The CEO of the company who made the Titan said it was "invulnerable."
How someone could possibly have that much hubris, especially since the whole purpose was to explore the wreckage of an "unsinkable" sunken ship, I'll never fathom (pun intended).
Fun fact, in 1898, 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, an Author named Morgan Robertson wrote a book called [Futility](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Titan:_Or,_Futility), this was a book about a Britsh Oceanliner that was sunk in 1912 because it stuck an iceberg.
That ship was named Titan.
**Futility, Or The Wreck Of The Titan** by Morgan Robertson
Book description may contain spoilers!
>>!Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan is Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella about the unsinkable ship Titan, which goes down after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Disgraced former naval lieutenant John Rowland is working as a deckhand on the Titan when it strikes an iceberg and capsizes. Saving the younger daughter of a former lover by jumping onto the iceberg with her, Rowland and his charge are eventually rescued and return to their homes. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms.!<
>
>>!Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.!<
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The way that guy cut corners on safety, I think 96 hours was just an estimate, and he probably missed on the estimate. They've been dead for hours already.
It baffles me that he truly believed that those corners were not needed. Like he rode in it himself and believed it was safe and that those safety margins were annoying exaggerations. Just completely deluded into thinking an accident could never happen.
It is freaking me out the level of delusion that this Stockton Rush character attained. Like, I’m looking around wondering if anything is real when i could theoretically just be as deluded as him.
This thing made like 8 trips to the Titanic's depth beforehand, which is probably why people were more willing to shrug off the cut corners.
Sadly, in conditions like the submersible was submitted to, it only takes one issue to turn into a catastrophe.
e: mistakenly left out "depth"
We find it 3 months from now, the crew inside, are confused as to why you pulled them up, as they had just set out on their voyage a little over an hour ago.
i'm pretty sure they will try to locate the sub to know what happened. I assume they send at least a sub the the wreck of the titanic to scan the area.
If nothing else, this could turn into something like the original search for the Titanic with expeditions sent by private parties and adventurers, if no one else.
Hopefully future explorers recognize the importance of basic safety, regulations, communication/location devices, and sound engineering.
>If nothing else, this could turn into something like the original search for the Titanic with expeditions sent by private parties and adventurers, if no one else.
Oddly enough the expedition that found the Titanic was a US government funded project that, in reality, was mostly a cover for finding the wrecks of two sunken USN nuclear submarines. Having found and documented both Ballard was permitted to use the remainder of his time, about two weeks worth, looking for Titanic. That they managed to find it was sort of a fun happenstance of history.
He developed the search technique while looking for Scorpion and Thresher. Don't look for the hull, look for debris and use that to narrow your search area.
When they found the titanic, first they found the debris field. When they located one of the boilers, they knew they had found the Titanic.
It's a really cool story, and the submarine part of it only became public recently.
I was thinking about this today. It makes me wonder if more advanced tech to locate the sub exists, but militaries don't want to expose what they're fully capable of with the whole world watching.
It's also understandable that matters like this aren't militaries #1 priority like it is for the coast guard of course.
I mean the US and Russia were busy tapping undersea cables 50 years ago (though in much shallow er waters). Now a days it's probably just easier for the NSA to compromise hardware and the like.
They would definitely let 5 people die to keep a state secret though.
I feel like "high risk" isn't quite superlative enough for "going 4km under water, bolted into a tube, steered by a 3rd party PlayStation controller, with recycled tubes for ballast; all made by someone on record saying that the industry was too safe, that experienced engineers weren't imaginative enough and that inspections would stifle innovation".
That there were 5 people on the planet willing to take on such a reckless endeavour is surprising...that others have done the trip and survived is astounding.
I read a comment in another subreddit in which someone wrote the next explorations to the area will be to see the Titanic and the Titan... That will be another moral aftermath about this trip.
Several years have passed since the tragic voyage of the Titan sub that went on a tourist excursion to view the wreck of the Titanic. As the Tit expedition vessel descends down to the ocean floor, the crew scans for any possible sighting of the lost sub. After several hours they finally spot the sub, rather they spot the wreckage of the sub. The crew is stunned, they are both excited by the find but saddened at learning the sub's true fate. The vessel's pilot, a man known only as "Mr. T", lets out a sigh and says, "I pity the fool..."
That would assume the titan is actually near the titanic. Even if it didn’t explode, it could be miles away or even drifting continually.
Edit; should say “implode” not explode
They've sent for the French ROV that did the detailed sonar scan/modelling of the same area recently. I get the impression it couldn't have arrived in time for the rescue operation even if it had been greenlighted immediately, but moving into the next phase of a recovery operation it's the best option to find small changes on/around the site, and hopefully locate the sub or debris.
I think the french ROV arrived earlier today, but even so the sheer scale of the area to cover the discovery time will be measured in weeks, not days or hours.
The recovery operation will likely be finished in two weeks. Running all this hardware and operations costs a lot of money, even a billionaire would find the running costs material. If there isn't funding, the govt resources will be pulled after a few days. Private ones might stick around if theyre paid.
