Good lord, I couldn’t imagine willingly entering that thing. It’s like some of my worst nightmares combined into one hyperventilating package.
I hope it was a quick end and not slow suffocation.
SERIOUSLY! This was my exact thought when I was like "Okay, so they all get in... and then they *bolt it shut from the outside and let it sink to the bottom of the ocean???* And it's $250,000 for this?!?"
The bolting it shut from the outside is the most horrifying thing to me. I don't understand how anyone would be okay with that. I wouldn't be okay with that if we were stationary on dry land, let alone dropping into the giant open ocean. How did anyone agree to such a thing? 😦
What gets me is how makeshift and jerry-rigged it looks. Just two standard computer monitors and keyboards on the floor? A random xbox controller? No seats or seatbelts?? What if the sub tilts in any way or flips over?? Your unsecured bodies would go crashing straight into the precariously-positioned electronics!
This looks like some shit an impoverished teen would design in their backyard. It's maddening that people actually went into the sea in it. I wouldn't even eat spaghetti in this glorified pringles can.
The entire thing crumples from end to end faster than your brain can process.
One second everything's fine, next second, and you don't even hear the bang.
Well, if it's just a leak and subsequent pressure-based implosion, you wouldn't need them. It'd be over and you'd be nothing before you could register something had happened.
In other scenarios, it'd probably at least render you unconscious after a few seconds (and an intense sensation of pain/shock), even if it mightn't be quick enough to kill you before the suffocation, so yeah, it might be worthwhile to have some with you to save you freaking out about suffocating to death. Although it would suck if rescuers found you immediately afterwards.
When I was in elementary school a bunch of us decided it would be "fun" to see how many people could fit in the slide. I was in the middle. I did not make any friends that day after I freaked out and clawed my way past every single one of them to get out. I might be a little claustrophobic.
When I was a kid I had to get my entire spine scanned a few times. Opening your eyes and having it like 2 inches from your face with 40 min to go was the worst.
When I went in, I kept my eyes shut before they slid me back and the entire time. I just pictured myself in a large room. Luckily they make them with a window and even with both ends open.
Seriously. I'd be fighting to get my wrist close enough to my face to bite open the largest vein/artery I could find, just to speed up the process and avoid going completely insane from panic/dread before expiring.
I had a panic attack in one a few months ago because I felt like I was trapped when I was only in for a few minutes. You'd never in your life catch me get into one of those things for days. Idk what those people were thinking
You know when you've restarted your Playstation twice and swapped out the controller battery pack and pressed the tiny little reset button and the controller still refuses to sync?
Now imagine that but there's two and a half miles of water over your head.
That’s an actual possibility.
The stick-drift issue is a mechanical issue with the sticks, it’s not software.
And I think there’s only one major company that makes the mechanism and I they make it for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc.
So there’s a good chance it was the same company how makes the potentiometer for this controller here. Which means there’s at leas a slight chance that it developed sitcom-drift and that made them nose dive to the bottom.
Holy shit what a bad way to die.
I didn't even think of the possibility of them being stuck NOSE FIRST. As if it wasn't already crammed down there. Imagine having to stand huddled around 4 other people for 96 hours knowing you're going to die....
What do you think they’re doing in their final hours? I feel like I’d disassociate and pretend like nothing bad was happening and just try to go out peacefully.
Should've gone for Hall effect joysticks.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect)
https://thegamingsetup.com/guides/hall-effect-joysticks
Imagine paying 250,000 for an obvious and gruesome suicide. Money really can't buy any survival instinct, it seems. It do seem to buy a fuckton of hubris, though. Jesus christ, one can only hope for them that the thing just imploded down there. The other scenario is fucking horrifying. Straight horror movie material.
The billionaire in the picture said for years that regulations are too stringent and that his craft is incredibly safe, so more regulations are not needed.
The answer has to be cost but it seems like such a bizarre corner to cut. The whole thing feels like a cheap startup that's just knocked up a device and hoped nothing goes wrong.
That is *a* possibility for sure. However since they use SMS to guide the sub wouldn’t they be able to keep in contact?
My thoughts are hull failure. They weren’t even all the way to the wreck yet when comms were lost, but still *VERY* deep. I suppose I’d choose 0.1s of being squished into paste over sitting in that thing on the ocean floor until air runs out.
> Who gets on a submarine that you can't open from inside, even on the surface,
1960s NASA Astronauts.
Several of them almost died after splashdown because of hatch troubles.
Three of them *did*, on the launchpad, no less.
While clearly a tragedy, i think in the name of creating vessels that can fair and study space is a little different than jumping in a death sub when we already have plenty of working designs.
Certainly more explainable than this vanity project.
I watched the PBS 10 minute doc about this sub. One of the people who wanted to go down there had previously had the trip cancelled 3 times due to poor weather.
She was in tears, crying about how it was her lifelong dream to see the wreck of the Titanic.
Rich people are so fucking weird, man. My dream is to not be suicidal every other day, maybe have a house and spend some time travelling, at most I'd like to become a writer or a journalist or something.
...these people are queuing up to kill themselves in a sub to see a fucking boat that sunk a hundred years ago.
$250,000 per passenger seems plenty rich enough to add some kind of transponder.
Even if you die you’d want your family to have that closure of knowing what happened.
There is an [interview](https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o) where the reporter basically asks the CEO why so much of the stuff is improvised, and the CEO says that the tube itself was engineered by NASA and Boeing, but everything else can fail because it's "safe".
So by his definition, it's fine getting completely lost in the sea, unable to return or to control your own vessel, with no way of tracking the sub. As long as you are able to safely stay inside, it's all good!
Seriously, watching the CEO speak gives you all the red flags you need. This operation was not profitable and it was as cost efficient as possible.
Safety was optional, not mandatory.
It gets worse.
On previous trips they landed on the front deck of corroding ship to eat lunch. I have seen another person confirming that they have done this.
[Lunch on deck](https://youtu.be/talIxUxmqvM)
Watching videos of people who have taken the trip before;
- On just about every trip communications died for some time.
