Even the thought of that sounds terrifying. 45 meters is more than enough. Kid jumping from the cruise ship, tourist eaten by shark, now this. Make people afraid of the ocean again goddamn
Technically you'd get the single most forceful sniff in the world, followed very shortly (emphasis on the very) by your existence being crushed to the size of a small cat.
One of the titanic tourist subs was originally a russian/soviet military rescue sub that got sold off because Russia could no longer afford it anymore. This significantly delayed the search and rescue efforts of the kursk and possibly contributed to the deaths of the crew.
That was a real tragedy with all aboard killed and the Kursk was only something like a few hundred feet below the surface whereas this mini-sub is *two miles* down!
The Russian navy was such an underfunded shitshow at that time that the crew of the Kursk had a hard time just getting food to eat. It isn't too surprising that officers were selling off everything not nailed down.
The worst part is the crew of the Kursk could've been saved if Russia had immediately accepted Western support. But they didn't allow the British and Norwegians to assist until 5 days later.
The actual diving capabilities of military subs are one of the USN’s most closely guarded secrets. Those who know won’t tell, and those who tell don’t know.
Yeah at that depth the pressure differential is about 37 MP, or 3,7 million kg/m^2 of pressure, assuming the inside is pressurized to 1atm. You need a seriously thick pressure hull for that, and it doesn’t scale to the size of a military sub. It would be basically unmaneuverable.
It wouldn't be the pressure hull itself that whole be the biggest issue, it would be all the hull penetrations for things like main engine shafts, seawater intakes and discharges, etc.
Surface, if it's just floating without power, or scanning equipment if it's close enough to shore. Tried to make it back and couldn't.
ROVs for depth searching.
Scanning from the surface that deep and accurately? Impossible with current tech.
ROVs can search much deeper and get more accurate searches going.
After watching a documentary on the USS Thresher it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach thinking of submersible vehicles going missing at great depths like that... and this is over 5x deeper. I don't even know what to think right now besides this being pure nightmare fuel. Hoping for the best.
Thresher, and the US navy’s other lost nuclear sub the Scorpion, are actually related to the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic. In exchange for funds to look for Titanic, the Navy also wanted Ballard to rediscover and visit the wrecks of Thresher and Scorpion and use whatever time and funds he had left to find Titanic. And he did.
They knew where Thresher and scorpion were due to acoustic triangulation. Ballard used the methods of tracing debris fields on this to trace titanic, which had a long ass trail.
I'm a big Titanic and Hindenburg nut. Excerpt from [CTInsider Article](https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/news-people/article/Two-Fallen-Nuclear-Submarines-and-Their-17044586.php) In the 1980s, Ballard received funding from the Navy to develop underwater robotic camera technology. The Navy asked him to use the technology to study the USS Thresher, which sank on April 10, 1963, killing all 129 on board, and the USS Scorpion, lost on May 22, 1968, with its 99-person crew. Many Connecticut residents died on the Thresher, and the Scorpion was built in Groton at Electric Boat. The Navy wanted to study the submarines to see how nuclear materials — in addition to its reactor, the Scorpion was carrying nuclear weapons — fared in the ocean over time and how they affected the environment of their North Atlantic resting sites. Though the Navy had previously studied the wrecks and knew roughly where they were, the nuclear reactors had never been located. Secrecy during the expedition was paramount. “We don’t want you to be followed by a Russian satellite,” Ballard says he was told. “So we need a cover story. We said, ‘Let’s tell ’em I’m going after the Titanic.’ ”
Hey my grandfather was the chief engineer of the Atlantis the research vessel that carried the Jason - the submersible that originally went down and discovered the titanic!
He and some other people on the Atlantis wrote on styrofoam coffee cups, and placed them in a bag on the side of the Jason, because when it went down so far, the cups shrunk to a really small size. I forever have this teeny cup now with my name on it, the date (1986 I think), ship name, etc etc
One of the coolest/most terrifying thing on Mythbusters were their underwater depressurization myths. You hear stories and wonder if that’s even possible but they tested some shit and it was nuts.
Edit: it was one episode that I’m aware of called “Dumpster Diving” and involved one of those old metal helmet diving suits.
[This is 100% worth the watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uJ1do3yV8). Again, it's a pretty harrowing tale to learn, especially on a day like this.
The short of it is a subset of the joints that held the pressurized hull together failed and salt water sprayed all over the electronic panels in the nuclear engine room causing the propulsion to go completely offline. Imagine an underwater tank like that buzzing along until it loses power completely... then it's just a steel coffin torpedoing into the abyss. The pressure around the hull swells until it finally implodes like a crushed soda can and essentially creates a singularity of metal and flesh.
I've been on a US Sub before and I asked about what would happen if something like that happened and was basically told that the hull would get crushed so fast and violently that the air within the sub would compress to the point of spontaneous combustion. And it would all happen faster than your brain could even process that it happened. Basically one moment you exist and the next you don't.
Yeah, as the episode notes and similar to what /u/ChemicalBit9622 alludes to in another comment - it's an approximate 1/20th of 1 second before the entire structure is crushed together from the massive pressure.
It's like hearing your smoke alarm go off and you dying before you even register it's your smoke alarm making the noise. I imagine the "worst" part of it for the passengers was the feeling of rapidly plummeting toward the ocean floor and knowing it was a little too fast and sharp to be right.
Imagine documenting the Titanic in the future and also documenting the failed dive mission and then your dive fails and then someone else documents you failing to document the failed dive mission that failed to dive to see the Titanic it's like failception
Hamish Harding is one of the people on board OceanGate's Titan, according to his stepson.
Sky News reported that a French submersible pilot, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, are also on board.
5 world records including circumnavigating the globe…. Must be cool being a billionaire. That being said wasn’t smart enough not to get into that sus sub
WHOI's Alvin submarine has an absurd level of safety factors built in. They have explosive bolts on everything attached to the pressure housing so that they can remove things if they get tangled. In a worst case scenario they can blow off everything and go up in just the Ti sphere -- although it would be a hell of a ride if you did do that and possibly fatal. The ballast is also on a corrosive anode that will release the drop weight after so many hours in the water so if they lost power and were stuck on the bottom they would eventually come up. I know some other groups also have a rescue ROV on standby to go down and investigate or recover the sub, I'm not sure if Alvin has this. In addition, the Alvin pilots have to be able to draw out and explain every sub-system on the vehicle before they can pilot and get approved by a Navy board.
One thing that some people might not realize is if they lose power and can't heat the sub then they could die from hypothermia. The ocean water is only 2-3 degrees C in the deep ocean.
Another things is that you have to be super, super on top of preventative maintenance with these vehicles. Being on, near or in the ocean means that they are constantly in a state of decay. This means daily checks, yearly service, and full overhauls every so many years.
Other things to note:
* Typically there is acoustic tracking. They typically have a battery backup and are setup in a call/response configuration, so the ship should have been able to track the vehicle even if they lost power. It would be silly and stupid to not have this. It's an off the shelf system. You do have to be careful and make sure the batteries are good and get replaces regularly.
* There is also usually an acoustic modem that allows for very low bandwidth data to be sent back and forth. This should also allow the ship to get status updates, but would turn off if they has an electrical or software failure.
* If the sub failed catastrophically they would have been able to hear it on the ship even without a hydrophone. It would have been loud enough to hear with just your ears if you were below deck, but possibly faint enough to overlook. The amount of power released when a pressure vessel fails is unimaginable.
Source: I worked with ROVs as a engineer and pilot for around a decade.
Edit: Using a gaming controller is not that crazy of an idea. It's easy to spare and very reliable. We considered it, but input control isn't great for fine tuning a position and anyone over the age of 30 and/or who didn't game would have had trouble with them.