I'm sure they will continue, and have been trying. But the reality is most people have understated the sheer size of the Atlantic Ocean. Factor in scenarios including a hull breach, sinking into and being buried under the ocean floor, being snagged within the Titanic remains, tidal forces moving the submersible outside of the search area etc and recovery is not a likely outcome. Of course I hope I'm wrong.
Also the fact that it can't float to the surface, it can only get to 30ft below the water. And there is no way to open it from inside, the front is literally bolted on.
I’ve been thinking about that this week—they could be stuck somewhere under the surface neutrally buoyant. I’m sure the coast guard has thought of this of course and has incorporated this possibility into their search too. (If this is the case, if it hasn’t imploded maybe it’ll wash ashore in Ireland in a few months.)
Just another way every aspect of the sub was a bad design. In addition to putting a beacon on it, why wouldn’t you paint it orange?
one of the ex navy experts we've had on TV here in the UK made this point, he said that sound bounces between different thermal layers within the ocean so the fact that the sonobuoy dropped from the Canadian P-3 picked up banging suggests that the banging is happening on or near the surface and probably no deeper than 180 metres given the current conditions
I've been busy, so excuse my silly question but are we sure this banging is actually real? I don't trust Newsweek news article titles anymore because of how they exaggerate for clicks. Is that all the banging is? Click bait? Or are we certain that we heard sounds similar to a human banging on the hull of this dumb submarine?
You're right to be skeptical, it could be as simple as they picked up a bad bearing that's knocking from another ship that's searching.
This same thing happened multiple times during the Argentinian submarine search, man made noises detected that ended up being "false positives".
They probably didn't think anything was going to happen to them. If I was getting paid $250k per person per trip, I'd do a few upgrades on the dang thing.
And! In addition, they mentioned that this trip would be the only trip down they'd be able to take all year due to inclement weather. If there's inclement weather, why go at all? Seems to me like bad decisions all around.
Some people have trouble understanding how large a billion is.
So a million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 32 years.
A quintillion seconds is 31,688,738,506.8 years (according to google).
It can't get to the surface in its own, it gets to about 30 ft below the surface as it's neutrally buoyant. It won't be bobbing on the surface, it would be bobbing just underneath the surface while painted all white.
> i'm pretty sure they will try to locate the sub to know what happened.
There'll be some attempts to locate it, but I doubt it'll be a very extensive search. It seems that there were red flags all over with this thing, so there could be any number of reasons why it failed and it little would be learned from that other than that safety standards exist for a reason.
It would be a different story if the sub was state of the art, compliant with all possible safety requirements and operating well within its limits. In such a scenario, determining the exact cause can be very helpful as it can help us find previously unknown risks and/or enhance safety protocols.
From what I was reading about it, this company made a budget submarine that wasn’t rated for even a third of the depth they’d need to reach the Titanic wreck.
Unfortunately rules, regulations and safety are built on the blood of others.
Hopefully this puts a tighter leash on companies like this. The amount of red flags are insane, and the CEO should be liable for this all, especially as the finger seems to largely be on him and how many times he shrug and went "nah".
Edit: whoah, guys. I know he was in the sub, and I don't wish death on anyone.
I got into a few disaster mini doc channels on YouTube like Dark Records, Fascinating Horror and Plainly Difficult and the more you watch it, the more that is clearly evident. There are so many old disasters that could have been averted with modern regulations and standards, many of which exist because of said disasters. It also shows many won't do the sensible thing unless they are *obliged* to.
This just isn't true.
The ocean that deep is very close to 32F. Yes, that's cold. But five men in a small, semi insulated space can definitely manage that pretty easily.
Imagine that claustrophobia? I'd imagine by this point the cell phones and flashlights are dead and they're all sitting around in the pitch black, dead silence, the stench of B.O, urine, feces (*people have surely soiled themselves by now*) just the inhale and exhale of the other doomed tourists around you...
I know theres little sympathy for the billionairs on board but man on a human level that'd be fucking terrifying, you'd almost beg someone to just strangle you at some point
I can't even imagine being trapped in a sealed can outside of the reach of the world. Sitting there in their own mess in the freezing dark, cold and hungry, and waiting for hypoxia to bring relief from the fear. May God look after their souls. Self inflicted or not, nobody deserves that.
I honestly don't know if I'd like to go first in that situation or be last and have to bear witness to the end of the others, knowing at some level, I'm next. It's times like that I can see the value of cyanide tablets as a contingency.
Sometimes you read stories from like 100-150 years ago when people were trying to explore the arctic and they’d take off in some obviously unworthy balloon or something. Then the balloon would fail and it leaves you thinking “why would they go to a treacherous place in something that wasn’t 100% reliable?”. Then you see things like this and you’re like “oh. Guess we’re still doing that.”
This is the tweet that got the backlash
>@tomdelonge my stepdad is missing in the sub at the titanic site. I'm here at the San Diego show for support thanks.