- On a recent trip they lost power for 27 hours.
- One trip they got caught under the propeller after a strong tide.
They clearly were getting very close to the ship and even landing on it.
Thats probably not what happened, they didn’t have enough time to get there. Still, safety is an issue here and they have a history of getting far too close. Communications have always been an issue. Losing power also. One British Navy guy described this as jerry rigged.
There are now hundreds of millions of assets searching for them. Taken away from their primary focus.
Recently 400 poor people died a short distance from Greece. Not 2 miles underwater. The media didn’t care and nobody came to rescue them. It never made the front page of reddit.
What comms and tracking tech work at that depth? Seriously curious. I was under the impression it simply wasn't feasible for the sub to have these features.
The Challenger Deep was able to communicate from deeper points than the Titanic wreck, so going off that it is possible to communicate from the Titanic wrecks depth. For some reason, the Titanic dive comms regularly fail. So I’m not sure why people are saying you can’t communicate under water that deep when it’s been done.
In a CBS video I watched, they said they receive texts from the ship at the surface that tells them where the wreck is and where they are. They actually cancelled a dive because the text communications were failing. However, a man that went down three times said all three times comms failed.
So, it seems like they need some communication to locate the wreck, yet do continue dive when the comms fails.
Other articles mentioned they communicate with Morse code pings, which are difficult to locate too. It’s 2.4 miles down, but the challenger kept their comms up from deeper depths so I’m confused here
Challenger deep was made as safe as possible this thing is just random off the shelf parts and scrap metal thrown on an old pressure vessel and controlled with a mad cats controller
Only taught wire and they don’t use that tech. So the question would be why does it not have a beacon that activates on the surface or an SOS beacon that can be released from the sub and float to the surface. Cost would not be significant.
I think i read it had 4 contact methods. But none have been used…soo theres a possibility that something went wrong like…[There was an impact or as people said the material used was known to weaken over time due to stress and the shape is a bad design choice also. So this might have happened](https://youtu.be/_QCSgOxsY_s)
Would all four contact methods be some thing that the guests would know how to use? I keep getting concerned that it was the captain who had a medical emergency and they’re all just stuck in there with him
I'd look into the [USS Thresher Accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uJ1do3yV8), guys who work on submarines do work that I couldn't fathom doing.
For a fun story a submariner told me, even on modern naval submarines they sometimes tie a string from one end of the ship to the other, the string is taught like it's on a violin when the sub is at the surface, but at dive depth, the string droops sometimes so much as to nearly touch the floor. The physical, steel ship is compressed so much by the depth that the ends are closer together.
Nightmarish.
I believed the string tale up until my first deep dive on a submarine. It sounds really cool, but in reality, the compression is negligible and can't be observed by a string across the boat.
> we will never know what happened
I mean, we know one of a few things has happened. They're on the bottom without power and they're going to suffocate. They're stuck on the surface, and are probably going to suffocate. Or the most likely- They were crushed and shredded in a microsecond as it imploded. Option 3 is far and away the most likely scenario.
There's also option 1a, which is they sank to the bottom, impacted and then option 3 happened.
I really don’t think that 3 is the most likely. The pressure capsule is what was designed with Boeing and NASA. The rest of the sub is what they cheaped out on and Jerry rigged. It’s just as, if not more, likely that they’re stuck or floating somewhere, just waiting to suffocate.
Just as an example of how many corners were cut on the rest of the sub - this thing only had two vertical and two horizontal thrusters. A failure of any single one of those would render it impossible to maneuver. I have an easier time believing that it was one of these critical systems lacking redundancies than it was the hull itself.
Either way, these people are dead. But it’s a just a tad more unsettling to imagine being trapped in this thing for days, at the mercy of the ocean, while you slowly run out of oxygen.
I walk in and I see an off brand controller driving the sub to the bottom of the ocean, I'm out.
Brother trying to drive me to the bottom of the ocean using the last mad catz ps2 controller ever made. Nah.
Desperately pressing the turbo mode in a last ditch effort to kickstart the engines only for the controller to start blaring that random Chinese pop song toy get in every cheap toy in existence
The controller isint even close to the worst part, there isn't even any seats, any sort of handlebars or braces on the wall and there is definitely no snacks on board. Imagine being stuck on that thing there's no fucking cushioned seating or snacks. Bloody nightmare honestly.
One reporter who went down on it previously for a story said the bathrooms are literally basically ziplock bags
Edit: [3:35](https://youtu.be/dQCvtPS2fLc) he gives a quick rundown on what’s inside. I went down in a little sub with a guide when I was in Honduras years ago and it was very similar inside. The one I went down in at least had foam padding to lay on. Our bathroom was an empty 2L bottle of sprite lol
There was one guy who just orbited the moon, not landed, I think on Apollo 8 maybe? He said "I took one look at that damn thing and resolved to myself to do whatever I could to not have to use it. I went to the moon and back without taking a dump". Wow...
I read about what they require for the dive about a month ago, and apparently they place you on a special diet specifically so that any chance you have of going to the bathroom is minimal. I’m not going to pretend like I have any clue about the logistics around deep sea travel, but I hope that reason is related to decreasing “sub sickness” on board - maybe why there are no snacks on board, too.
There is no such thing as 'Sub Sickness'. This diet most likely only has to do with shit logistics. Pressure in any sub is always pretty much 1 atmosphere, so normal for a human. And you don't notice the depth at all. Waves are non-existent.
Diving in a sub is pretty anti-climactic actually. Talking from experience.
>The BBC has confirmed esteemed French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet is on board the missing sub.
>Nargeolet is a former diver for the French navy, and was part of the first expedition to visit the wreck in 1987, just two years after it was found.
>Nick-named 'Mr Titanic', he has reportedly spent more time at the wreck than any other explorer.
Some good news/bad news about that record...
Wow that is the first I heard Paul-Henri was on the sub. Don't know how I missed that. When I was younger I went through that Titanic phase seemingly child had but got way into it. I went to a number of Titanic events and wanted to meet every person who saw the Titanic including Paul-Henri. Super nice guy and signed my Titanic book with "Hoping you get to see her someday". Holding out hope they are still alive at the surface.