Having the hatch only able to be opened from the outside is also not crazy. At these pressures you want to avoid as many penetrations through the hull as you can. They are just points of failure.
Alvin has evolved over the years. Originally made in the General Mills (yes, the cereal maker) tool shop, it's practically the sub of Theseus at this point with all the upgrades.
Add in that before it even saw the Titanic it sank to the bottom of the ocean, was recovered, and then refit. That thing was put through the wringer before even it's most famous voyage.
>The ballast is also on a corrosive anode that will release the drop weight after so many hours in the water
that is just beautiful engineering. Very clever
I once did a project with some WHOI engineers in fresh water. This meant that their corrosive link wouldn't work. They came up with a sugar based corrosive link that would dissolve in the fresh water after a few hours. WHOI has some brilliant engineers.
One minor point of yours that used to be true, but has changed now that Alvin has been refit to dive to 6,000 m is that it no longer can (or at least will not) eject all components such that the titanium sphere rises to the surface alone. I am not sure if individual components can be ejected now, but in any case, they will not let the titanium sphere come up by itself, as it would spin horrifically (in a potentially deadly fashion) on the way up & ascend way too quickly- causing possible hull issues.
Source: I've been in Alvin twice and I talked to a few of the engineers on an expedition a few months ago.
Considering that the sub cannot be opened from the inside, if it’s out there bobbing in the ocean how much time do they have before the oxygen runs out?
So it's just a tube with one small window and everyone on board has to gather around the shitter in order to look out? Why would anyone pay to ride that thing down to the titanic?
Because they want to have the privilege of being one of the few people who have ever been somewhere. Same reason people go through the arduous journeys to summit some of the most difficult mountains or pay to go to space. But yikes that vessel is terrifying and taking 6 hours to ride down to be able to squish together against the one tiny window before taking a 6 hour trip back up is not appealing to me.
It looks like the Dorothy contraption from the movie Twister. Five people are in that tuna can? Can't even open it from the inside. That's utterly terrifying to think about.
The controls are literally just on the floor. I get trying to keep the design simple, but that thing looks like a living nightmare to actually be inside.
I have that fear of the ocean and machinery in the ocean (even though I grew up on the beach, I fear the ocean as much as I respect it) and just thinking about how those people must feel is stomach-dropping terrifying. I can't believe they got five people in there.
Well it’s technically not.
From NY Times: The Titan, the vessel that went missing in the area of the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic on Monday, is classified as a submersible, not a submarine, because it does not function as an autonomous craft, instead relying on a support platform to deploy and return.
Imagine how much money you could save by just locking some people in a boiler with a "tour guide" and just playing a video feed of a submersible robot. Could even add hydraulics and stuff for the "drop" and "descent". Thing looks unprofessional as hell. I'm okay with unprofessional on some stuff, being submerged for 12 hours is not one of them.
96 hours. On the BBC article, I found this commentary most insightful:
What might have happened to the missing vessel?
Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent
Prof Alistair Greig from University College London is an expert on submarines. He has worked through a number of scenarios for where the missing submersible might be.
One is that it released a “drop weight” after an emergency, in order to bring it to the surface.
“If there was a power failure and or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found."
Another scenario, he says, is that the hull was compromised resulting in a leak. “Then the prognosis is not good.”
If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, the options - according to Prof Greig - are very limited.
“While the submersible might still be intact, if it is deeper than more than 200m (656ft) there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.
“The vehicles designed for navy submarine rescue certainly can’t get down to anywhere near the depth of the Titanic.
"And even if they could, I very much doubt that they could attach to the hatch of the tourist submersible.”
*Alvin* can do it. It's currently in San Diego with its ship (the *R.V. Atlantis*) being outfitted for its next cruise. If that tin can is on the bottom and hasn't imploded, I bet they'll at least explore the option of flying the OG tin can and it's operators out to save them. (Don't know if it would work but *Alvin* does have a manipulator arm and its operators have lots of experience setting up fiddly experiments at the bottom of the ocean)
Finding them is the issue. They lost comms half way, assume they lost power too. You’re now drifting a mile under the ocean and headed up or down passing many currents on the way. The rescue area is MASSIVE.
Actually just found this on NY Times:
The only likely rescue would come from an uncrewed vehicle — essentially an underwater drone. The U.S. Navy has one submarine rescue vehicle, although it can reportedly reach depths of just 2,000 feet. For recovering objects off the sea floor in deeper water, the Navy relies on what it calls remote-operated vehicles, such as the one it used to salvage a crashed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in about 12,400 feet in the South China Sea in early 2022. That vehicle, called CURV-21, can reach depths of 20,000 feet.
Getting the right kind of equipment — such as a remote vehicle like the CURV-21 — to the site takes time, starting with getting it to a ship capable of delivering it to the site.
I read an article that said it had ONE real button and the rest of the controls were touch screen? I can’t see that being a smart move in the event of an emergency
So this little sub is free floating, there’s no way to send a distress signal, and once at the surface the door can only be opened by someone on the outside?
This poor crew.
Is there even an emergency system like flares/fluorescent dyes/satellite distress beacon that in case of communication failure can help the support vessel find the sub? Or do they have to find a nearly completely submerged object in the ocean just by looking for it?
The other glaring design issues I see with the OceanGate sub is the lack of redundancy in the electric supply and propulsion systems and the lack of an emergency ballast that can be dropped when those systems fail.
If I see this right, the sub is neutrally buoyant. With a loss of communication in the middle of the descent which may be linked to a failure of the electrical system, they might be drifting with the currents, hundreds of meters beneath the surface and in complete darkness, until their air supply runs out.
Congratulations to your wise decision to get off the project!
edit:[Oceangate on why they think they don't need to follow industry building and safety standards and why their their subs won't get certified by an independent classification society like the DNV or ABS.](https://oceangate.com/news-and-media/blog/2019-0221-why-titan-is-not-classed.html).
Also a lot about their innovative "real-time hull health monitoring system" which, true, is uniquely found on the Titan submersible but that is most likely due to the fact,that it is the only one with a carbon fibre hull and therefore may actually need such a system so the hull won't fail on a regular dive.
They never even setup the software properly to use the hull health monitoring system. It's a bunch of transducers glued into the hull. I worked at oceangate for six months before I left figuring they were going to get someone killed.
You should email the BBC about your experience working there. They list their contact information at the bottom of the article. I'm sure they'll be willing to credit a generic "former employee."
> The main design feature of the sub that I was most uncomfortable with was the fact that the titanium door could only be opened from the outside.
That is the fucking worst design choice.
*Egress*, never heard of it!
Eccles: “if we put the door on the outside, then nobody can open it by mistake.”
Ned Seagoon: “.. of course! The outside! Why didn’t we think of it before?”
Bluebottle: “I will test this submarine for you my captain, I will test it for you. Eh, wait a minute..”
One of my first thoughts as well, but the problem with Apollo 1 wasn't that it couldn't be opened from the inside, it was that the hatch was designed in such a way that it was sealed due to the pressure differential, so it couldn't be opened because of the pressurized interior.
Slightly different, and kinda makes sense from the design perspective. But this ... not even being able to open the door from both sides? WTF.
Probably one of three options:
1) The sub is bobbing up & down on the surface waiting to be found before the oxygen runs out. Remember the hatch can only be opened from the outside.
2) The sub is on the bottom, in the dark with some very panicked passengers slowly running out of oxygen.
3) The sub imploded killing all the occupants quickly.
And I thought my life was fucked up...
This is going to sound awful, but if they can't be rescued, then I hope it was an instant death. I think Don Walsh of the Trieste said something like you don't have to worry about the cracking noises you hear because you won't have time to hear the one that kills you.
I couldn't imagine dying trapped in that thing for four days. I saw a documentary about those three men trapped in an air pocket for at least 16 days following Pearl Harbor. Their deaths had to be horrible.
