searching deep underwater outside of our territorial waters without a guarantee that costs incurred will be paid for."

I simply see no reason for a US taxpayer to be on the hook for something that happened outside the US that never had a chance at any rescue. (unless it has training value)

 

1 hour ago, Gargamel said:

This is absolutely not yours, mine, or anybody else’s call to make.    This is exactly the attitude we don’t want in the emergency services.    One thing I always taught my students was that it might not seem like a real emergency to them, but somebody sure thinks it is, so we need to treat it as such.   You put forth your best response until proven otherwise.     Not the other way around.   

It's a simple math problem. Imagine that there is in fact a deep sea rescue ship, built to pull a navy bathysphere off the deepest part of the Pacific, so way, way overbuilt for the Titanic wreck site. Now, imagine a similar incident at Titanic, but they know exactly what happened, and how the vehicle is trapped, and the ONLY asset that can save them is the USN vehicle. Awesome, they are saved! Except it's at Pearl harbor. So the crew has 5 days (slop it up to a week!), and the only asset on Earth that can save them is... 50 days away? 40?

Doing anything subsurface in that situation is definitionally a complete waste of time.

In the OceanGate situation, if the only assets available are 2 days out under the most optimistic hopes, and it has 4 days air, then after 2 days into the crisis, there is no hope. That's not debatable.

Edited June 22, 2023 by tater

[Kerbart]

23 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Again, who does the requiring?     The international sea police?  Country of flag?   Ok I’ll just switch registry’s to a different country that didn’t sign that international treaty, cause they knew they would get a huge boost to their coffers via registration fees if they didn’t sign.

For starters, there's the IMO (a UN organization regarding international maritime affairs). It will also make for a very interesting discussion with CBP officials  when entering US waters if there's no proper insurance, and the vessel will likely be chained up without it. You're still starting your trip in a US port, and likely you plan to come back to that port. I doubt the Canadians are going to be any more lenient than the USA in this respect. I'm not an expert on maritime law but I suspect that it's not that easy to do this without insurance.

Now, agreeably, some countries will have much higher standards regarding classification than others, and that'll likely reflect on the insurance premium. There are many things that make an American flagged vessel very expensive but I assume the insurance on it will be lower than for the exact same vessel registered under a flag of convenience.

But I doubt they would have been able to leave port in the US without proper insurance.

5 minutes ago, tater said:

I simply see no reason for a US taxpayer to be on the hook for something that happened outside the US.

Does the Maersk Alabama ring a bell? Or further back in time, the Barbary Wars? (if they weren't the reason we have marines, then it was at least their first deployment if I'm correct).

Of course that's in regards to American vessels, who are technically considered US territory regardless of where they are. Not sure what the status of the Titan was in that respect. But unless there was a reason to skirt regulations, I assume it was US-built, operated and flagged (all those things are very expensive when done on a large scale but it's a different story for such a micro operation).

[SunlitZelkova]

13 hours ago, Nuke said:

taking risks on a long enough timeline will inevitably lead to deaths. it is unavoidable. its a matter of personal responsibility to accept any risks you may chose to take. if you are handed a waiver it usually means that a corporate bean counter figured out the death rate for a given activity, figured out that it is not zero, how much it would cost per instance, determined the cost over time, and decided that it could not afford to engage in that activity if they had to pay the price of such inevitabilities. in other words, a safe world is a boring world. we all have to take measured risks, driving, flying, eating sushi from the convenience store, dating that one freaky girl everyone else is afraid of, survival demands it. some people are willing to take a little more than others. and im sure everyone who got into that sub was aware of what they were doing.

All I’m saying is we shouldn’t treat it as a normality.

It is an avoidable tragedy- despite any inevitability- not a run of the mill event.

EDIT- Also, this isn’t a case where someone “pushed the limits”. The design of the sub was pure negligence. We don’t know if that was the cause, but if it was, this was unacceptable.

You can push the limits and do it safely like SpaceX. This was not SpaceX. It was dudes in a scrap yard building a sub.

EDIT 2- I’ll also say this. I dislike his attitude because it sounds to me like he is trying to justify the death of a 19 year old “for science” or “for engineering”.

7 hours ago, tater said:

We still send an ambulance to scoop up the victim (and maybe people to hose off the street).

That said, the expense of multi-day air/sea ops by the navy and coast guard of 2 countries is a nontrivial expense. As I think I said up the thread, there should be some way that commercial operations compensate the countries for those expenses, at least for operations that are in excess of normal maritime activity.