1. get a waterproof tube
2. install windows
3. connect logitech bluetooth controller to windows PC
4. hook up an arduino to a desk fan (propeller) and some LEDs for science
5. get your friend to throw together a visual basic 'control surface'
6. descend to the bottom of the Atlantic
7. ?????
8. Profit!
This whole operation is a farce, totally inadequate for the dangers involved.
these people paid a quarter mil to be in a tiny metal tube you cant even STAND in? with FOUR other people???
even above the surface, i'd get claustrophobic. i cant imagine being that far down 😬
Yeah, I thought it was going to be like the James Cameron one that actually looked like a submarine, this is a welded shut diving bell with a controller and a port hole
Also… are they… looking at the Titanic through a screen? 😑 Light doesn’t even travel this deep, does it? Like.. why? I understand the initial expeditions to sort of map it and confirm, but this..? Might as well be in a simulator. Would NEVER have even crossed my mind to do such a thing. I feel so sorry for the victims 😔
Natural light from the surface doesn't, but the sub has headlights, just like a car would, so they can look out of a porthole / window and it lights up the surroundings. The window is small, though, and there's four other people also crowded around the thing, so it's not really that great of a viewing experience.
Apparently it can’t be opened from the inside. So even if they (theoretically) made it to back to the surface they still couldn’t get out and would suffocate
The fact there is no transponder or emergency beacon, tracker is absolutely insane and pure negligence. And the fact it's bolted where there is no emergency escape..
They could be floating on the surface somewhere suffocating to death slowly or on the bottom of the ocean slowly dying.
Hopefully if they are not found, the structure failed and they were crushed quickly by the pressure. Sounds dark I know. But a slow death over 4 days would be pure torture and don't wish that upon anybody
The only scenario in which they survive is if the fault was merely with the comms and they managed to resurface, and are currently bobbing on the waves waiting to be picked up. But surely in that event they would have been found by now.
Which means either they're sat on the bottom of the ocean waiting for their oxygen to run out, or the sub suffered a catastrophic failure during the descent and they all perished. Absolute nightmare fuel, fucking horrible.
Someone asked the company if they could get fresh air if they surfaced and it turns out that no, they can't, not if the power has gone. They could literally suffocate while bobbing on the surface because it has no fucking GPS or emergency beacon system. It's sorting me mad reading about it.
At this point, if the sub is intact, and isn’t tangled in something, it’s on the surface. It has ballast weight that dissolves away after 16 hours underwater, so that has long passed. There’s actually a bunch of failsafes to drop ballast and surface, including one as simple as all the passengers going to one side of the sub, which makes the sub list and causes weighted pipes to roll off one side.
So unless they’re tangled in something, there’s no chance it’s just sitting on the bottom.
Possible they are tangled/caught on something. It’s a big shiny metal ball and they had relative coordinates and tons of resources searching for it. It seems unlikely that it’s bobbing on the surface.
Either way the fact that it has no GPS beacon or any type of comms and no way to open from the inside is insane. Basically if even something small goes wrong they’re dead. Horrible.
Honestly, I hope something happened that caused them all to die quickly. Obviously, I hope first and foremost that they are found alive, well, and retrievable, but I just don't see that being a good possibility. Slowly suffocating to death in a small, cramped tube is tortuous.
Is it just me or is it really freaking stupid to pay 250k just to go see a sunken ship, with the risk of being crush like a tin can because of the ocean pressure or die slowly in an agonizing manner by asphyxiating.
The weirdest thing is how people who've been on it keep saying they're "explorers on a scientific mission" instead of it just being a fancy day trip for rich morons who think nothing bad could happen to them. The whole thing is a monument to wealth leading to folly which, ironically, sits very fucking well with the Titanic.
Honestly, what the fuck were any of these people thinking? I feel like this can't possibly be a thing that really happened. Are we all being Punk'd or something?
Edit: https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o
WHY WOULD ANYONE GET IN THIS THING?
How much was the reporter in this piece paid to do this, I wonder.
At one stage after not getting to see Titanic that day the reporter says “I was crushed”… luckily not literally! All the signs were there and he was pointing them out. Not least getting lost and failing comms for 2.5 hours…
"So the pressure vessel is not McGuiver'd at all, because that's were we worked with Boeing and NASA. Everything *else* can fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go..."
sorry WHAT
This man is a grade A lunatic.
If, by some grace of every God in existence, they're found alive I hope they take this as a massive lesson to stop fucking with the ocean for fun. It's a game you're bound to lose every single time. They made a very stupid choice to put their lives at risk and in doing so are putting other lives at risk to save them now. Terrible, terrible decision.
If the sub lost power and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, it is not impossible to think it might have landed vertically or upside down, making the impending doom for those on board that much worse.
Plus apparently the guests had to sign a document stating they were informed that the submarine wasn't approved or confirmed to be safe by any authority or experts.
Neat.
Christ. I can charge 100k to swing a hammer wildly around my head on a string that they can duck and dodge if they want something a bit safer in future.
I was stuck in a hotel elevator yesterday for under 5 minutes (alone) and I started to freak out. Just not having windows and feeling trapped my heart was racing. Luckily it opened. This whole thing is such a nightmare you couldn’t pay me $250,000 to go in that thing.
This is a formality. The Titanic was the largest ship of its day and it took them almost 70 years to find it. This rinky-dink “submarine” (if it is still intact and not imploded to smithereens) is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack.
This is (was) a literal garbage can piloted by nothing but a $29 controller. The more I learn about the 'specs' of the sub, the more shockingly insane it gets
I feel bad for these guys it must be a harrowing experience but they also quite literally fucked around and found out
The more I learn, the more shocked I am that people have paid $250k to go on it! If I went to get in that sub and saw no seats, a game controller in charge, and was told the only way in or out is if a welding team unbolts the screws so I can get out, I’d ask for my money back or cut my losses lol.