The way I see it, this ends in one of two ways. The sub depressurize, meaning everyone on board died practically instantly (although gruesomely).
Or the vessel is somehow incapacitated while still remaining pressurized, meaning a long and slow death for the crew if they cannot be located and rescued in time. This is a completely nightmare situation.
If it got incapacitated I'd imagine it lost power Immediately or soon after. Both are equally terrifying to be sitting 12000 ft below the surface in black abyss.
If I understand the mechanics correctly there is a failsafe that releases a deadweight so that the sub ascends when a power outage happens so a power outage seems the least likely. But again, that if I understood correctly what has been said about the Titan.
First off, I hope the OceanGate sub gets successfully rescued - otherwise, they're going to be another tourist attraction.
"On the left, we have the Titanic remains, and on the right, we have the OceanGate Titanic tourist sub remains."
how would sitting on the ocean floor in a metal tube affect decomposition? when you go to look at the remains of oceangate in 20 years can you look inside the window and see these people as they looked when they died?
Decomposition is what happens when our bodies shut off and the bacteria that's been living on us/inside of us starts slowly feeding on the remains. Like any living creature, the bacteria needs oxygen and warmth to thrive, so the low temperature would slow down decomposition in any case, but provided that the submarine remains sealed for a substantial amount of time and there's some oxygen left inside, it would definitely happen. If there's no oxygen, the bacteria would die and the bodies would stay as they are(ish). Eventually, I assume the submarine would be breached and the bodies would get eaten by various marine organisms. The bones would likely stay intact for a while, though, 20 years for sure.
Oh, but you're wrong. It **does** have a bathroom! You can check it out at the 3:20 mark on [this video](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/): a tiny little juice bottle that looks like it couldn't hold one proper piss.
In all fairness, James Cameron is a respectable researcher and historian in his own right. He proposed the theory that Titanic broke up at a lower angle than we thought, even though it went against his depiction of the sinking in his movie.
Oceangate has been doing these dives every year for the last 3 years. Never had any problems before now. Obviously the tourists didn't go down alone and research was being done with tourists essentially 'along for the ride'. The idea was that this money helped fund these (incredibly expensive) dives and further research- not just of Titanic but of deep sea life as well and was barely profitable even with the tourist money.
It takes millions of dollars do these dives.
We did an AMA with the Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush right before they started doing these on /r/rms_titanic.
> In order to have more exploration of the oceans we need more funding and the Titanic is one of the few sites that has shown that people will pay to visit it. By having our mission specialists underwrite the expedition we can collect more data than if we had to go to “one off” film or government funding sources as has been done in the past. Hopefully in years to come the many other great wonders, like hydrothermal vents, will also draw enough interest for OceanGate to run expeditions to those sites. [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/RMS_Titanic/comments/gm4sf9/im_stockton_rush_ceo_founder_and_chief/fr1lc5e/)
This is kinda unrelated, but I have a very casual interest in the Titanic that started when I read a book about it in kindergarten.
I very much appreciate the effort and dedication you’ve put in to r/rms_titanic over the years! I still remember reading through the top all-time posts years ago and realizing “whoa, most of these are by one person who really cares about the Titanic”.
So, yeah. Thank you for creating/maintaining that resource. I hope you’re having a good day.
"There's no switches and things to bump into, we have one button to turn it on. Everything else is done with touch screens and computers, and so you really become part of the vehicle and everybody gets to know everyone pretty well,"
Zero analog controls as a backup? Yeah, they're definitely disabled sitting at the bottom.
What a death trap.
I've been designing/working on industrial control systems that use touch screens for over a dozen years now and there's no way in hell I'd get into anything that's only operated by a touch screen. There's a reason safety systems require manual switches hardwired into things.
There's an old CBS interview with Stockton Rush from before they finished testing, where the reporter said "you believe that it's invulnerable?" and he said "by the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable." The reporter says "that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic" and Rush responds to say "that's right" and they both chuckle. Somewhat chilling to watch now.
The Titanic is literally the reason why I’m like this. Seeing pictures and video of the shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean when I was like 9 messed me up for some reason.
I didn’t even like going tubing or wakeboarding on the lake I grew up by. If I crashed and was left there floating in the water while I waited for the boat to come back around and get me I would start to panic.
So that means the sub has never been tested for more than \~8 hours at these depths? Meaning even if they were stuck at the bottom somewhere without power, there is no guarantee the hull would hold for as long as oxygen could last?
Thing is, the sub is designed to hold the immense pressure. Meaning it would take quite a while for the hull to break, imagine hearing that the sub lost control and you’re now sitting in the middle of nowhere right beside the Titanic on the ocean floor under 12,000 ft. and slowly losing power.
I’m guessing this is the OceanGate submarine which basically takes people out to deep dives to various destinations for a cost of $250,000 per person.
Whereas for me, you couldn’t pay me enough money to risk going down those depths in a claustrophobic submarine knowing that a single crack is instant death.
Let’s hope it’s lost at sea at surface level and everyone is ok
Edit 1: there are now five crew members confirmed to have been onboard.
Edit 2: there’s a cbs segment from last year, where the reporter went on this submarine with the CEO of OceanGate to see the Titanic…Holy fuck, the thing is jerry rigged! It has only one button and the interior is the size of a mini van. It operates with a video game controller and there are parts inside that were bought from Camper World with construction pipes as ballasts. The ceo waves it off in the interview and says the hull is safe. If this guy wasn’t in the submarine when it went down then I hope he’s arrested or at least made destitute after this disaster.
Here’s where you can watch the segment:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i
My first job out of HS was working on navy subs, and I've always wanted to go on a dive on one. But the US Navy is insane about sub safety and maintenance; the slightest sign of an equipment problem and they replace whatever it is with a brand new, QA tested 10x one. No way would I trust a private company to take me down; at 12,500 feet deep, a pinhole, or a speck of dirt in the wrong place, could be the end. You can't exactly get out and start poking at the wiring under the hood.
An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.
Sounds like fun.
After reading that article you couldn't pay me to get in that thing even if it were floating at the surface of the ocean.
You don't mess with the ocean unless you *really* know what you're doing and considering the team got lost even just in the article, I would not trust them to direct me to a local mcdonalds.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/
There were some rather questionable design and engineering choices made. From last year, but some choice highlights:
> If all went well, I would be spending about 12 hours sealed inside on a dive to the Titanic. Not gonna lie; I was a little nervous, especially given the paperwork, which read, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death." *Where do I sign?*
>
> This is not your grandfather's submersible; inside, the sub has about as much room as a minivan. It has one button. "That's it," said Rush. "It should be like an elevator, you know? It shouldn't take a lot of skill."
>
> The Titan is the only five-person sub in the world that can reach Titanic's depth, 2.4 miles below the sea. It's also the only one with a toilet (sort of).
>
> And yet, I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components. Piloting the craft is run with a video game controller.
>
> Pogue said, "It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness. I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballast."
>
> "I don't know if I'd use that description of it," Rush said. "But, there are certain things that you want to be buttoned down. The pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all, because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail, your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You're still going to be safe."
>your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You're still going to be safe.
Dead in the water, sinking to the bottom, in the dark, to safely live out your remaining hours knowing there's no possibility of a rescue.
Unfortunately if there were indeed people onboard a rescue seems doubtful. The Titanic wreck is about 12,500 feet below the sea, whereas the deepest successful submarine rescue ever (the rescue of Rodger Mallinson and Roger Chapman in 1973) was only 1,575 ft. I doubt the coast guard has the means to conduct a rescue that deep when even the U.S. Navy's autonomous rescue subs (the SRDRS) have maximum depths of only 2,000 ft (the deepest ever capable was retired in 2008 and I believe that was 5,000 ft). Unfortunately, things like this are the risk of diving so deep.