 

Depends on how it was lost. I still tend to think it never made it to the wreck and imploded, in which case yes. If the pinger failed and they continued the dive anyway, that's a combination of not having a backup (poor design), and bad decision-making. The latter is very related though, as it points to a lack of a robust safety culture in the company.

The will certainly happen at some point for space tourism. Regulation is not the solution, IMO. Not until it is not a touristic stunt, but actual travel. Should they do point to point—then it gets regulated like an airline. A few randos to space? Dangerous and risky. As I pointed out above, a number of the tallest peaks on Earth (the 8000m peaks) have huge mortality rates (deaths per summit). Literally Russian roulette levels of risk and people do it every year. And yeah, the space risk will be live streamed.

The first stranded mission someplace will be very much like the last few days, but we'll have coverage, and no chance of rescue.

True. In fact I only now realize it is possible this loss was akin to Challenger, tech guys say something might be wrong and management pushes through to avoid upsetting customers.

Edited June 22, 2023 by SunlitZelkova

[tater]

Note that my primary goal in requiring insurance for this very specific case—deep sea operations—would be that the insurance companies would set premiums based on the safety the operator could demonstrate. The goal is not to extract X millions, the goal is to incentivize better engineering (cause apparently the incentive of "not getting killed" was not strong enough)

[Scarecrow71]

1 hour ago, tater said:

I simply see no reason for a US taxpayer to be on the hook for something that happened outside the US that never had a chance at any rescue. (unless it has training value)

Unfortunately, taxpayers are on the hook for stuff like this.  The US government - not individuals - determines what to do with their resources.  And in cases like this, the US almost always sends aid of some kind, whether that be manpower, money, technology, or what-have-you.

[Gargamel]

1 hour ago, tater said:

It's a simple math problem.

So, you’re telling me people’s lives are no more than a simple math problem?    That’s….. callous.   
 

 

So should apply the same logic to other rescue situations?    Oh, he was going way to fast, and probably won’t survive that wreck, so we’re just going to let him die.  

[tater]

41 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

So, you’re telling me people’s lives are no more than a simple math problem?    That’s….. callous.   

It's realistic. It's one thing to try and rescue people who can be rescued. It's another to "try" when you know no rescue is in fact possible—or even when such a rescue might harm others I suppose.

We see this on high mountains all the time. Sometimes there are heroic efforts to rescue people, other times it's clearly a case where any attempt by 1 person to rescue another will result in 2 dead people vs 1. In short, there are situations you can put yourself in where self-rescue is the only option, and honestly the only ethical option. I recall reading about a cave dive where someone was killed, and the other diver went back into the cave to recover the body—then he died as well. 1 death is bad. 2 deaths is worse.

Accidents happen, and there is a nonzero chance of a deadly accident during such a huge search. Happily none happened, but any death in trying to "rescue" people who aside from already being dead could never have been rescued had they been alive would have been needless.

 

41 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

So should apply the same logic to other rescue situations?    Oh, he was going way to fast, and probably won’t survive that wreck, so we’re just going to let him die.  

Bad example. People get in horrible wrecks, then get evaced, and the docs fix them up. I'm not talking about "probably won't survive" here.

What assets were on hand that could lift a 10,000kg vehicle off the bottom of the ocean? Actually, worse, since the only plausible way anyone is alive is that said vehicle is entangled in the shipwreck. So what assets were available on the East coast of North America capable of doing that job? Any exist? If so, what is the transit time of those assets to the Titanic wreck site? If >96 hours, then even if dispatched the second they closed the hatch, the occupants are dead. Dispatched after 9-10 hours it took to notify the Coast Guard? Transit time needs to be <83 hours (transit time, plus 2.5 hours to descend to wreck depth assuming it's the same as Titan). All this assumes they have zero search to do, BTW—a fair guess since the only possible way they're alive is tangled on the wreck, and that site is known. So again, realistically, unless the actual assets capable of doing a rescue that deep were en-route for arrival yesterday... zero chance of rescue. Zero.