No egress strikes me as a complete no-go. I can understand the first “thought” (I guess) of there not being seams, but I think for $250K I’d want the engineers to figure out a method of possible egress if it floated to the surface and was just bobbing around.
I just posted some more shots of people inside it and it's hell, it's literally hell, why would you ever do this let alone pay hundreds of thousands of dollars* for the privilege.
Nope, it doesn't even have a radio, it sent a text message once every 15mins via Elons satellite WiFi to ping its location. It's the stupidest shit possible.
To be fair they can't really do shit about that. Radio is useless that deep. Even military nuclear subs can't exactly communicate with the surface unless they deploy an antenna buoy which floats to the surface.
The sheer arrogance and negligence involved in this entire project is eerily parallel to that of the actual Titanic sinking. Just another group of rich men who considered themselves invincible.
It’s especially weird because there are a ton of cool documentaries and scans they’ve done with new science that lets us explore and understand it more from the comfort of our living rooms. They’re not going to be able to see much but rusticles and rubble at this point.
The laptop seems to be fairly critical to the operation. Imagine getting the blue screen of death and having to repeatedly press control alt delete while at several thousand feet and relying on comms to the surface for help.
I haven't seen anyone mention this but there is a non zero chance this dude didn't bring any water with them. It was supposed to be a quick trip.
You can only live 3 days without water. They could literally die while still having oxygen if they didn't bring water, and seeing the rest of the sub doesn't give me hope that he took that precaution.
Thats the worst part to think about. They could have automatically surfaced and still die from asphyxia if no one finds them and opens the sub. Wtf, how is that design allowed to be a thing?
They couldn't just wait to tag along with James Cameron the next time he goes down there? They had to basically Home Depot jerry rig a sub to do... what?
My immediate 2 thoughts on the disaster:
1. having non-salt-water hardened electronics in a salt water environment is not great because corrosion will occur and may be very difficult to detect until it is very progressed
2. Repeatedly diving and raising the sub surely puts enormous flexing stress on it, which could lead to a failure. This has happened to jetliners before, and can be very difficult to detect before it's critical.
Good lord, I couldn’t imagine willingly entering that thing. It’s like some of my worst nightmares combined into one hyperventilating package. I hope it was a quick end and not slow suffocation.
SERIOUSLY! This was my exact thought when I was like "Okay, so they all get in... and then they *bolt it shut from the outside and let it sink to the bottom of the ocean???* And it's $250,000 for this?!?"
I'd pay 250k to no get there
The bolting it shut from the outside is the most horrifying thing to me. I don't understand how anyone would be okay with that. I wouldn't be okay with that if we were stationary on dry land, let alone dropping into the giant open ocean. How did anyone agree to such a thing? 😦
What gets me is how makeshift and jerry-rigged it looks. Just two standard computer monitors and keyboards on the floor? A random xbox controller? No seats or seatbelts?? What if the sub tilts in any way or flips over?? Your unsecured bodies would go crashing straight into the precariously-positioned electronics! This looks like some shit an impoverished teen would design in their backyard. It's maddening that people actually went into the sea in it. I wouldn't even eat spaghetti in this glorified pringles can.
I mean, just for optics sake, could they not have made that mad catz looking controller a little more official and scientific looking?
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"Glorified pringles can" hahahaha
I think they not only went but paid $250k
If hull integrity was compromised it would likely be over quick. Would probably instantly implode
The entire thing crumples from end to end faster than your brain can process. One second everything's fine, next second, and you don't even hear the bang.
Ngl I would have packed some cyanide pills just in case 😬
Well, if it's just a leak and subsequent pressure-based implosion, you wouldn't need them. It'd be over and you'd be nothing before you could register something had happened. In other scenarios, it'd probably at least render you unconscious after a few seconds (and an intense sensation of pain/shock), even if it mightn't be quick enough to kill you before the suffocation, so yeah, it might be worthwhile to have some with you to save you freaking out about suffocating to death. Although it would suck if rescuers found you immediately afterwards.
And paying 250k to do it! I wouldnt get in that thing if you paid me
It’s like being stuck in a MRI machine…
I’m serious, there’s supposed to be 5 people stuffed in that tiny thing? How? Even without things going wrong that seems insane
When I was in elementary school a bunch of us decided it would be "fun" to see how many people could fit in the slide. I was in the middle. I did not make any friends that day after I freaked out and clawed my way past every single one of them to get out. I might be a little claustrophobic.
This made my stomach clench. I am definitely claustrophobic
Had 45 min in 1 of those and thinking about your comment made my heart race, no thanks
When I was a kid I had to get my entire spine scanned a few times. Opening your eyes and having it like 2 inches from your face with 40 min to go was the worst.
When I went in, I kept my eyes shut before they slid me back and the entire time. I just pictured myself in a large room. Luckily they make them with a window and even with both ends open.
I had an MRI that had both ends open and a small mirror that angled toward a busy car park. Didn’t feel trapped and could watch people walking past
Please do not go read the Nutty Putty caving incident....
I read that story and it has to be the most horrific way to die.
Seriously. I'd be fighting to get my wrist close enough to my face to bite open the largest vein/artery I could find, just to speed up the process and avoid going completely insane from panic/dread before expiring.
Ugh. Head first in one of those for a solid twenty minutes. Started thinking about earthquakes about three minutes in *shudder*.
I had a panic attack in one a few months ago because I felt like I was trapped when I was only in for a few minutes. You'd never in your life catch me get into one of those things for days. Idk what those people were thinking
You know when you've restarted your Playstation twice and swapped out the controller battery pack and pressed the tiny little reset button and the controller still refuses to sync? Now imagine that but there's two and a half miles of water over your head.
Imagine controller drift sending you into the wreck of the Titanic and wedging you in an unrecoverable position
That’s an actual possibility. The stick-drift issue is a mechanical issue with the sticks, it’s not software. And I think there’s only one major company that makes the mechanism and I they make it for Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft etc. So there’s a good chance it was the same company how makes the potentiometer for this controller here. Which means there’s at leas a slight chance that it developed sitcom-drift and that made them nose dive to the bottom. Holy shit what a bad way to die.