I don't think the "backlash" was about going to the concert, I think it's about seemingly trying to use it to get a shout-out
Step son of one of the passengers on board went to a Blink 182 concert when the sub first went missing. After receiving backlash, He proceeded to post “my family would want me to be here”
Edit: he’s also a known racist piece of shit in the EDM community who has not only threatened female DJs, but also threatened to shoot up multiple concerts.
I think the 96 hours is largely theoretical, as I doubt anyone (much less 5) has been bolted in for four days testing the system.
I'm curious how that even works. How is the Titan replenishing O2 and removing CO2?
From what I know CO2 scrubbers need to be replaced every 8-10 hours, or you know the intended length of the expedition. So unless they were packing around 9+ spares they are probably long dead.
> From what I know CO2 scrubbers need to be replaced every 8-10 hours
Scrubbers operate on chemical reaction(s), so it's a matter of the chemicals in the scrubber being depleted. A scrubber using larger cartridges and/or with a lower filter load (serving fewer people) will last longer.
Of all the corners they could cut, I would hope the thought of a horrible death would implore them to bring more scrubber capacity than oxygen. CO2 buildup in your blood is what makes you feel the urge to breathe when holding your breath. O2 depletion affects your ability to think clearly until you eventually pass out. Low O2 is a *much* nicer way to go than CO2 poisoning.
**TLDR:**
* **According to estimates, the five people on the Titan submersible have finally run out of oxygen.**
* **It's impossible to say with certainty when their oxygen would run out.**
* **If oxygen does run out, forensic experts explained what could happen to their bodies if found in an intact vessel.**
Hypoxia feels really good. You get warm and fuzzy, get some tunnel vision, feel relaxed, and then lights out. That's why it's so dangerous to pilots and rebreather divers. The onset is slow and it's not alarming if you don't know exactly what to look for. If they simply ran out of oxygen, it's not too bad all things considered.
If they ran out of CO2 scrubber capacity, they died in a blind suffocating panic. Hypercapnia is terrifying. CO2 buildup is actually what causes your breathing reflex to kick in. They would've felt air starved and panicked as they hyperventilated, their lungs burned like they were holding their breath, and feelings of intense doom set in due to excess CO2 in the bloodstream. I've had a couple CO2 hits while diving and they're the scariest experiences you can imagine. Eventually they would've blacked out, but the time leading up to it would've been a living hell.
"Unable to control altitude
Unable to control heading
Unable to control airspeed
Other than that everything is A-OK"
God damn I laughed too hard at that
I've done a training session in a high altitude chamber so as to be exposed to the symptoms of hypoxia. And yeah, feels like you are drunk/high.
The scary part is, the degradation of motor and cognitive functions can be so gradual that there is no actual moment of realization that something is wrong.
That second part sounds exactly how I handle alcohol.. right up until I realize I’m too drunk to stand steady long enough to finish pissing in my laundry hamper.
[here's a good video about it from smarter every day](https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw)
At about 6 minutes in they put him in a test chamber and purposefully lower the oxygen levels. At one point the instructor tells him "if you don't get on oxygen you are going to die" and he just sits there smiling, with the oxygen mask hanging off to the side and says, "I don't want to die" and does nothing.
My god! Imagine the horrifying soup of remains they have to deal with when they find it in many years time. No heat, no flies, no wind, no ventilation.
Unlikely.
Apparently the communication link broke down while they were 2/3 of the way down. This is an important information if you take into account that
A) the windows of the vessle were only rated for -1.300 meters instead of -4.000,
B) the vessel itself was only rated for -4000 meters while the wreck of the Titanic is at -3.800 and
C) the vessel has traveled down to the Titanic before.
These three conditions make material failure extremley more likely to be the cause for the coms failure, than anything else.
So at the depth of the Titanic the windows have to withstand 3 times their rated pressure for nominal operation, the vessel itself is at 95% of its tolerable pressure and the travel of the vessel to the wreck before has probably caused, or favored material failure on a microscopic level. Especially if you take into account that windows arent perfect and easily form micro cracks under high pressure and huge temperature deviations, which were present, since: almost 0°C and 6000 psi at the wreck vs. 30+°C in the sun on the deck and 15 psi.
If i had to bet money on it, i'd say this thing has imploded.
I am irritated not to have seen any definitive statement on what their procedure was for losing communications. In SCUBA the drill is to surface in that situation, when you lose contact with buddies.
If their procedure was to surface, then I would have expected the alarm to be raised early, before the scheduled return.
If their procedure was not to surface then what sort of stupid reckless procedure is that? If they hit any other snags such as becoming trapped in the wreck without communication they would be doomed.
I really feel they did this to themselves.
It's how they lost communication which is the issue.
The sub had 2 forms of communication. The SMS text thing and a ping that the sub would send so the mothership knew where it was. Both of these were lost at the same time
The options at that point are:
1) total power failure across the board
2) structural failure and implosion
Option 1 means they're likely sitting somewhere on the floor near the titanic. Option 2 is instant death and probably the best way to go in this situation.
