For Questions That Don't Merit Their Own Thread

[TheSaint]

6 hours ago, K^2 said:

I find these instructions somewhat questionable. "We found no traces of stone fish venom. He must have mistaken something else for it." - "Wait, so what killed him?" - "The bends."

Not this.

5 hours ago, tomf said:

You would have to be spectacularly unlucky to get fatal DCI from the type of diving I am sure the Saint was doing, whereas even a mild reaction to stonefish, which is rarely fatal on its own is going to be extremely hazardous under water. (Source: been bent twice)

Bends can be treated, drowning not so much

This.

One of the fundamental rules in recreational diving, which they stress over and over again in your training, is that if you dive within the limits of the standard recreational dive tables, within your depth and bottom time limits, you can, at any time, swim directly to the surface at full speed and you will not experience fatal decompression sickness. That's how they engineer the tables, so that if amateur divers experience some other sort of emergency (stuck reg, physical injury, OMG I saw a shark, etc) and panic, they don't die when they decide to suddenly swim straight back to the surface. The reality is there's actually a ton of margin built into the tables, you'd have to be diving way outside of them to be at risk. It's a lawyer thing.

I never managed to get bent, even though on my first dives I was Captain Hamfist. My safety stops were more like "safety slowdown while I bobbed to the surface because my depth control was laughable".

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

26 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

on my first dives I was Captain Hamfist

On mine - thank god I had an experienced guide.  Having been an avid snorkeler, I was thrilled to be able to stay down there.  Found a cool cliff and started following it down.  Lots of cool stuff to see.

Felt a slap at my ankle.

(very liquided off eyes of guy who knows what he's doing motioning stupid noob back up to the very far above surface)

...

Probably not too far, actually, but we were on simple air; tourist trip. 

[TheSaint]

2 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

On mine - thank god I had an experienced guide.  Having been an avid snorkeler, I was thrilled to be able to stay down there.  Found a cool cliff and started following it down.  Lots of cool stuff to see.

Felt a slap at my ankle.

(very liquided off eyes of guy who knows what he's doing motioning stupid noob back up to the very far above surface)

...

Probably not too far, actually, but we were on simple air; tourist trip. 

Oh, The Wall, at Cozumel. Tons of people get bent there. Because you swim up to the edge, and it just drops off and it just keeps going down, and everyone is all, "OMG! This is so cool!" And they just keep going down and looking at all the cool fish and coral and the visibility is great they have plenty of light and before they know it they're at 250 feet. There's no visible indicator of depth, no bottom. If you aren't paying attention to your gauges, it gets you.

[DDE]

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35041874/

Does labelling a food as 'light' vs. 'filling' influence intake and sensory-specific satiation?

Spoiler: yes

[TheSaint]

3 minutes ago, DDE said:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35041874/

Does labelling a food as 'light' vs. 'filling' influence intake and sensory-specific satiation?

Spoiler: yes

Brings extra meaning to the old culinary phrase, "You eat with your eyes."

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

Oh, The Wall, at Cozumel. Tons of people get bent there. Because you swim up to the edge, and it just drops off and it just keeps going down, and everyone is all, "OMG! This is so cool!" And they just keep going down and looking at all the cool fish and coral and the visibility is great they have plenty of light and before they know it they're at 250 feet. There's no visible indicator of depth, no bottom. If you aren't paying attention to your gauges, it gets you.

Holy cow is that timely; taking my kids there in a couple of months!  We're really looking forward to snorkeling again at Cozumel. 

My cliff was off Corfu or Mikonos, can't remember which.  What you describe is exactly what I found... and it just keeps drawing you down!

[TheSaint]

5 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Holy cow is that timely; taking my kids there in a couple of months!  We're really looking forward to snorkeling again at Cozumel. 

My cliff was off Corfu or Mikonos, can't remember which.  What you describe is exactly what I found... and it just keeps drawing you down!

Dive Cozumel. Honestly, some of the best diving on the planet. If your kids are old enough just have them take a resort course and do it.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

5 minutes ago, TheSaint said:

Dive Cozumel. Honestly, some of the best diving on the planet. If your kids are old enough just have them take a resort course and do it.

My son is - but my daughter, not yet.  Really, Really want to do what you suggest... but I think we're just snorkeling this trip.

She only discovered that she loved snorkeling last year (before that it was a pain-in-the-tailbone-and-kinda-scary-thing-her-dad-made-her-do)

So - I want to give her something bite-sized and within her comfort zone to sink the hook!

[TheSaint]

1 minute ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

My son is - but my daughter, not yet.  Really, Really want to do what you suggest... but I think we're just snorkeling this trip.

She only discovered that she loved snorkeling last year (before that it was a pain-in-the-tailbone-and-kinda-scary-thing-her-dad-made-her-do)

So - I want to give her something bite-sized and within her comfort zone to sink the hook!