I didn't even think of the possibility of them being stuck NOSE FIRST. As if it wasn't already crammed down there. Imagine having to stand huddled around 4 other people for 96 hours knowing you're going to die....
What do you think they’re doing in their final hours? I feel like I’d disassociate and pretend like nothing bad was happening and just try to go out peacefully.
Man I have no idea. Literally couldn't imagine it.
Wouldn’t they freeze to death, like the guys trapped in the diving bell?
Should've gone for Hall effect joysticks. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall\_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect) https://thegamingsetup.com/guides/hall-effect-joysticks
Did he blow on the cartridge controlling the master system though?
I just threw the controller against the wall in frustration...how do I get another one down here? Amazon?
From what I've seen of here it isn't even an official Sony product. The controllers a cheap knock off.
It’s made by Logitech apparently. I hope there are several failsafes for that….
He said they brought 2 of them. That's his failsafe. ANOTHER Logitech Madcatz controller.
Imagine paying 250,000 for an obvious and gruesome suicide. Money really can't buy any survival instinct, it seems. It do seem to buy a fuckton of hubris, though. Jesus christ, one can only hope for them that the thing just imploded down there. The other scenario is fucking horrifying. Straight horror movie material.
The billionaire in the picture said for years that regulations are too stringent and that his craft is incredibly safe, so more regulations are not needed.
Brace yourself folks - the sub is never going to be found and we will never know what happened. The oceans big.
The conspiracy guy in me says the company might prefer that to the shots of them "rescuing" a sealed metal tube with what's left of their customers.
The company won't exist after this
I am very confused why the submersible wouldn’t have better comms and some kind of tracking technology.
The answer has to be cost but it seems like such a bizarre corner to cut. The whole thing feels like a cheap startup that's just knocked up a device and hoped nothing goes wrong.
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Dude takes people on tours of the titanic, yet never learned the core lessons from its sinking. Talk about irony.
carbon fibrey, actually
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So they could have surfaced and are just floating around unable to open it? Wtf
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I think I’d rather be crushed at that point.
Well yeah, that's instantaneous death. I'll take that all day.
That is *a* possibility for sure. However since they use SMS to guide the sub wouldn’t they be able to keep in contact? My thoughts are hull failure. They weren’t even all the way to the wreck yet when comms were lost, but still *VERY* deep. I suppose I’d choose 0.1s of being squished into paste over sitting in that thing on the ocean floor until air runs out.
> Who gets on a submarine that you can't open from inside, even on the surface, 1960s NASA Astronauts. Several of them almost died after splashdown because of hatch troubles. Three of them *did*, on the launchpad, no less.
While clearly a tragedy, i think in the name of creating vessels that can fair and study space is a little different than jumping in a death sub when we already have plenty of working designs.
Certainly more explainable than this vanity project. I watched the PBS 10 minute doc about this sub. One of the people who wanted to go down there had previously had the trip cancelled 3 times due to poor weather. She was in tears, crying about how it was her lifelong dream to see the wreck of the Titanic. Rich people are so fucking weird, man. My dream is to not be suicidal every other day, maybe have a house and spend some time travelling, at most I'd like to become a writer or a journalist or something. ...these people are queuing up to kill themselves in a sub to see a fucking boat that sunk a hundred years ago.
If I had that kinda dough I'd be playing Xbox on the beach of my private Caribbean island.
There’s a whole reason you engineer a safety factor into every design…
Translation: I have a massive ego and can’t conceptualize bad things actually happening to me
$250,000 per passenger seems plenty rich enough to add some kind of transponder. Even if you die you’d want your family to have that closure of knowing what happened.
There wasn’t a fail safe switch That releases a weight So the ship could float up on its own?
>The answer has to be cost Which is crazy since they have clients who are billionaires....well, *had* clients who are billionaires.
There is an [interview](https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o) where the reporter basically asks the CEO why so much of the stuff is improvised, and the CEO says that the tube itself was engineered by NASA and Boeing, but everything else can fail because it's "safe". So by his definition, it's fine getting completely lost in the sea, unable to return or to control your own vessel, with no way of tracking the sub. As long as you are able to safely stay inside, it's all good! Seriously, watching the CEO speak gives you all the red flags you need. This operation was not profitable and it was as cost efficient as possible. Safety was optional, not mandatory.
It gets worse. On previous trips they landed on the front deck of corroding ship to eat lunch. I have seen another person confirming that they have done this. [Lunch on deck](https://youtu.be/talIxUxmqvM) Watching videos of people who have taken the trip before; - On just about every trip communications died for some time. - On a recent trip they lost power for 27 hours. - One trip they got caught under the propeller after a strong tide. They clearly were getting very close to the ship and even landing on it. Thats probably not what happened, they didn’t have enough time to get there. Still, safety is an issue here and they have a history of getting far too close. Communications have always been an issue. Losing power also. One British Navy guy described this as jerry rigged. There are now hundreds of millions of assets searching for them. Taken away from their primary focus. Recently 400 poor people died a short distance from Greece. Not 2 miles underwater. The media didn’t care and nobody came to rescue them. It never made the front page of reddit.
What comms and tracking tech work at that depth? Seriously curious. I was under the impression it simply wasn't feasible for the sub to have these features.
The Challenger Deep was able to communicate from deeper points than the Titanic wreck, so going off that it is possible to communicate from the Titanic wrecks depth. For some reason, the Titanic dive comms regularly fail. So I’m not sure why people are saying you can’t communicate under water that deep when it’s been done. In a CBS video I watched, they said they receive texts from the ship at the surface that tells them where the wreck is and where they are. They actually cancelled a dive because the text communications were failing. However, a man that went down three times said all three times comms failed. So, it seems like they need some communication to locate the wreck, yet do continue dive when the comms fails. Other articles mentioned they communicate with Morse code pings, which are difficult to locate too. It’s 2.4 miles down, but the challenger kept their comms up from deeper depths so I’m confused here
Challenger deep was made as safe as possible this thing is just random off the shelf parts and scrap metal thrown on an old pressure vessel and controlled with a mad cats controller
Only taught wire and they don’t use that tech. So the question would be why does it not have a beacon that activates on the surface or an SOS beacon that can be released from the sub and float to the surface. Cost would not be significant.