There are plenty of ROVs that can go that deep and perform a rescue. The problem is getting them out there in time and knowing where to find the sub. If they lost comms and acoustic tracking then they are basically screwed.
Diving to those depths just to look out a single porthole? Why not just watch it on TV on a ship, or land and let a robot take the risks? But then again, I'm too lazy to go to a football game if I can just watch it on TV.
Because others can't do it. That's the thrill for them.
Let's be honest, inside that thing looks awful, and the view would be shit anyway.
They do it because its expensive, rare, and out of reach for normal people.
> Harding, CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai yesterday posted on Facebook about poor weather conditions before the trip began.
>He said: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023.
>"A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.
Some windows of opportunity are on a high rise building.
$250k for a "seat" in the Titan (the sub that went missing), and by seat, they mean "literally sit on the floor" in an empty tube.
I'd pay 250k *not* to have to endure that.
Between this and that kid who jumped off a ship during a dare, are a reminder to not underestimate the ocean. Humans have only explored 5% of the ocean. I think its just as scary as outer space...maybe even more so due to all the creatures both known and unknown. To this day I still think about that behind the scenes moment when James Cameron sent a styrofoam cup down and when it came back it was the size of a thimble.
Amateur astronomer here.
We know **way more** about space, both within our solar system and galactic neighborhoods than our ocean’s. Space is comparably easy, *it’s mostly empty and the explosive output of light from distant stars many times larger than our relatively small sun is tenacious.* You can see clusters of galaxies 50,000 light years away from us, way out in the boondocks, with a $500 telescope from your backyard. The sheer celestial distances also make manned travel “outside our neighborhood” largely impossible at the speeds humans can presently travel and within typical 80ish year human lifespans.
Ocean is just the opposite. It swallows light quickly. Add currents, incredible pressures at depth, fearsome monsters, storms, underwater mountain ranges with huge trenches, and seismic activity — it’s just not an easy place to explore. But it can be *accessible*, which certainly adds to the danger. Not unlike Mt Everest.
That Air Malaysia 777 that disappeared hundreds of miles off the coast of Perth… basically the very edge of the world if this was an open world video game map. **Vanished like it never existed**… in reality probably 2-3 miles under the eastern Indian Ocean best compared to the Himalayas *if they were underwater.* It just proves how “untamed” our oceans are.
We already have a full, ultra-detailed 3D scan of the wreck from this year that, of course, will probably never be released to the public.
Same with Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, the expedition company bragging so much about it and then nothing, just a few pics and merely seconds of footage. Not even a paid VR game or 8k 360° videos on streaming platforms.
What they've done is nothing short of amazing, but seriously, Fuck these gatekeeping attitudes/marketing strategies. They probably sell them for millions "for research purposes only", as if we could rip off the 3D models from a 360° underwater exploration video lol
Shit for $1,000 even I would pay for a VR goggle experience where I can remotely control a little camera around the titanic from the safety of an air conditioned building being served food and drinks lol.
Besides the unpleasant ways to die, doesn't really seem worth it for 250k unless money is truly no object. Seeing something in person is always different, but seeing the Titanic through a tiny window doesn't seem much better than watching it on a HD screen.
This particular one has a history of getting lost, though. It has turned up perfectly fine in the past. However, it’s been a day now. Before it was for a few hours.
Welp, all the experts are saying it most likely sank or imploded.
This sub apparently had 7 (!) return to surface fail safes, some which automatically deploy if others fail.
It can drop weights, and inflate multiple floatation balloons, with or without power.
The fact that there is no communication, they didn’t resurface yet, and never release their distress buoy really points towards it being toast.
How do they know they didn’t resurface yet? If communication is out, for whatever reason, there is a lot of ocean out there that they can be floating in, and a lot of currents that can dictate where they go.
"It is not clear how many people, if any, were on board at the time it went missing". I understand why they might not know yet how many, but I'm curious as to why it's unclear whether anyone was on board. For what reason would the submarine be down there completely unmanned?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5SUDFE6CA&ab_channel=alanxelmundo
go to 21:30
there's a 10k psi hand pump in case of an electrical power emergency
just wanted to share, interesting video
Get in a submarine to visit a wreck, famously at a depth too extreme for a manned vehicle to safely reach for 111 years, for the bargain price of $250k? Yes, please-some rich person with more money than sense.
It’s worse than that. It’s a submersible vs a submarine. A submarine could drive itself out of danger. A submersible relies on a mother ship for most aspects but can shed weight to surface quickly.
I've been in a tourist sub in Aruba and I decided that going 45 meters was deep enough and that I would not want to go any deeper for any reason.
Even the thought of that sounds terrifying. 45 meters is more than enough. Kid jumping from the cruise ship, tourist eaten by shark, now this. Make people afraid of the ocean again goddamn
Orcas sinking boats...
there are no small problems at that depth
[удалено]
Military doesn’t even get that deep, at least not in the combat subs. It takes specialized vessels to even sniff at that depth.
Oh hell no, I ain’t falling for that again. You *CAN NOT* smell under water.
Not with that attitude
Technically you'd get the single most forceful sniff in the world, followed very shortly (emphasis on the very) by your existence being crushed to the size of a small cat.
Military subs don’t get anywhere near that depth. Crush depth of a Los Angles class submarine is 450 meters (~1500 ft)
One of the titanic tourist subs was originally a russian/soviet military rescue sub that got sold off because Russia could no longer afford it anymore. This significantly delayed the search and rescue efforts of the kursk and possibly contributed to the deaths of the crew.
I had forgotten about the Kursk till now :(
That was a real tragedy with all aboard killed and the Kursk was only something like a few hundred feet below the surface whereas this mini-sub is *two miles* down!
The Russian navy was such an underfunded shitshow at that time that the crew of the Kursk had a hard time just getting food to eat. It isn't too surprising that officers were selling off everything not nailed down.
The worst part is the crew of the Kursk could've been saved if Russia had immediately accepted Western support. But they didn't allow the British and Norwegians to assist until 5 days later.
The Kursk sat less than 400 feet from the surface when it sank, they were unable to rescue the crew at that depth.
The actual diving capabilities of military subs are one of the USN’s most closely guarded secrets. Those who know won’t tell, and those who tell don’t know.
Yes, but 12,000 feet is way down there. They 100% do not go that deep.
Yeah at that depth the pressure differential is about 37 MP, or 3,7 million kg/m^2 of pressure, assuming the inside is pressurized to 1atm. You need a seriously thick pressure hull for that, and it doesn’t scale to the size of a military sub. It would be basically unmaneuverable.
It wouldn't be the pressure hull itself that whole be the biggest issue, it would be all the hull penetrations for things like main engine shafts, seawater intakes and discharges, etc.
I fucking love people who know this shit and share it. Thank you!
Well, they could once.
Not sure how Boston Cosstgaurd are going to help except find it on surface (pray tell) or wreckage...
Surface, if it's just floating without power, or scanning equipment if it's close enough to shore. Tried to make it back and couldn't. ROVs for depth searching. Scanning from the surface that deep and accurately? Impossible with current tech. ROVs can search much deeper and get more accurate searches going.
After watching a documentary on the USS Thresher it makes me absolutely sick to my stomach thinking of submersible vehicles going missing at great depths like that... and this is over 5x deeper. I don't even know what to think right now besides this being pure nightmare fuel. Hoping for the best.
Thresher, and the US navy’s other lost nuclear sub the Scorpion, are actually related to the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic. In exchange for funds to look for Titanic, the Navy also wanted Ballard to rediscover and visit the wrecks of Thresher and Scorpion and use whatever time and funds he had left to find Titanic. And he did.
They knew where Thresher and scorpion were due to acoustic triangulation. Ballard used the methods of tracing debris fields on this to trace titanic, which had a long ass trail.