What do we know for real? The ROV that found Titan found her today. That means today (or yesterday?) was the soonest even an ROV could get there—maybe they started at Titanic and spiraled out, since zero chance of stuck on "not Titanic." Is there a deep sea rescue rig on scene? Cause short of finding the thing yesterday, then pulling it up yesterday—dead. Even having the ROV is pointless without a way to pull the sub up (unless it's powerful enough to push the target, or bend metal it might have been caught on). The USN sent a special crane (as of Wed it was reported they had sent it), but it needed another day to be welded to the deck of a ship (assuming it arrived yesterday). Then of course it's 400 miles to the wreck... call it 20 knots? So almost 2 days from Wed is the first a crane could have been there?

Edited June 22, 2023 by tater

[tater]

 

He said that the DSV community knows that they had dropped their ballast... dunno how they know, but the thought is the sensors told them the hull was failing.

[tater]

Alternately, the ROV team found evidence of ballast having been deployed. Obviously the bags that self-deploy can't be it, or the roll-off ballast... but perhaps there are some firmly attached ballast weights that require electrical deployment, and those were observed missing from the skids at the bottom? This would make more sense, since the DSV community probably knows people on that ship and could then hear their speculation.

[Jacke]

14 hours ago, monophonic said:

Well, you see, 737 MAX had all the documentation, but the hardware did not match the documentation. Boeing paid 2,5 billion USD for that fraud.

From what I know, that wasn't the problem with the 737 MAX.  There were 2 problems as I see it.

First problem was that Boeing (still in the grips of bad leadership fallout from the McDonnell-Douglas takeover in the 1990's) wanted to push out the 737 MAX without the need to re-certify pilots on a new model.  This was crazy.  The increased thrust of the new engines changed the balance between thrust, drag, lift, and weight, as well as the pitch moments needed to balance this across the flight envelop.

Second problem was certain controls should have been updated but weren't.  Like the pitch trim control.  This was powered only when the software was active.  Which then at times pushed the pitch trim control too far nose down.  Turn off the software and the pitch trim had to be adjusted manually.  This combination almost certainly led to the crashes.

With proper training and pitch trim control, there would have been no need for the software to drive the pitch trim control.

Back to this deathtrap submersible.  From Sub Brief's video on it, which he researched from public sources, there was a culture of avoiding proper submarine knowledge experts and proper design, safety equipment, and testing of the craft.  He also said there was apparently no proper true test depth dive.  And that would be dangerous, as carbon fibre doesn't crack but shatters.  I've heard from another source that 5in of carbon fibre wasn't enough, which by calculation should have a test depth about 4000m (which was never tested), about the same depth as the wreck of the Titanic; it should have had 7in.  And Sub Brief compared it to Apollo 1: apparently no problem atmosphere environment control, just dumping more oxygen into a tube without ability from the inside to escape or even vent.

It's another case of rich / billionaire hubris.  They think they can set everything the way they want it.  The Laws of Physics trumped them.

Edited June 23, 2023 by Jacke

[StrandedonEarth]

14 minutes ago, Jacke said:

The Laws of Physics trumped them.

No lawyer that ever lived could talk their way around those laws. 

[Jacke]

2 minutes ago, StrandedonEarth said:

No lawyer that ever lived could talk their way around those laws. 

But considering some of the passengers were billionaires, I'm sure there'll be lawyers driving a civil suit that will start with getting those releases thrown out due to the incompetence and fatal hubris of Stockton Rush.

[tater]

Wall Street Journal reporting that the USN detected the implosion in real time on Sunday.

So all the "rescue" was nonsense from the start if that is in fact true.

[tater]

I'm honestly shocked if this is true.

 

[kerbiloid]

Based on the personalities, I'm not.

[tater]

Yeah, it's true. From AP:

Quote

 A U.S. Navy acoustic system detected an ‘anomaly’ Sunday that was likely the Titan’s fatal implosion, according to a senior military official.

...

That anomaly was “consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the TITAN submersible was operating when communications were lost,” according to a senior Navy official.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive acoustic detection system.

The Navy passed on the information to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.

So they detected it in the right area—but not definitive. Definitive would require that it happen around the right time—but they didn't know the time I guess, cause detectors don't know what time it is. It's really useful to detect approaching boomers, but not have a time stamp. Maybe it came by at 8am this morning, maybe last week, who knows? Amiright?

So the US government knew there was an implosion in the wreck area, and certainly with a time stamp. If that time stamp was after the last ping—yeah, that's definitive, since it was always the most likely failure.

Everything after that was a useless show since they had no way to rescue anyone anyway—but at least they got to torture to the families with fruitless hope (mixed with the horror of thinking their loved ones were living for days in terror)!