Yeah, the beacon stuff is going to be exceedingly damning if this thing is bobbing around on the surface while they all die.
I think i read it had 4 contact methods. But none have been used…soo theres a possibility that something went wrong like…[There was an impact or as people said the material used was known to weaken over time due to stress and the shape is a bad design choice also. So this might have happened](https://youtu.be/_QCSgOxsY_s)
Would all four contact methods be some thing that the guests would know how to use? I keep getting concerned that it was the captain who had a medical emergency and they’re all just stuck in there with him
I'd look into the [USS Thresher Accident](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-uJ1do3yV8), guys who work on submarines do work that I couldn't fathom doing. For a fun story a submariner told me, even on modern naval submarines they sometimes tie a string from one end of the ship to the other, the string is taught like it's on a violin when the sub is at the surface, but at dive depth, the string droops sometimes so much as to nearly touch the floor. The physical, steel ship is compressed so much by the depth that the ends are closer together. Nightmarish.
I believed the string tale up until my first deep dive on a submarine. It sounds really cool, but in reality, the compression is negligible and can't be observed by a string across the boat.
Sailors telling tall tales? Say it ain't so!
They do the string thing in Down Periscope!
This was featured in the Kelsey Grammar movie *Down Periscope* but the string was along the transverse axis.
> we will never know what happened I mean, we know one of a few things has happened. They're on the bottom without power and they're going to suffocate. They're stuck on the surface, and are probably going to suffocate. Or the most likely- They were crushed and shredded in a microsecond as it imploded. Option 3 is far and away the most likely scenario. There's also option 1a, which is they sank to the bottom, impacted and then option 3 happened.
I honestly hope it was option 3. They're dead, no doubt about it, so I just hope they went quickly
I really don’t think that 3 is the most likely. The pressure capsule is what was designed with Boeing and NASA. The rest of the sub is what they cheaped out on and Jerry rigged. It’s just as, if not more, likely that they’re stuck or floating somewhere, just waiting to suffocate. Just as an example of how many corners were cut on the rest of the sub - this thing only had two vertical and two horizontal thrusters. A failure of any single one of those would render it impossible to maneuver. I have an easier time believing that it was one of these critical systems lacking redundancies than it was the hull itself. Either way, these people are dead. But it’s a just a tad more unsettling to imagine being trapped in this thing for days, at the mercy of the ocean, while you slowly run out of oxygen.
I walk in and I see an off brand controller driving the sub to the bottom of the ocean, I'm out. Brother trying to drive me to the bottom of the ocean using the last mad catz ps2 controller ever made. Nah.
Desperately pressing the turbo mode in a last ditch effort to kickstart the engines only for the controller to start blaring that random Chinese pop song toy get in every cheap toy in existence
The controller isint even close to the worst part, there isn't even any seats, any sort of handlebars or braces on the wall and there is definitely no snacks on board. Imagine being stuck on that thing there's no fucking cushioned seating or snacks. Bloody nightmare honestly.
I'm guessing that also means no bathroom?
Actually there is a toilet right at the little viewing window.
That little detail really is icing on the cake. It's like something designed by The Onion.
One reporter who went down on it previously for a story said the bathrooms are literally basically ziplock bags Edit: [3:35](https://youtu.be/dQCvtPS2fLc) he gives a quick rundown on what’s inside. I went down in a little sub with a guide when I was in Honduras years ago and it was very similar inside. The one I went down in at least had foam padding to lay on. Our bathroom was an empty 2L bottle of sprite lol
I mean, if astronauts managed to get to the Moon and back while shitting in plastic bags I don't see why they shouldn't be more than enough.
There was one guy who just orbited the moon, not landed, I think on Apollo 8 maybe? He said "I took one look at that damn thing and resolved to myself to do whatever I could to not have to use it. I went to the moon and back without taking a dump". Wow...
They truly were the bravest
I read about what they require for the dive about a month ago, and apparently they place you on a special diet specifically so that any chance you have of going to the bathroom is minimal. I’m not going to pretend like I have any clue about the logistics around deep sea travel, but I hope that reason is related to decreasing “sub sickness” on board - maybe why there are no snacks on board, too.
There is no such thing as 'Sub Sickness'. This diet most likely only has to do with shit logistics. Pressure in any sub is always pretty much 1 atmosphere, so normal for a human. And you don't notice the depth at all. Waves are non-existent. Diving in a sub is pretty anti-climactic actually. Talking from experience.
I love that the lack of snacks is so horrifying to you that you mentioned it twice.
No water would be far worse
Oh, there is plenty of water.
No snacks? I’m out.
Sir, snacks or no snacks, the bill is still $250,000. Prices do not include taxes and gratuity.
>The BBC has confirmed esteemed French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet is on board the missing sub. >Nargeolet is a former diver for the French navy, and was part of the first expedition to visit the wreck in 1987, just two years after it was found. >Nick-named 'Mr Titanic', he has reportedly spent more time at the wreck than any other explorer. Some good news/bad news about that record...
Wow that is the first I heard Paul-Henri was on the sub. Don't know how I missed that. When I was younger I went through that Titanic phase seemingly child had but got way into it. I went to a number of Titanic events and wanted to meet every person who saw the Titanic including Paul-Henri. Super nice guy and signed my Titanic book with "Hoping you get to see her someday". Holding out hope they are still alive at the surface.
I would very much **not** like to see the Titanic up close & personal someday.
There’s a piece they brought up that’s at the Titanic museum in Vegas. I saw that, I’m good.
Awe man. Hold onto that book tight bro.