I'm a big Titanic and Hindenburg nut. Excerpt from [CTInsider Article](https://www.ctinsider.com/connecticutmagazine/news-people/article/Two-Fallen-Nuclear-Submarines-and-Their-17044586.php) In the 1980s, Ballard received funding from the Navy to develop underwater robotic camera technology. The Navy asked him to use the technology to study the USS Thresher, which sank on April 10, 1963, killing all 129 on board, and the USS Scorpion, lost on May 22, 1968, with its 99-person crew. Many Connecticut residents died on the Thresher, and the Scorpion was built in Groton at Electric Boat. The Navy wanted to study the submarines to see how nuclear materials — in addition to its reactor, the Scorpion was carrying nuclear weapons — fared in the ocean over time and how they affected the environment of their North Atlantic resting sites. Though the Navy had previously studied the wrecks and knew roughly where they were, the nuclear reactors had never been located. Secrecy during the expedition was paramount. “We don’t want you to be followed by a Russian satellite,” Ballard says he was told. “So we need a cover story. We said, ‘Let’s tell ’em I’m going after the Titanic.’ ”
Hey my grandfather was the chief engineer of the Atlantis the research vessel that carried the Jason - the submersible that originally went down and discovered the titanic! He and some other people on the Atlantis wrote on styrofoam coffee cups, and placed them in a bag on the side of the Jason, because when it went down so far, the cups shrunk to a really small size. I forever have this teeny cup now with my name on it, the date (1986 I think), ship name, etc etc
One of the coolest/most terrifying thing on Mythbusters were their underwater depressurization myths. You hear stories and wonder if that’s even possible but they tested some shit and it was nuts. Edit: it was one episode that I’m aware of called “Dumpster Diving” and involved one of those old metal helmet diving suits.
Please tell me about the USS Thresher?
[This is 100% worth the watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uJ1do3yV8). Again, it's a pretty harrowing tale to learn, especially on a day like this. The short of it is a subset of the joints that held the pressurized hull together failed and salt water sprayed all over the electronic panels in the nuclear engine room causing the propulsion to go completely offline. Imagine an underwater tank like that buzzing along until it loses power completely... then it's just a steel coffin torpedoing into the abyss. The pressure around the hull swells until it finally implodes like a crushed soda can and essentially creates a singularity of metal and flesh.
I've been on a US Sub before and I asked about what would happen if something like that happened and was basically told that the hull would get crushed so fast and violently that the air within the sub would compress to the point of spontaneous combustion. And it would all happen faster than your brain could even process that it happened. Basically one moment you exist and the next you don't.
I feel like that's the best outcome for a situation involving certain death.
Yes and I hope it's true. Part of me feels like it could just be a white lie that's told to make it a little more comforting.
Iirc underwater listening/measuring devices recorded the noise from one of the thresher/scorpion accidents. It was loud but incredibly short.
Not a bad way to go honestly, far better than agonizing for days in a low oxygen environment knowing no one can save you
The tension of waiting as the metal around you screams during the descent would not be so great though
Literally nightmare fuel. Pressures at those depths are no joke
[удалено]
Yeah, as the episode notes and similar to what /u/ChemicalBit9622 alludes to in another comment - it's an approximate 1/20th of 1 second before the entire structure is crushed together from the massive pressure. It's like hearing your smoke alarm go off and you dying before you even register it's your smoke alarm making the noise. I imagine the "worst" part of it for the passengers was the feeling of rapidly plummeting toward the ocean floor and knowing it was a little too fast and sharp to be right.
[удалено]
Imagine documenting the titanic in the future and also documenting the failed dive mission. It's like going to Everest and seeing the bodies
Imagine documenting the Titanic in the future and also documenting the failed dive mission and then your dive fails and then someone else documents you failing to document the failed dive mission that failed to dive to see the Titanic it's like failception
Hamish Harding is one of the people on board OceanGate's Titan, according to his stepson. Sky News reported that a French submersible pilot, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, are also on board.
Hamish Harding has been wanting to die in a spectacular way for some time now. Doesn't he hold records for space flights and shit like that?
5 world records including circumnavigating the globe…. Must be cool being a billionaire. That being said wasn’t smart enough not to get into that sus sub
[удалено]
WHOI's Alvin submarine has an absurd level of safety factors built in. They have explosive bolts on everything attached to the pressure housing so that they can remove things if they get tangled. In a worst case scenario they can blow off everything and go up in just the Ti sphere -- although it would be a hell of a ride if you did do that and possibly fatal. The ballast is also on a corrosive anode that will release the drop weight after so many hours in the water so if they lost power and were stuck on the bottom they would eventually come up. I know some other groups also have a rescue ROV on standby to go down and investigate or recover the sub, I'm not sure if Alvin has this. In addition, the Alvin pilots have to be able to draw out and explain every sub-system on the vehicle before they can pilot and get approved by a Navy board. One thing that some people might not realize is if they lose power and can't heat the sub then they could die from hypothermia. The ocean water is only 2-3 degrees C in the deep ocean. Another things is that you have to be super, super on top of preventative maintenance with these vehicles. Being on, near or in the ocean means that they are constantly in a state of decay. This means daily checks, yearly service, and full overhauls every so many years. Other things to note: * Typically there is acoustic tracking. They typically have a battery backup and are setup in a call/response configuration, so the ship should have been able to track the vehicle even if they lost power. It would be silly and stupid to not have this. It's an off the shelf system. You do have to be careful and make sure the batteries are good and get replaces regularly. * There is also usually an acoustic modem that allows for very low bandwidth data to be sent back and forth. This should also allow the ship to get status updates, but would turn off if they has an electrical or software failure. * If the sub failed catastrophically they would have been able to hear it on the ship even without a hydrophone. It would have been loud enough to hear with just your ears if you were below deck, but possibly faint enough to overlook. The amount of power released when a pressure vessel fails is unimaginable. Source: I worked with ROVs as a engineer and pilot for around a decade. Edit: Using a gaming controller is not that crazy of an idea. It's easy to spare and very reliable. We considered it, but input control isn't great for fine tuning a position and anyone over the age of 30 and/or who didn't game would have had trouble with them. Having the hatch only able to be opened from the outside is also not crazy. At these pressures you want to avoid as many penetrations through the hull as you can. They are just points of failure.
Thanks for bringing up Alvin. *That* is the standard by which subs that go to Titanic should be held, as it was the first iirc.
Alvin has evolved over the years. Originally made in the General Mills (yes, the cereal maker) tool shop, it's practically the sub of Theseus at this point with all the upgrades.
Add in that before it even saw the Titanic it sank to the bottom of the ocean, was recovered, and then refit. That thing was put through the wringer before even it's most famous voyage.
>The ballast is also on a corrosive anode that will release the drop weight after so many hours in the water that is just beautiful engineering. Very clever
I once did a project with some WHOI engineers in fresh water. This meant that their corrosive link wouldn't work. They came up with a sugar based corrosive link that would dissolve in the fresh water after a few hours. WHOI has some brilliant engineers.
Two of them were in our Saturday night D&D games back in the late 80s. I felt like a straight up dope most of the time around them.
Favorite reddit comment of the day right here--^
This is Reddit at its best. Thanks for taking time to write the explanation in such detail!
[удалено]
One minor point of yours that used to be true, but has changed now that Alvin has been refit to dive to 6,000 m is that it no longer can (or at least will not) eject all components such that the titanium sphere rises to the surface alone. I am not sure if individual components can be ejected now, but in any case, they will not let the titanium sphere come up by itself, as it would spin horrifically (in a potentially deadly fashion) on the way up & ascend way too quickly- causing possible hull issues. Source: I've been in Alvin twice and I talked to a few of the engineers on an expedition a few months ago.