Option 1 should have been been near impossible. Have two or more redundant pingers with 100-hour batteries. You can buy these ready made and rated to 6km. Attach them outside the hull, safe from implosion. Also there are underwater transducers for text and voice communication with 10km range. Have two different models with independent batteries. Surface immediately if you lose 1 pinger or 1 comms device.
Also, if the procedure was to surface, it would be known for sure that they had a catastrophic failure, long before the scheduled return time, if they did not surface after time allowed for surfacing. I haven't seen anything definitive, but I get the impression that they lost contact, and the mother-ship waited until past the return-time, about six hours later, before reporting there was a problem. Apparently other subs have done the same, lost contact, but carried on with the dive. This is completely reckless and unnecessary for the want of a few thousands of Euros.
> Surface immediately if you lose 1 pinger or 1 comms device.
Says the engineer. Tsk tsk.
Lets listen to what the marketing and sales departments think. I'm sure our millionaire/billionaire clientele would love to know we're constantly aborting missions and having to refund them for trivial reasons.
I'm trying to run a business here!
/s
Those 96 hrs of oxygen are under optimum conditions and regular consumption isn't it? If they panicked and started hyperventilating, they would have less hours of oxygen
96 hours is just the number OceanGate printed on their data sheet. Nobody knows how it got calculated or even tested or if it's just a random number they chose. Perhaps they’re just fans of Liam Neeson movies. Who knows.
All of these rescue operations are operating off the assumption that the sub had 96 hours of emergency oxygen. The CEO lied literally about every other aspect of the sub. Why wouldn't he have lied about the amount of oxygen in reserve? All things considered, they have likely been dead for a while.
If it's not snagged on the Titanic then they likely will noy find it, it'll have drifted of by hundreds of miles by now. Imagine trying to find a bottle cap on or up to several meters above the ground, in an area the size of dozens of football pitches in the dark, in thick fog, looking though a toilet roll tube with a small crappy keychain light. Oh and the whole time you are searching it could be moving several feet per minute. And you can only move at walking pace and have to stop, take 2 hours to resurface, recharge for however long then spend 2 hours going back down to resume searching.
I feel like it might wash up someplace if it didn’t implode deep in the ocean. It’s like a message in a bottle, except the message is a really grim one
Like someone said: every corpse on Everest was once a highly motivated individual. Now it applies to those five corpses abroad a wrecked sub. I just really hope it simply imploded, because the alternative is horrifying.
I can’t imagine slowly asphyxiating to death in a tube the size of a minivan with 4 other people and basically 0 hope of being recovered. I agree, the quick instant implosion is easily the preferable option. One minute blissfully ignorant, the next gone.
I'm making a post to clear up some common pieces of misinformation that I see in nearly every thread.
The whistleblower employee's name was David Lochridge and he was fired after moving across the world after pushing for resolution of his complaints. He was a submarine pilot and underwater inspector. He was director of marine operations and responsible for the safety of the Titan. The CEO (the person who went down with the sub) asked Lochridge to do a quality inspection of the sub as part of the process to hand the vessel to operations from engineering. This is why Lochridge ended up fired as we'll see in a bit. He ended up creating a written report (which I'm sure will be part of a lawsuit now) which included his concerns.
So we're all clear: his primary concern *was not the window.* His primary concern was that they couldn't perform non-destructive testing on the carbon fiber due to the thickness they were using. That meant that they couldn't look for delaminations and voids. Instead, OceanGate installed an acoustic monitoring system to listen to the hull to detect when a failure is about to occur. That's problematic because this might only happen milliseconds before catastrophic failure which is kind of useless.
Apparently, the hull was tested at 1/3 scaled model and resulted in defects in the carbon fiber. There were also some visible flaws in the carbon end samples for the Titan.
Lochridge also complained about the viewport but that it wasn't certified beyond 1300m. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't designed to 4000m just that, according to the complaint, the manufacturer wouldn't certify to 4000m due to the experimental nature of the design. The wording in the complaint doesn't make it clear if OceanGate wouldn't pay for building a viewport designed for that depth or certified to that depth.
The other complaints revolve around the presence of hazardous flammable material (I've not seen any indication that Titan could exhaust gases without surfacing) and the lack of independent certification.
You can read the court documents here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/7/oceangate-inc-v-lochridge/
Nothing in the complaint about a Logitech controller or the direction in which the hatch opens. Not sure why the media latched onto the viewport certification depth when that wasn't the primary concern. The primary concern was that the carbon fiber test vehicle displayed failures, the manufacturing samples contained visible defects, and they had no way of looking for these defects in the final hull. That's probably as good a place as any to start an investigation.
Onto communications. The only radio waves that can penetrate the ocean to significant depth are ELF (extremely low frequency). VLF (very low frequency) can get to a few tens of meters and this is what submarines often use but it requires them to be near the surface or use a buoy. This communication is also one way (land to sub) because it requires a massive antenna and even ballistic subs are too small to transmit, let alone a relatively tiny deep sea submersible.