We did snuba with our kids when we were in Grand Cayman back in 2018. Thing 1 and Thing 2 loved it. (The divemaster said to me after, "Your boys...they're like fish.") Thing 3 was not a fan. She spent most of her time on the surface with the reg in her mouth, and she still complained about it. When we bring it up in conversation now, her memories of it are less than positive. But she does say she wants to try it again. Ironically, she's a better swimmer in the pool than Thing 2, I think she just psyched herself out.

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 minute ago, TheSaint said:

I think she just psyched herself out.

("Thing 1"  )

That happened to us in the keys. 

I'd previously had her swim alongside me in the Bahamas and she freaking hated it.  So sending her off the boat in the Keys, she was less than happy with her old dad, remembering the old fear.  Until I told her to just ride my back and look at stuff.  Soon enough she was doing her own thing and having a blast... now she's the one asking to go this trip.

Can't push - can only invite!

[Jacke]

2 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Oh, The Wall, at Cozumel. Tons of people get bent there. Because you swim up to the edge, and it just drops off and it just keeps going down, and everyone is all, "OMG! This is so cool!" And they just keep going down and looking at all the cool fish and coral and the visibility is great they have plenty of light and before they know it they're at 250 feet. There's no visible indicator of depth, no bottom. If you aren't paying attention to your gauges, it gets you.

Oh hell.  I've never dived in the real world, but I had something similar in the original Subnautica.  Sure, it's not realistic diving without mods, but wow, going over a cliff and seeing that depth.  Even with the depth gauge and Subnautica's gameplay control on it, low amounts of oxygen, it's easy to get lost even in the "open".

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

6 minutes ago, Jacke said:

Oh hell.  I've never dived in the real world, but I had something similar in the original Subnautica.  Sure, it's not realistic diving without mods, but wow, going over a cliff and seeing that depth.  Even with the depth gauge and Subnautica's gameplay control on it, low amounts of oxygen, it's easy to get lost even in the "open".

You really should try it; even Resort Diving is... (can't do it justice)...

Amazing?  Serene? 

Both

[tomf]

1 hour ago, TheSaint said:

Dive Cozumel. Honestly, some of the best diving on the planet. If your kids are old enough just have them take a resort course and do it.

If you have a cave diving ticket I would say the best diving in the world is the caves on the mainland opposite.

It's a dangerous myth that you can only get DCI if you have done something wrong, it tends to cause people to deny their symptoms because they don't want to be thought at fault. Both my bends came after dives that had gone perfectly to plan, the first after a 50m dive with ~40 minutes of decompression, the second after a 25 min no stop dive to 20m

[Terwin]

33 minutes ago, tomf said:

If you have a cave diving ticket I would say the best diving in the world is the caves on the mainland opposite.

It's a dangerous myth that you can only get DCI if you have done something wrong, it tends to cause people to deny their symptoms because they don't want to be thought at fault. Both my bends came after dives that had gone perfectly to plan, the first after a 50m dive with ~40 minutes of decompression, the second after a 25 min no stop dive to 20m

He was talking about recreational diving, 50m is a good 34 feet deeper than the recreational diving limit, so if that was 'according to plan', you were not doing recreational diving.

 Also, when I was certified (2014) they were no longer teaching 'no stop' dives, and every dive requires a 3 minute safety-stop at 15 feet.

He also specified 'fatal' decompression sickness.  A far as I can tell, it looks like you survived both of your cases, even though neither dive complied with the current recreational diving guidelines.

 

[tomf]

11 minutes ago, Terwin said:

12 minutes ago, Terwin said:

Also, when I was certified (2014) they were no longer teaching 'no stop' dives, and every dive requires a 3 minute safety-stop at 15 feet.

 

Ok I over simplified for to make my point, I meant it was a dive with no mandatory decompression, I do of course do a safety stop on every dive, and as for what counts as recreational diving that depends on what agency you train with.

My point was that a blame culture around DCI leads to dangerous denialism. It can happen on any dive but is extremely unlikely to do long term harm unless you have seriously overstepped.

I have seen multiple cases of people with clear symptoms who have been unwilling to believe them because "everything was ok on the dive". All of them were completely fine after treatment.

[TheSaint]

59 minutes ago, tomf said:

If you have a cave diving ticket I would say the best diving in the world is the caves on the mainland opposite.

Sorry, but I would not cave dive for all the tea in China. I don't do wreck penetrations either. Perfectly fine swimming around them, peeking in the hatches and windows. Not going inside. Nope, nope, nope. Heard way too many stories with unhappy endings. I have a certain threshold of risk that I'm willing to accept for recreation. Open water diving falls within it. Cave and wreck diving falls outside it. YMMV

59 minutes ago, tomf said:

It's a dangerous myth that you can only get DCI if you have done something wrong, it tends to cause people to deny their symptoms because they don't want to be thought at fault. Both my bends came after dives that had gone perfectly to plan, the first after a 50m dive with ~40 minutes of decompression, the second after a 25 min no stop dive to 20m

This is technically true, because the tables are written for people of average physiology. And nobody has average physiology, everyone is different. And they do tell you what the symptoms of decompression sickness are and to look out for them after every dive. However, the reality is that decompression sickness is very rare, even among people who push the envelope of the dive tables. I don't in any way want to dismiss your experience; decompression sickness sucks. But if someone came to me and said, "I'm thinking about taking up diving, but I'm afraid of decompression sickness," I would do everything I could to talk them down off that ledge.