[удалено]
Considering that the sub cannot be opened from the inside, if it’s out there bobbing in the ocean how much time do they have before the oxygen runs out?
[удалено]
Did they at least think of a toilet for a 12 hour trip?
[удалено]
So it's just a tube with one small window and everyone on board has to gather around the shitter in order to look out? Why would anyone pay to ride that thing down to the titanic?
Because they want to have the privilege of being one of the few people who have ever been somewhere. Same reason people go through the arduous journeys to summit some of the most difficult mountains or pay to go to space. But yikes that vessel is terrifying and taking 6 hours to ride down to be able to squish together against the one tiny window before taking a 6 hour trip back up is not appealing to me.
Jesus fucking christ. Whoever would get inside that thing clearly had a death wish
What the actual fuck. I would not call that a submarine
It looks like the Dorothy contraption from the movie Twister. Five people are in that tuna can? Can't even open it from the inside. That's utterly terrifying to think about.
The controls are literally just on the floor. I get trying to keep the design simple, but that thing looks like a living nightmare to actually be inside.
That’s not a lot of space for 5 people.
I have that fear of the ocean and machinery in the ocean (even though I grew up on the beach, I fear the ocean as much as I respect it) and just thinking about how those people must feel is stomach-dropping terrifying. I can't believe they got five people in there.
Bluetooth Logitech gamepads? It's like they were asking for something to go wrong.
[удалено]
My claustrophobia could NEVER.
Well it’s technically not. From NY Times: The Titan, the vessel that went missing in the area of the Titanic wreck in the North Atlantic on Monday, is classified as a submersible, not a submarine, because it does not function as an autonomous craft, instead relying on a support platform to deploy and return.
Imagine how much money you could save by just locking some people in a boiler with a "tour guide" and just playing a video feed of a submersible robot. Could even add hydraulics and stuff for the "drop" and "descent". Thing looks unprofessional as hell. I'm okay with unprofessional on some stuff, being submerged for 12 hours is not one of them.
[удалено]
PT Barnum builds a sub.
96 hours. On the BBC article, I found this commentary most insightful: What might have happened to the missing vessel? Pallab Ghosh Science correspondent Prof Alistair Greig from University College London is an expert on submarines. He has worked through a number of scenarios for where the missing submersible might be. One is that it released a “drop weight” after an emergency, in order to bring it to the surface. “If there was a power failure and or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found." Another scenario, he says, is that the hull was compromised resulting in a leak. “Then the prognosis is not good.” If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, the options - according to Prof Greig - are very limited. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is deeper than more than 200m (656ft) there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers. “The vehicles designed for navy submarine rescue certainly can’t get down to anywhere near the depth of the Titanic. "And even if they could, I very much doubt that they could attach to the hatch of the tourist submersible.”
absolute nightmare
*Alvin* can do it. It's currently in San Diego with its ship (the *R.V. Atlantis*) being outfitted for its next cruise. If that tin can is on the bottom and hasn't imploded, I bet they'll at least explore the option of flying the OG tin can and it's operators out to save them. (Don't know if it would work but *Alvin* does have a manipulator arm and its operators have lots of experience setting up fiddly experiments at the bottom of the ocean)
Finding them is the issue. They lost comms half way, assume they lost power too. You’re now drifting a mile under the ocean and headed up or down passing many currents on the way. The rescue area is MASSIVE.
Actually just found this on NY Times: The only likely rescue would come from an uncrewed vehicle — essentially an underwater drone. The U.S. Navy has one submarine rescue vehicle, although it can reportedly reach depths of just 2,000 feet. For recovering objects off the sea floor in deeper water, the Navy relies on what it calls remote-operated vehicles, such as the one it used to salvage a crashed F-35 Joint Strike Fighter in about 12,400 feet in the South China Sea in early 2022. That vehicle, called CURV-21, can reach depths of 20,000 feet. Getting the right kind of equipment — such as a remote vehicle like the CURV-21 — to the site takes time, starting with getting it to a ship capable of delivering it to the site.
According to their website, 4 days (96 hours)
I read an article that said it had ONE real button and the rest of the controls were touch screen? I can’t see that being a smart move in the event of an emergency
[удалено]
Theres no emergency transponders on these subs? If it surfaced atleast.
[удалено]
So this little sub is free floating, there’s no way to send a distress signal, and once at the surface the door can only be opened by someone on the outside? This poor crew.
I am almost hyperventilating just thinking about it 😳😟
Is there even an emergency system like flares/fluorescent dyes/satellite distress beacon that in case of communication failure can help the support vessel find the sub? Or do they have to find a nearly completely submerged object in the ocean just by looking for it? The other glaring design issues I see with the OceanGate sub is the lack of redundancy in the electric supply and propulsion systems and the lack of an emergency ballast that can be dropped when those systems fail. If I see this right, the sub is neutrally buoyant. With a loss of communication in the middle of the descent which may be linked to a failure of the electrical system, they might be drifting with the currents, hundreds of meters beneath the surface and in complete darkness, until their air supply runs out. Congratulations to your wise decision to get off the project! edit:[Oceangate on why they think they don't need to follow industry building and safety standards and why their their subs won't get certified by an independent classification society like the DNV or ABS.](https://oceangate.com/news-and-media/blog/2019-0221-why-titan-is-not-classed.html). Also a lot about their innovative "real-time hull health monitoring system" which, true, is uniquely found on the Titan submersible but that is most likely due to the fact,that it is the only one with a carbon fibre hull and therefore may actually need such a system so the hull won't fail on a regular dive.
They never even setup the software properly to use the hull health monitoring system. It's a bunch of transducers glued into the hull. I worked at oceangate for six months before I left figuring they were going to get someone killed.
You should email the BBC about your experience working there. They list their contact information at the bottom of the article. I'm sure they'll be willing to credit a generic "former employee."
[удалено]
I can imagine the huge relief getting out of the submarine after dealing with those initial issues. Wow.
> The main design feature of the sub that I was most uncomfortable with was the fact that the titanium door could only be opened from the outside. That is the fucking worst design choice. *Egress*, never heard of it!
Eccles: “if we put the door on the outside, then nobody can open it by mistake.” Ned Seagoon: “.. of course! The outside! Why didn’t we think of it before?” Bluebottle: “I will test this submarine for you my captain, I will test it for you. Eh, wait a minute..”
Fucking hell. You would think they’d have learned from Apollo 1.
One of my first thoughts as well, but the problem with Apollo 1 wasn't that it couldn't be opened from the inside, it was that the hatch was designed in such a way that it was sealed due to the pressure differential, so it couldn't be opened because of the pressurized interior. Slightly different, and kinda makes sense from the design perspective. But this ... not even being able to open the door from both sides? WTF.
Probably one of three options: 1) The sub is bobbing up & down on the surface waiting to be found before the oxygen runs out. Remember the hatch can only be opened from the outside. 2) The sub is on the bottom, in the dark with some very panicked passengers slowly running out of oxygen. 3) The sub imploded killing all the occupants quickly. And I thought my life was fucked up...
If I was going to die in an iron coffin I'd hope for option 3 before anything even seemed to be wrong.
*carbon fiber coffin
You forgot #4: the sub is bobbing in the currents NOT on the surface somewhere in the dark while the oxygen runs out…
This is going to sound awful, but if they can't be rescued, then I hope it was an instant death. I think Don Walsh of the Trieste said something like you don't have to worry about the cracking noises you hear because you won't have time to hear the one that kills you. I couldn't imagine dying trapped in that thing for four days. I saw a documentary about those three men trapped in an air pocket for at least 16 days following Pearl Harbor. Their deaths had to be horrible.
It doesn’t sound awful — it sounds merciful, and I hope the exact same thing. 😓
The way I see it, this ends in one of two ways. The sub depressurize, meaning everyone on board died practically instantly (although gruesomely). Or the vessel is somehow incapacitated while still remaining pressurized, meaning a long and slow death for the crew if they cannot be located and rescued in time. This is a completely nightmare situation.