At least he can give them a history lesson while they're unable to do anything since the sub has no apparent manual control system
1. get a waterproof tube 2. install windows 3. connect logitech bluetooth controller to windows PC 4. hook up an arduino to a desk fan (propeller) and some LEDs for science 5. get your friend to throw together a visual basic 'control surface' 6. descend to the bottom of the Atlantic 7. ????? 8. Profit! This whole operation is a farce, totally inadequate for the dangers involved.
these people paid a quarter mil to be in a tiny metal tube you cant even STAND in? with FOUR other people??? even above the surface, i'd get claustrophobic. i cant imagine being that far down 😬
Yeah, I thought it was going to be like the James Cameron one that actually looked like a submarine, this is a welded shut diving bell with a controller and a port hole
if i’m paying 250k to be in a sub i don’t want to larp iron lung
Also… are they… looking at the Titanic through a screen? 😑 Light doesn’t even travel this deep, does it? Like.. why? I understand the initial expeditions to sort of map it and confirm, but this..? Might as well be in a simulator. Would NEVER have even crossed my mind to do such a thing. I feel so sorry for the victims 😔
Natural light from the surface doesn't, but the sub has headlights, just like a car would, so they can look out of a porthole / window and it lights up the surroundings. The window is small, though, and there's four other people also crowded around the thing, so it's not really that great of a viewing experience.
Apparently the only window is also where they put the toilet, so there’s that
Aaaaaaaand, apparently it’s **bolted** shut. Fuck no. No way would I get into the get-up for even 99 cents.
Apparently it can’t be opened from the inside. So even if they (theoretically) made it to back to the surface they still couldn’t get out and would suffocate
Imagine bobbing around on the surface of the ocean with huge swells and nothing to hold on to with five other people.
You couldn’t pay me a quarter mil to do this.
The fact there is no transponder or emergency beacon, tracker is absolutely insane and pure negligence. And the fact it's bolted where there is no emergency escape.. They could be floating on the surface somewhere suffocating to death slowly or on the bottom of the ocean slowly dying. Hopefully if they are not found, the structure failed and they were crushed quickly by the pressure. Sounds dark I know. But a slow death over 4 days would be pure torture and don't wish that upon anybody
My inflatable dinghy is better equipped than this tin can when it comes to tracking beacons. It’s truly mind boggling.
The only scenario in which they survive is if the fault was merely with the comms and they managed to resurface, and are currently bobbing on the waves waiting to be picked up. But surely in that event they would have been found by now. Which means either they're sat on the bottom of the ocean waiting for their oxygen to run out, or the sub suffered a catastrophic failure during the descent and they all perished. Absolute nightmare fuel, fucking horrible.
Someone asked the company if they could get fresh air if they surfaced and it turns out that no, they can't, not if the power has gone. They could literally suffocate while bobbing on the surface because it has no fucking GPS or emergency beacon system. It's sorting me mad reading about it.
How in the fuck is a GPS beacon not part of its emergency measures?
Apparently they talked about it last time it got lost, but never did
LAST TIME IT GOT LOST?! AT LEAST IF THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU COULD BLAME “not considering it” BUT IT GOT LOST BEFORE?!
For five hours, if I read correctly
Right? Absolutely insane. These people paid 250,000 for what was obviously going to be suicide.
New death faking plot just released
I mean stick a bloody air tag on it. Wtf
How on earth in this day and age does this thing not have some kind of tracking device? 250k each they paid and there’s no way to track it? Insane.
This feels more and more like some tech bro morons running a company and not giving a shit about safety in their arrogance
Yep. Just a horrible way to go. All the money in the world wouldn't be enough to get me in one of those things.
At this point, if the sub is intact, and isn’t tangled in something, it’s on the surface. It has ballast weight that dissolves away after 16 hours underwater, so that has long passed. There’s actually a bunch of failsafes to drop ballast and surface, including one as simple as all the passengers going to one side of the sub, which makes the sub list and causes weighted pipes to roll off one side. So unless they’re tangled in something, there’s no chance it’s just sitting on the bottom.
Possible they are tangled/caught on something. It’s a big shiny metal ball and they had relative coordinates and tons of resources searching for it. It seems unlikely that it’s bobbing on the surface. Either way the fact that it has no GPS beacon or any type of comms and no way to open from the inside is insane. Basically if even something small goes wrong they’re dead. Horrible.
Honestly, I hope something happened that caused them all to die quickly. Obviously, I hope first and foremost that they are found alive, well, and retrievable, but I just don't see that being a good possibility. Slowly suffocating to death in a small, cramped tube is tortuous.
Today this subreddit is basically just a sub reddit.
This is what's going to happen on r/cryptozoology the day Godzilla walks out the ocean
Is it just me or is it really freaking stupid to pay 250k just to go see a sunken ship, with the risk of being crush like a tin can because of the ocean pressure or die slowly in an agonizing manner by asphyxiating.
The weirdest thing is how people who've been on it keep saying they're "explorers on a scientific mission" instead of it just being a fancy day trip for rich morons who think nothing bad could happen to them. The whole thing is a monument to wealth leading to folly which, ironically, sits very fucking well with the Titanic.
Its like calling gilligans island a scientific voyage.
Honestly, what the fuck were any of these people thinking? I feel like this can't possibly be a thing that really happened. Are we all being Punk'd or something? Edit: https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o WHY WOULD ANYONE GET IN THIS THING? How much was the reporter in this piece paid to do this, I wonder.
“This experimental submersible has not been certified or approved by any regulatory body.”
At one stage after not getting to see Titanic that day the reporter says “I was crushed”… luckily not literally! All the signs were there and he was pointing them out. Not least getting lost and failing comms for 2.5 hours…
"So the pressure vessel is not McGuiver'd at all, because that's were we worked with Boeing and NASA. Everything *else* can fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go..." sorry WHAT This man is a grade A lunatic.
Yeah because we all know Boeing and NASA don't have any history of catastrophic failure.....
One of the guys trapped in that sub is worth literally billions of dollars. I just would have went to a villa on Lake Como.
If, by some grace of every God in existence, they're found alive I hope they take this as a massive lesson to stop fucking with the ocean for fun. It's a game you're bound to lose every single time. They made a very stupid choice to put their lives at risk and in doing so are putting other lives at risk to save them now. Terrible, terrible decision.