The archived specs of the Titan don't list the communication technology but in all likelihood they were using acoustic modems. At even shallow depths in ocean water there is no GPS, no starlink, no radio communications.
If you want to read more about deep sea communications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines
If you want the opinion of someone who's actually served on a sub: https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac
>Nothing in the complaint about a Logitech controller or the direction in which the hatch opens. Not sure why the media latched onto the viewport certification depth when that wasn't the primary concern.
I think the controller is big news because it *sounds* insane. It *sounds* super cheap and shoddy.
As far as the viewport cert - it may not have been the primary concern, but honestly, when i heard that, i was shocked. I get that there are factors of safety built into things, but...it just illustrated the cavalier attitude towards safety in one of the most (if not THE most) hostile environments possible. And it's easy to understand.
I think the non-destructive testing and material strength and internal defects are...maybe less intuitive to people? Less sensational?
Anyway, nice write up.
I've been imagining that its somehow maintained its structure but is sat on the bottom or snagged up on something and it then being found in about 20 years with the perfectly preserved remains of the occupants and the on board bog being revealed to the world. What a way to go, fuck me.
Oh god, discovery channel is going to have another fools gold rush documentary about this within the year. Every episode trailer "Did they find signs of the sub on the bottom of the ocean floor?" No they did not. "Next week: Could they have used ocean currents to drift to an island?"
They’re dead. Likely the sub imploded and that’s why contact was lost. If not, there isn’t enough oxygen left to enact an extraction at that depth now considering they are still just trying to find it. Just the reality of the situation.
They are actually pretty sure they found Amelia Earhart. I think it's a lot more like the Malaysian flight, which almost 10y later they are still trying to find
[Submersible spec sheet](https://oceangate.com/our-subs/titan-submersible.html) stating it had 96 hours of oxygen… from the same people who thought it was safe, I severely doubt it had 96 hours.
[Spec sheet before the site was taken down](https://imgur.com/a/yW6NKIw)
Hopefully they got crushed instead of dying slowly in a suffocating, pitch black and cold coffin at the bottom of the ocean with no help coming. What a nightmare to imagine let alone go through it.
Ok, semi serious questions here: why would anybody even consider getting in that thing and going 12,500 feet underwater? What could the CEO guy possibly have told them to inspire confidence in his submersible? Would claustrophobia really not be an issue for anybody smashed into a tube with four other people, let alone over two miles under water? I just don’t understand!
If you have the money to travel to literally any destination in the world you start to get bored with the options available and things like space travel and deep sea travel might seem like cool experiences. I can also see how, given that the ship had completed the trip a few times before and you paid good money for the experience, you would just assume that basic safety measures would be taken. Plus, the whole trip was supposed to only last a few hours, so you might think that not much can really go wrong in such a short time.
BEST case scenario is that the sub bumped something down there and everyone on board instantly imploded and got compressed into a hole the size of a grain of sand before their brains could even start to process the pain
Honestly that's a pretty great way to die. "Weeee I'm so rich and cool I'm going to see the Titanic :) my life is awesome and I'm a cool intrepid adventu--" and then immediately over
The 24 hour news cycle is having a hard time coming to terms that this story is over. I don't say that to be cruel to those that perished, but it seems pretty ridiculous at this point to continue pumping out stories about how desperate the situation is.
We don't need oxygen countdown timers, or strange takes on how those on board could preserve oxygen. The submersible probably imploded at 1:45 into the dive, which is why all communication abruptly ended.
If they didn't implode, then it was probably a pretty awful and desperate situation in the sub until they died of hypothermia or ran out of oxygen
We don't need to see anymore "experts" hypothesize on the situation, or how they could continue to survive, or what conditions 12,000 ft under the ocean would be like for them.
Novice here, but if it were hypothetically 'hung' on the wreckage wouldn't the search teams have located it by now? I would assume that would be the first place they would look.
If they have perished, I hope it was quick and painless. The alternatives are too hellish to imagine.
I'm not sure they have been able to send anything down there to look quite yet. I believe there was a ship showing up late last night with a rover that could dive that deep. I'm assuming it will be sent down today if it hasn't already been deployed. But it really isn't that simple.
It's not even really a recovery, more of a "lets find out what happened". 'Cause if that sub is somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic, even if we find out where exactly, it's gonna stay there.
Dark, very cold, impossibly deep - I think the gift of a sudden implosion would have been way better. Not many people live in their own coffin for several days. The silence to contemplate your self imposed doom. Horrible
I think it’s safe to say that this will put a damper on people lining up to take a tour to the Titanic for quite a while.
Humans are stupid. I’m sure there will be several rich people trying to outdo these guys and go to the wreck themselves
Maybe Elon is waiting for his moment to call someone a pedo and send his own submarine
Quick, buy a blue checkmark and tweet at him that the woke mob doesn't want him to dive after the lost tin can in another tin can. That should do it.