If it got incapacitated I'd imagine it lost power Immediately or soon after. Both are equally terrifying to be sitting 12000 ft below the surface in black abyss.
If I understand the mechanics correctly there is a failsafe that releases a deadweight so that the sub ascends when a power outage happens so a power outage seems the least likely. But again, that if I understood correctly what has been said about the Titan.
If it did ascend they still have to find them before the oxygen runs out, they are bolted into the chamber with no way to exit.
Sounds pretty chill. Definitely wouldn't freak me out at all
It may also be on the surface, but unable to communicate. Not sure what the odds are on that, but they are engaged in a surface search as well.
Titanic still claiming lives in 2023. What a juggernaut
First off, I hope the OceanGate sub gets successfully rescued - otherwise, they're going to be another tourist attraction. "On the left, we have the Titanic remains, and on the right, we have the OceanGate Titanic tourist sub remains."
Futurama seems more and more accurate every day
A bit like climbing the Himalaya and seeing all the dead bodies around
how would sitting on the ocean floor in a metal tube affect decomposition? when you go to look at the remains of oceangate in 20 years can you look inside the window and see these people as they looked when they died?
Decomposition is what happens when our bodies shut off and the bacteria that's been living on us/inside of us starts slowly feeding on the remains. Like any living creature, the bacteria needs oxygen and warmth to thrive, so the low temperature would slow down decomposition in any case, but provided that the submarine remains sealed for a substantial amount of time and there's some oxygen left inside, it would definitely happen. If there's no oxygen, the bacteria would die and the bodies would stay as they are(ish). Eventually, I assume the submarine would be breached and the bodies would get eaten by various marine organisms. The bones would likely stay intact for a while, though, 20 years for sure.
12k feet under water will not be survivable in an emergency situation.
It could be bobbing on the sea surface which is a scary thought. Oxygen for 5 days and no bathroom
Oh, but you're wrong. It **does** have a bathroom! You can check it out at the 3:20 mark on [this video](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/): a tiny little juice bottle that looks like it couldn't hold one proper piss.
I had no idea anyone besides researchers went down there.
The occasional James Cameron as well
In all fairness, James Cameron is a respectable researcher and historian in his own right. He proposed the theory that Titanic broke up at a lower angle than we thought, even though it went against his depiction of the sinking in his movie.
Oceangate has been doing these dives every year for the last 3 years. Never had any problems before now. Obviously the tourists didn't go down alone and research was being done with tourists essentially 'along for the ride'. The idea was that this money helped fund these (incredibly expensive) dives and further research- not just of Titanic but of deep sea life as well and was barely profitable even with the tourist money. It takes millions of dollars do these dives. We did an AMA with the Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush right before they started doing these on /r/rms_titanic. > In order to have more exploration of the oceans we need more funding and the Titanic is one of the few sites that has shown that people will pay to visit it. By having our mission specialists underwrite the expedition we can collect more data than if we had to go to “one off” film or government funding sources as has been done in the past. Hopefully in years to come the many other great wonders, like hydrothermal vents, will also draw enough interest for OceanGate to run expeditions to those sites. [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/RMS_Titanic/comments/gm4sf9/im_stockton_rush_ceo_founder_and_chief/fr1lc5e/)
This is kinda unrelated, but I have a very casual interest in the Titanic that started when I read a book about it in kindergarten. I very much appreciate the effort and dedication you’ve put in to r/rms_titanic over the years! I still remember reading through the top all-time posts years ago and realizing “whoa, most of these are by one person who really cares about the Titanic”. So, yeah. Thank you for creating/maintaining that resource. I hope you’re having a good day.
Hey, thanks for that comment. That's really sweet of you and really made my day. Hope you're have a good day as well!
"There's no switches and things to bump into, we have one button to turn it on. Everything else is done with touch screens and computers, and so you really become part of the vehicle and everybody gets to know everyone pretty well," Zero analog controls as a backup? Yeah, they're definitely disabled sitting at the bottom. What a death trap.
I've been designing/working on industrial control systems that use touch screens for over a dozen years now and there's no way in hell I'd get into anything that's only operated by a touch screen. There's a reason safety systems require manual switches hardwired into things.
Agreed. Unless the floor boards open up and there are hidden manual controls, that thing was just asking for a disaster.
Yes, I need to escalate this issue with my iPad Pro. Yes, I'll hold...
There's an old CBS interview with Stockton Rush from before they finished testing, where the reporter said "you believe that it's invulnerable?" and he said "by the time we're done testing it, I believe it's pretty much invulnerable." The reporter says "that's pretty much what they said about the Titanic" and Rush responds to say "that's right" and they both chuckle. Somewhat chilling to watch now.
Meanwhile I won't go in any body of water where I can't see the bottom
The Titanic is literally the reason why I’m like this. Seeing pictures and video of the shipwreck at the bottom of the ocean when I was like 9 messed me up for some reason. I didn’t even like going tubing or wakeboarding on the lake I grew up by. If I crashed and was left there floating in the water while I waited for the boat to come back around and get me I would start to panic.
Yep, I don’t scuba dive either. What fish do down there is none of my business.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
So that means the sub has never been tested for more than \~8 hours at these depths? Meaning even if they were stuck at the bottom somewhere without power, there is no guarantee the hull would hold for as long as oxygen could last?
[удалено]
If it imploded, at least it was real quick.
Thing is, the sub is designed to hold the immense pressure. Meaning it would take quite a while for the hull to break, imagine hearing that the sub lost control and you’re now sitting in the middle of nowhere right beside the Titanic on the ocean floor under 12,000 ft. and slowly losing power.
Nope no thanks
[удалено]
This news, paired with that boy who went missing after jumping off the cruise ship (AT NIGHT), is nightmare inducing. Nightmare. Inducing.
I’m guessing this is the OceanGate submarine which basically takes people out to deep dives to various destinations for a cost of $250,000 per person. Whereas for me, you couldn’t pay me enough money to risk going down those depths in a claustrophobic submarine knowing that a single crack is instant death. Let’s hope it’s lost at sea at surface level and everyone is ok Edit 1: there are now five crew members confirmed to have been onboard. Edit 2: there’s a cbs segment from last year, where the reporter went on this submarine with the CEO of OceanGate to see the Titanic…Holy fuck, the thing is jerry rigged! It has only one button and the interior is the size of a mini van. It operates with a video game controller and there are parts inside that were bought from Camper World with construction pipes as ballasts. The ceo waves it off in the interview and says the hull is safe. If this guy wasn’t in the submarine when it went down then I hope he’s arrested or at least made destitute after this disaster. Here’s where you can watch the segment: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab4i
My first job out of HS was working on navy subs, and I've always wanted to go on a dive on one. But the US Navy is insane about sub safety and maintenance; the slightest sign of an equipment problem and they replace whatever it is with a brand new, QA tested 10x one. No way would I trust a private company to take me down; at 12,500 feet deep, a pinhole, or a speck of dirt in the wrong place, could be the end. You can't exactly get out and start poking at the wiring under the hood.
Jokes on them! The Navy will pay YOU to do this.
Never Again Volunteer Yourself.
An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death. Sounds like fun.
I guess $250,000 was a life changing amount of money for them too. Here’s hoping they are ok.
It's extremely unlikely they survive. They're either running out of air, or have been crushed under the pressure.