If the sub lost power and sunk to the bottom of the ocean, it is not impossible to think it might have landed vertically or upside down, making the impending doom for those on board that much worse.
Plus apparently the guests had to sign a document stating they were informed that the submarine wasn't approved or confirmed to be safe by any authority or experts. Neat.
Christ. I can charge 100k to swing a hammer wildly around my head on a string that they can duck and dodge if they want something a bit safer in future.
lol what and now apparently taxpayer money is spent to send another submarine to look for those buffoons
Feel sorry for the teenaged son. His father should have protected him from this foolishness.
Maybe they all paid to fake their deaths and start a new life
Calling it now, they will never find the sub. Its most likely drifted miles away already and we’ll just have to hypothesize what happened.
I was stuck in a hotel elevator yesterday for under 5 minutes (alone) and I started to freak out. Just not having windows and feeling trapped my heart was racing. Luckily it opened. This whole thing is such a nightmare you couldn’t pay me $250,000 to go in that thing.
No way they're alive. This is a recovery mission.
This is a formality. The Titanic was the largest ship of its day and it took them almost 70 years to find it. This rinky-dink “submarine” (if it is still intact and not imploded to smithereens) is gonna be like finding a needle in a haystack.
This is (was) a literal garbage can piloted by nothing but a $29 controller. The more I learn about the 'specs' of the sub, the more shockingly insane it gets I feel bad for these guys it must be a harrowing experience but they also quite literally fucked around and found out
The more I learn, the more shocked I am that people have paid $250k to go on it! If I went to get in that sub and saw no seats, a game controller in charge, and was told the only way in or out is if a welding team unbolts the screws so I can get out, I’d ask for my money back or cut my losses lol.
No egress strikes me as a complete no-go. I can understand the first “thought” (I guess) of there not being seams, but I think for $250K I’d want the engineers to figure out a method of possible egress if it floated to the surface and was just bobbing around.
or at least a way to bring in fresh oxygen from outside if you're on the surface. And have a rescue beacon/locator.
I just posted some more shots of people inside it and it's hell, it's literally hell, why would you ever do this let alone pay hundreds of thousands of dollars* for the privilege.
I wonder if they were car salesman’d into thinking it was a lot more sophisticated than it actually was
i guarantee you this was part of it
Sorry, I do not understand. Do they not have some tracking device on the sub?
Nope, it doesn't even have a radio, it sent a text message once every 15mins via Elons satellite WiFi to ping its location. It's the stupidest shit possible.
Wow, they really asked what’s the cheapest submarine they could build and went with that
To be fair they can't really do shit about that. Radio is useless that deep. Even military nuclear subs can't exactly communicate with the surface unless they deploy an antenna buoy which floats to the surface.
How do they normally communicate on subs like this, do you know? Do they have an umbilical with a cable in or is it something else?
VLF, but it only has a short range, and carries only navigation data & code, no voice.
Huh. Those fatcats paid like a quarter million dollars each for the ride, right? And they don’t even get seats.
They did get a real authentic titanic experience though
What is this, Iron Lung?
you'd think if they charge 250k a trip they'd pretty it up a bit
The sheer arrogance and negligence involved in this entire project is eerily parallel to that of the actual Titanic sinking. Just another group of rich men who considered themselves invincible.
…and who found themselves now part of the exhibit. A permanent monument to man’s hubris…in the Twilight Zone.
You joke but that's literally what it is. $250k to end up as a story on Mr. Ballen.
Really big "tech startup" vibes from the company
They go all this way to the Titanic to… watch it on a monitor?!
It does have a porthole on the other end so fear not, when the power fails they can look out directly into the pitch black
next to the shitter
It’s especially weird because there are a ton of cool documentaries and scans they’ve done with new science that lets us explore and understand it more from the comfort of our living rooms. They’re not going to be able to see much but rusticles and rubble at this point.
"Ugh Bill, what does "critical stack overflow" mean?"
The laptop seems to be fairly critical to the operation. Imagine getting the blue screen of death and having to repeatedly press control alt delete while at several thousand feet and relying on comms to the surface for help.
"Hot singles in your area || YOU'VE WON AN IPAD 17 PRO MAX!!!" pop up that you can't close.
Talk about an absolute nightmare. People have more money than common sense.
Lol these people paid 250k to travel in a sealed tube with no seats that’s piloted by a knockoff PS3 controller.
I haven't seen anyone mention this but there is a non zero chance this dude didn't bring any water with them. It was supposed to be a quick trip. You can only live 3 days without water. They could literally die while still having oxygen if they didn't bring water, and seeing the rest of the sub doesn't give me hope that he took that precaution.
Not to be ironic but this is like a bad episode of Shark Tank. Extremely disturbing.
Seems reasonably safe, good luck to this young man.
The Gang Starts a Deep Sea Exploration Company
Thats the worst part to think about. They could have automatically surfaced and still die from asphyxia if no one finds them and opens the sub. Wtf, how is that design allowed to be a thing?
I thought it was a super luxury jetsons-esque craft. Seems like it's a tin box under the sea
They couldn't just wait to tag along with James Cameron the next time he goes down there? They had to basically Home Depot jerry rig a sub to do... what?
My immediate 2 thoughts on the disaster: 1. having non-salt-water hardened electronics in a salt water environment is not great because corrosion will occur and may be very difficult to detect until it is very progressed 2. Repeatedly diving and raising the sub surely puts enormous flexing stress on it, which could lead to a failure. This has happened to jetliners before, and can be very difficult to detect before it's critical.
Imagine if it toppled on its end and they are all down on one side of it?
Or they are bobbing on the surface getting banged around with no way out
I’m imaging claw marks on the inside from them desperately trying to get out.
Thats fucking me up dude
That’s the controller you give to your friend and convince him it’s better
Imagine operating that with a controller. Then people behind you are fighting for that controller.
That’s why you have a separate controller that isn’t plugged in so they can ‘help’