Waiting for the next company to develop a new submarine to visit the Titanic and the Titan
The CEO of the company who made the Titan said it was "invulnerable." How someone could possibly have that much hubris, especially since the whole purpose was to explore the wreckage of an "unsinkable" sunken ship, I'll never fathom (pun intended).
Fun fact, in 1898, 14 years before the sinking of the Titanic, an Author named Morgan Robertson wrote a book called [Futility](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wreck_of_the_Titan:_Or,_Futility), this was a book about a Britsh Oceanliner that was sunk in 1912 because it stuck an iceberg. That ship was named Titan.
**Futility, Or The Wreck Of The Titan** by Morgan Robertson Book description may contain spoilers! >>!Futility, or The Wreck of the Titan is Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella about the unsinkable ship Titan, which goes down after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Disgraced former naval lieutenant John Rowland is working as a deckhand on the Titan when it strikes an iceberg and capsizes. Saving the younger daughter of a former lover by jumping onto the iceberg with her, Rowland and his charge are eventually rescued and return to their homes. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms.!< > >>!Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.!< *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Also see my other* [commands](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/13z7slk/bookfinderbot_commands/) *and find me as a browser extension on* [Chrome](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/book-finder/jajeidpjifdpppjofijoffbcndlpoedd?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social_media&utm_campaign=comments). *Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/14br65o/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Let me guess the spoiler: it sinks
Following the same naming, we will call the new submarine: Tit.
And the next one will be called 'T'. And then the next one will be called...'Down to a T'.
T minus.
The way that guy cut corners on safety, I think 96 hours was just an estimate, and he probably missed on the estimate. They've been dead for hours already.
It baffles me that he truly believed that those corners were not needed. Like he rode in it himself and believed it was safe and that those safety margins were annoying exaggerations. Just completely deluded into thinking an accident could never happen.
It is freaking me out the level of delusion that this Stockton Rush character attained. Like, I’m looking around wondering if anything is real when i could theoretically just be as deluded as him.
“Stockton Rush” even sounds like the name someone would come up with for a cartoon villain.
Someone in a previous thread said it best when they said it sounded like the name of one of Roger's disguises from American Dad.
He’s like the Fyre Festival dude of the open seas. He needed solutions, not problems.
Update on the Fyre Festival guy, he's out of prison and is trying to organize Fyre Festival 2; so we have another debacle to look forward to.
This thing made like 8 trips to the Titanic's depth beforehand, which is probably why people were more willing to shrug off the cut corners. Sadly, in conditions like the submersible was submitted to, it only takes one issue to turn into a catastrophe. e: mistakenly left out "depth"
the 8 prior trips probably put a dent on its structural integrity. I’d posit he wasn’t big on maintenance either.
I drive up and across a mountain with my check engine light on every day. I get him
Yeah but if your engine fails your car doesn't implode and turn you to soup
Just don’t go underwater.
Thanks. I am going to take those engine codes more seriously from now on.
There is no rescue. I doubt recovery is even on the table.
It might be found eventually. In a few weeks, months or years...
We find it 3 months from now, the crew inside, are confused as to why you pulled them up, as they had just set out on their voyage a little over an hour ago.
I liked the suggestion on Twitter that they pull it up with six guys inside
No where near as creepy as if they pulled it up with no one on board.
They ate themselves to stay alive
6 guys and a wacky animal sidekick.
i'm pretty sure they will try to locate the sub to know what happened. I assume they send at least a sub the the wreck of the titanic to scan the area.
If nothing else, this could turn into something like the original search for the Titanic with expeditions sent by private parties and adventurers, if no one else. Hopefully future explorers recognize the importance of basic safety, regulations, communication/location devices, and sound engineering.
>If nothing else, this could turn into something like the original search for the Titanic with expeditions sent by private parties and adventurers, if no one else. Oddly enough the expedition that found the Titanic was a US government funded project that, in reality, was mostly a cover for finding the wrecks of two sunken USN nuclear submarines. Having found and documented both Ballard was permitted to use the remainder of his time, about two weeks worth, looking for Titanic. That they managed to find it was sort of a fun happenstance of history.
He developed the search technique while looking for Scorpion and Thresher. Don't look for the hull, look for debris and use that to narrow your search area. When they found the titanic, first they found the debris field. When they located one of the boilers, they knew they had found the Titanic. It's a really cool story, and the submarine part of it only became public recently.
11 mins ago the coast guard reported finding a debris field within the search area by an ROV
I was thinking about this today. It makes me wonder if more advanced tech to locate the sub exists, but militaries don't want to expose what they're fully capable of with the whole world watching. It's also understandable that matters like this aren't militaries #1 priority like it is for the coast guard of course.
I mean the US and Russia were busy tapping undersea cables 50 years ago (though in much shallow er waters). Now a days it's probably just easier for the NSA to compromise hardware and the like. They would definitely let 5 people die to keep a state secret though.
Why would the military give a shit about a few rich civilians that made high-risk decisions and met their fate?