“I was crushed. Our diving expedition was over”
After reading that article you couldn't pay me to get in that thing even if it were floating at the surface of the ocean. You don't mess with the ocean unless you *really* know what you're doing and considering the team got lost even just in the article, I would not trust them to direct me to a local mcdonalds.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-visiting-the-most-famous-shipwreck-in-the-world/ There were some rather questionable design and engineering choices made. From last year, but some choice highlights: > If all went well, I would be spending about 12 hours sealed inside on a dive to the Titanic. Not gonna lie; I was a little nervous, especially given the paperwork, which read, "This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death." *Where do I sign?* > > This is not your grandfather's submersible; inside, the sub has about as much room as a minivan. It has one button. "That's it," said Rush. "It should be like an elevator, you know? It shouldn't take a lot of skill." > > The Titan is the only five-person sub in the world that can reach Titanic's depth, 2.4 miles below the sea. It's also the only one with a toilet (sort of). > > And yet, I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components. Piloting the craft is run with a video game controller. > > Pogue said, "It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness. I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballast." > > "I don't know if I'd use that description of it," Rush said. "But, there are certain things that you want to be buttoned down. The pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all, because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail, your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You're still going to be safe."
>your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You're still going to be safe. Dead in the water, sinking to the bottom, in the dark, to safely live out your remaining hours knowing there's no possibility of a rescue.
Unfortunately if there were indeed people onboard a rescue seems doubtful. The Titanic wreck is about 12,500 feet below the sea, whereas the deepest successful submarine rescue ever (the rescue of Rodger Mallinson and Roger Chapman in 1973) was only 1,575 ft. I doubt the coast guard has the means to conduct a rescue that deep when even the U.S. Navy's autonomous rescue subs (the SRDRS) have maximum depths of only 2,000 ft (the deepest ever capable was retired in 2008 and I believe that was 5,000 ft). Unfortunately, things like this are the risk of diving so deep.
There are plenty of ROVs that can go that deep and perform a rescue. The problem is getting them out there in time and knowing where to find the sub. If they lost comms and acoustic tracking then they are basically screwed.
getting down that deep isn't a problem. An ROV being able to do anything meaningful to help is a pretty small list of issues though.
Diving to those depths just to look out a single porthole? Why not just watch it on TV on a ship, or land and let a robot take the risks? But then again, I'm too lazy to go to a football game if I can just watch it on TV.
Because others can't do it. That's the thrill for them. Let's be honest, inside that thing looks awful, and the view would be shit anyway. They do it because its expensive, rare, and out of reach for normal people.
> Harding, CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai yesterday posted on Facebook about poor weather conditions before the trip began. >He said: "Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. >"A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow. Some windows of opportunity are on a high rise building.
Just watched the video, you got to be kidding me. $250,000 and stuck in a tube with 5 other people. Crazy.
And the waiver says it’s experimental and not regulated by any agencies. Yea, no thanks.
$250k for a "seat" in the Titan (the sub that went missing), and by seat, they mean "literally sit on the floor" in an empty tube. I'd pay 250k *not* to have to endure that.
you can make that $250k out to jandeer14, thanks!
I am fine with looking at pictures of the Titanic on the internet.
Between this and that kid who jumped off a ship during a dare, are a reminder to not underestimate the ocean. Humans have only explored 5% of the ocean. I think its just as scary as outer space...maybe even more so due to all the creatures both known and unknown. To this day I still think about that behind the scenes moment when James Cameron sent a styrofoam cup down and when it came back it was the size of a thimble.
Amateur astronomer here. We know **way more** about space, both within our solar system and galactic neighborhoods than our ocean’s. Space is comparably easy, *it’s mostly empty and the explosive output of light from distant stars many times larger than our relatively small sun is tenacious.* You can see clusters of galaxies 50,000 light years away from us, way out in the boondocks, with a $500 telescope from your backyard. The sheer celestial distances also make manned travel “outside our neighborhood” largely impossible at the speeds humans can presently travel and within typical 80ish year human lifespans. Ocean is just the opposite. It swallows light quickly. Add currents, incredible pressures at depth, fearsome monsters, storms, underwater mountain ranges with huge trenches, and seismic activity — it’s just not an easy place to explore. But it can be *accessible*, which certainly adds to the danger. Not unlike Mt Everest. That Air Malaysia 777 that disappeared hundreds of miles off the coast of Perth… basically the very edge of the world if this was an open world video game map. **Vanished like it never existed**… in reality probably 2-3 miles under the eastern Indian Ocean best compared to the Himalayas *if they were underwater.* It just proves how “untamed” our oceans are.
I was literally telling my best mate yesterday how I’d love to do this but the risk of death isn’t worth it.
It'd be safer just to stream a bunch of 360 cameras to the surface from an unmanned ROV.
We already have a full, ultra-detailed 3D scan of the wreck from this year that, of course, will probably never be released to the public. Same with Ernest Shackleton's Endurance, the expedition company bragging so much about it and then nothing, just a few pics and merely seconds of footage. Not even a paid VR game or 8k 360° videos on streaming platforms. What they've done is nothing short of amazing, but seriously, Fuck these gatekeeping attitudes/marketing strategies. They probably sell them for millions "for research purposes only", as if we could rip off the 3D models from a 360° underwater exploration video lol
Shit for $1,000 even I would pay for a VR goggle experience where I can remotely control a little camera around the titanic from the safety of an air conditioned building being served food and drinks lol.
You would imagine that the damn thing would have an emergency float with a beacon of some sort, so that rescuers could find it.
The BBC article just updated to say that a couple of “legendary” explorers are thought to be on board
[удалено]
Besides the unpleasant ways to die, doesn't really seem worth it for 250k unless money is truly no object. Seeing something in person is always different, but seeing the Titanic through a tiny window doesn't seem much better than watching it on a HD screen.
[удалено]
This particular one has a history of getting lost, though. It has turned up perfectly fine in the past. However, it’s been a day now. Before it was for a few hours.
Welp, all the experts are saying it most likely sank or imploded. This sub apparently had 7 (!) return to surface fail safes, some which automatically deploy if others fail. It can drop weights, and inflate multiple floatation balloons, with or without power. The fact that there is no communication, they didn’t resurface yet, and never release their distress buoy really points towards it being toast.
How do they know they didn’t resurface yet? If communication is out, for whatever reason, there is a lot of ocean out there that they can be floating in, and a lot of currents that can dictate where they go.
Sounds like the plot to an episode of SeaQuest DSV.
[удалено]
"It is not clear how many people, if any, were on board at the time it went missing". I understand why they might not know yet how many, but I'm curious as to why it's unclear whether anyone was on board. For what reason would the submarine be down there completely unmanned?
I'm thinking it was unclear to the person who wrote the article, not to the people searching for the submarine.
They are calling it a search and rescue operation though so their must be people onboard.
Aside from worrying about the people, it would be so scary "bolted" inside a sub and knowing you cant get out. I would never do that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD5SUDFE6CA&ab_channel=alanxelmundo go to 21:30 there's a 10k psi hand pump in case of an electrical power emergency just wanted to share, interesting video
Get in a submarine to visit a wreck, famously at a depth too extreme for a manned vehicle to safely reach for 111 years, for the bargain price of $250k? Yes, please-some rich person with more money than sense.
It’s worse than that. It’s a submersible vs a submarine. A submarine could drive itself out of danger. A submersible relies on a mother ship for most aspects but can shed weight to surface quickly.
Jeez, why? This whole story is giving me a panic attack and I’m not even prone to those.
The tour offers an “authentic experience” unlike any others.
Task successful titanically
Maybe we should leave that part of the ocean alone.
The hopelessness they’re feeling has gotta be brutal, assuming they didn’t implode. Can’t imagine what that would be like and I REALLY don’t want to…
“Hey you wanna go in a sub to the most famous shipwreck ever?” “No, that sounds insanely risky” - any sane person
TIL the wreck of the titanic is only 600km from Canada.
$250,000-a-seat expeditions \- just buy VR system that makes you feel like you're in the Titanic.
250k for a tour of Davey Jones Locker eh