[Gargamel]

12 hours ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Holy cow is that timely; taking my kids there in a couple of months!  We're really looking forward to snorkeling again at Cozumel. 

My cliff was off Corfu or Mikonos, can't remember which.  What you describe is exactly what I found... and it just keeps drawing you down!

Ochos Rios, Jamaica.    About 100ft down, amongst the coral.    Swim out over the edge of the wall, Noped my butt right back into the  reef. 
 

Edit: Looking at some charts, looks like it was a 5k-7k foot cliff.   Probably why I couldn’t see the bottom. 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Gargamel

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

14 minutes ago, Gargamel said:

Ochos Rios, Jamaica.    About 100ft down, amongst the coral.    Swim out over the edge of the wall, Noped my butt right back into the  reef. 

Wow.  I usually feel the pull of the unknown.  

"Just a little bit" I say...

(What's the saying about drunkards and fools?)

[DDE]

Why did the Soviets not return to the 'pumpkin suit' International Orange with Sokol and Stryzh IVA suits?

[kerbiloid]

41 minutes ago, DDE said:

Why did the Soviets not return to the 'pumpkin suit' International Orange with Sokol and Stryzh IVA suits?

Spoiler

 

P.S.
The boeingers think so, too.

Spoiler

 

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Stylin hats. 

[SunlitZelkova]

9 hours ago, DDE said:

Why did the Soviets not return to the 'pumpkin suit' International Orange with Sokol and Stryzh IVA suits?

Only result from an English google search- https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/31982/why-is-the-sokol-suit-white-instead-of-safety-orange

For Sokol- Shuttle suits and Vostok suits were for spacecraft one either was intended to or could potentially eject from. You can’t eject from Soyuz so it just isn’t needed. This is a pretty reasonable theory- after all, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo had white or silver pressure suits and also had no ejection feature (Gemini did technically, but it might not have worked anyway). Same with the modern Dragon.

For Stryzh- Buran was a military asset, so it is possible it was intended to have camouflage in case it was somehow forced down over enemy territory. Or perhaps by that time (mid-80s?) orange dye was just not in the budget compared to widely available bland colors. Another possibility is someone decided to make it beige and simply no one questioned it. There are allegedly some Soviet weapons with odd designations due to a reason like this, although I can’t recall the exact examples.

As to why Sokol M and Sokol MP are orange though, perhaps they are intended to be potentially marketed to private spaceflight companies?

———

Some questions-

1. Could very long range SAMs and AAMs (S-400, AIM-120) be repurposed as sounding rockets?

2. What were some of the non-Mir and non-strike related payloads Buran might have carried? “Just satellites”? Probes like how Galileo was?

3. Code names were used for prototypes of certain weaponry in the USSR. Tanks were referred to as “Object” while aviation design bureaus used the term “izdeliye” (translated as “product”). Did rocket and space design bureaus have any such code names, or were missiles and space launchers so secret that they could just use the real designation?*

*For that matter, I find it interesting that the RVSN just accepted the designation given by the design bureau instead of assigning their own. Object 137 became the T-54 and izdeliye 330 became the MiG-17, but the UR-100 is just the UR-100.

[kerbiloid]

They were BadS everyone, and didn't need orange.

[kerbiloid]

25 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

What were some of the non-Mir and non-strike related payloads Buran might have carried?

Orbital station assembly, large antennas, etc.

https://www-buran-ru.translate.goog/htm/spirit.htm?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=ru#blabla

Scientific lab 4 m in diameter (shorter than Spacelab)

25 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Code names were used for prototypes of certain weaponry in the USSR. Tanks were referred to as “Object” while aviation design bureaus used the term “izdeliye” (translated as “product”). Did rocket and space design bureaus have any such code names, or were missiles and space launchers so secret that they could just use the real designation?*

Probably izdeliye for everything flying. 

Also "of project XX" for anything.

25 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

but the UR-100 is just the UR-100.

Just a colloquial internal name, various for various bureau. Actually named by GRAU code as 8K84, like every other rocket.

Also the codes were radically changed in 70s.

Also the rocket has one code, the complex in whole - another code.

  

25 minutes ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Could very long range SAMs and AAMs (S-400, AIM-120) be repurposed as sounding rockets?

They are atmospheric, and their payload is not big.

Edited February 10, 2022 by kerbiloid

[DDE]

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

Could very long range SAMs and AAMs (S-400, AIM-120) be repurposed as sounding rockets?

S-200s were used in hypersonic ramjet tests. They probably lack the kick of a space-capable sounding rocket, though.

1 hour ago, SunlitZelkova said:

2. What were some of the non-Mir and non-strike related payloads Buran might have carried? “Just satellites”? Probes like how Galileo was?

Soviet outer planet probes like Tsiolkovsky (Jupiter) and the less imaginatively-named Saturn were in really, really early conceptual stages.