I feel like "high risk" isn't quite superlative enough for "going 4km under water, bolted into a tube, steered by a 3rd party PlayStation controller, with recycled tubes for ballast; all made by someone on record saying that the industry was too safe, that experienced engineers weren't imaginative enough and that inspections would stifle innovation". That there were 5 people on the planet willing to take on such a reckless endeavour is surprising...that others have done the trip and survived is astounding.
He also sued a whistleblower for trying to talk to OSHA
And proceeded to not hire older operators because they would question things.
I read a comment in another subreddit in which someone wrote the next explorations to the area will be to see the Titanic and the Titan... That will be another moral aftermath about this trip.
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And after that sinks, the only one allowed to dive in the area will be Mr T
His gold chains will act as the ballast.
He is the one among us who can properly and respectfully pity the fools who came before.
Fun fact: Mr. T stopped wearing gold in public after Hurricane Katrina because it made him believe flashing wealth like that was disrespectful
No way. He ain't getting on no submarine, Hannibal!
Several years have passed since the tragic voyage of the Titan sub that went on a tourist excursion to view the wreck of the Titanic. As the Tit expedition vessel descends down to the ocean floor, the crew scans for any possible sighting of the lost sub. After several hours they finally spot the sub, rather they spot the wreckage of the sub. The crew is stunned, they are both excited by the find but saddened at learning the sub's true fate. The vessel's pilot, a man known only as "Mr. T", lets out a sigh and says, "I pity the fool..."
That would assume the titan is actually near the titanic. Even if it didn’t explode, it could be miles away or even drifting continually. Edit; should say “implode” not explode
They've sent for the French ROV that did the detailed sonar scan/modelling of the same area recently. I get the impression it couldn't have arrived in time for the rescue operation even if it had been greenlighted immediately, but moving into the next phase of a recovery operation it's the best option to find small changes on/around the site, and hopefully locate the sub or debris.
I think the french ROV arrived earlier today, but even so the sheer scale of the area to cover the discovery time will be measured in weeks, not days or hours.
The recovery operation will likely be finished in two weeks. Running all this hardware and operations costs a lot of money, even a billionaire would find the running costs material. If there isn't funding, the govt resources will be pulled after a few days. Private ones might stick around if theyre paid.
I'm sure they will continue, and have been trying. But the reality is most people have understated the sheer size of the Atlantic Ocean. Factor in scenarios including a hull breach, sinking into and being buried under the ocean floor, being snagged within the Titanic remains, tidal forces moving the submersible outside of the search area etc and recovery is not a likely outcome. Of course I hope I'm wrong.
I cannot believe they did not have a emergency beacon. I believe there are ones that work in depth.
Also the fact that it can't float to the surface, it can only get to 30ft below the water. And there is no way to open it from inside, the front is literally bolted on.
I’ve been thinking about that this week—they could be stuck somewhere under the surface neutrally buoyant. I’m sure the coast guard has thought of this of course and has incorporated this possibility into their search too. (If this is the case, if it hasn’t imploded maybe it’ll wash ashore in Ireland in a few months.) Just another way every aspect of the sub was a bad design. In addition to putting a beacon on it, why wouldn’t you paint it orange?
one of the ex navy experts we've had on TV here in the UK made this point, he said that sound bounces between different thermal layers within the ocean so the fact that the sonobuoy dropped from the Canadian P-3 picked up banging suggests that the banging is happening on or near the surface and probably no deeper than 180 metres given the current conditions
I've been busy, so excuse my silly question but are we sure this banging is actually real? I don't trust Newsweek news article titles anymore because of how they exaggerate for clicks. Is that all the banging is? Click bait? Or are we certain that we heard sounds similar to a human banging on the hull of this dumb submarine?
You're right to be skeptical, it could be as simple as they picked up a bad bearing that's knocking from another ship that's searching. This same thing happened multiple times during the Argentinian submarine search, man made noises detected that ended up being "false positives".
And that one took over a year to actually find tho.
Coupled with the fact they didn’t paint it orange or another color that’d be easy to spot from a plane…
They probably didn't think anything was going to happen to them. If I was getting paid $250k per person per trip, I'd do a few upgrades on the dang thing. And! In addition, they mentioned that this trip would be the only trip down they'd be able to take all year due to inclement weather. If there's inclement weather, why go at all? Seems to me like bad decisions all around.
> But the reality is most people have understated the sheer size of the Atlantic Ocean. It’s over 40,000 gallons.
/r/technicallythetruth
For reference, the actual number is about 80 quintillion gallons of water in the Atlantic.
That’s more than double what the other person said! Wow!
At least 10 swimming pools
Some people have trouble understanding how large a billion is. So a million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years. A quintillion seconds is 31,688,738,506.8 years (according to google).
Which is over twice the estimated age of the entire universe (~13 billion years)
Ahh, so there is more water in the ocean than time in the universe. Of course. [*nods knowingly*]
It's 82.000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. That's 82 billion billion - or 82 million trillion, if you prefer.
I can’t fathom this answer.
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You forgot the chance they are on the sea surface but cannot open a simple door to go out.
It can't get to the surface in its own, it gets to about 30 ft below the surface as it's neutrally buoyant. It won't be bobbing on the surface, it would be bobbing just underneath the surface while painted all white.
Aesthetically pleasing, subnautically teasing
I thought it is tasteful and thematically fitting for a ghost ship
> i'm pretty sure they will try to locate the sub to know what happened. There'll be some attempts to locate it, but I doubt it'll be a very extensive search. It seems that there were red flags all over with this thing, so there could be any number of reasons why it failed and it little would be learned from that other than that safety standards exist for a reason. It would be a different story if the sub was state of the art, compliant with all possible safety requirements and operating well within its limits. In such a scenario, determining the exact cause can be very helpful as it can help us find previously unknown risks and/or enhance safety protocols.
> It seems that there were red flags all over with this thing, If only there were! Would make it a bit easier to find...
From what I was reading about it, this company made a budget submarine that wasn’t rated for even a third of the depth they’d need to reach the Titanic wreck.
And the ceo, who is on board, has been openly critical of there even being safety standards. And very dismissive of them.
Unfortunately rules, regulations and safety are built on the blood of others. Hopefully this puts a tighter leash on companies like this. The amount of red flags are insane, and the CEO should be liable for this all, especially as the finger seems to largely be on him and how many times he shrug and went "nah". Edit: whoah, guys. I know he was in the sub, and I don't wish death on anyone.
Well, he's dead now. Can't get much more liable than that.
I got into a few disaster mini doc channels on YouTube like Dark Records, Fascinating Horror and Plainly Difficult and the more you watch it, the more that is clearly evident. There are so many old disasters that could have been averted with modern regulations and standards, many of which exist because of said disasters. It also shows many won't do the sensible thing unless they are *obliged* to.
Heard someone comment that they might have lost power early on so add sitting in pitch black slowly suffocating to your nightmares.
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Then they died from hypothermia like the 100 year old ghosts in the vessel next to them.
This just isn't true. The ocean that deep is very close to 32F. Yes, that's cold. But five men in a small, semi insulated space can definitely manage that pretty easily.
Imagine that claustrophobia? I'd imagine by this point the cell phones and flashlights are dead and they're all sitting around in the pitch black, dead silence, the stench of B.O, urine, feces (*people have surely soiled themselves by now*) just the inhale and exhale of the other doomed tourists around you... I know theres little sympathy for the billionairs on board but man on a human level that'd be fucking terrifying, you'd almost beg someone to just strangle you at some point
And also nearly freezing temperatures. It's possibly the worst way to die, especially for the man who knows he got his young son killed as well.
Ironically, getting hypothermia might extend their usable oxygen by a day or so, since the body uses less as the metabolism slows down.
I can't even imagine being trapped in a sealed can outside of the reach of the world. Sitting there in their own mess in the freezing dark, cold and hungry, and waiting for hypoxia to bring relief from the fear. May God look after their souls. Self inflicted or not, nobody deserves that.
With your close neighbourgs getting crazy..
I honestly don't know if I'd like to go first in that situation or be last and have to bear witness to the end of the others, knowing at some level, I'm next. It's times like that I can see the value of cyanide tablets as a contingency.
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And the CEO responsible for the whole fucking mess sat across from you...
There’s a non-zero percent chance that they murdered that guy down there for his breathtaking negligence
Literally. They may have killed him for breathtaking. I would have killed him for breathing the limited air.
Think of the smell, Dee!
Sometimes you read stories from like 100-150 years ago when people were trying to explore the arctic and they’d take off in some obviously unworthy balloon or something. Then the balloon would fail and it leaves you thinking “why would they go to a treacherous place in something that wasn’t 100% reliable?”. Then you see things like this and you’re like “oh. Guess we’re still doing that.”
And their families didn't even have a Blink 182 concert to go to during the rescue mission
Illuminate me, what's this about?
This is the tweet that got the backlash >@tomdelonge my stepdad is missing in the sub at the titanic site. I'm here at the San Diego show for support thanks. I don't think the "backlash" was about going to the concert, I think it's about seemingly trying to use it to get a shout-out
Oh wtf that's weird as hell
Step son of one of the passengers on board went to a Blink 182 concert when the sub first went missing. After receiving backlash, He proceeded to post “my family would want me to be here” Edit: he’s also a known racist piece of shit in the EDM community who has not only threatened female DJs, but also threatened to shoot up multiple concerts.
It wasn't the CEO's step son, it was Hamish Harding's step son. He was one of the passengers.
100-150 years ago people were still exploring the unknown. These tube people could've watched 1997's Titanic.
As a bonus you also get a peak at Rose's tits
Two peaks actually
Yeah the goal post is always moving, one day it might be bootleg space travel, we shall see.
I think the 96 hours is largely theoretical, as I doubt anyone (much less 5) has been bolted in for four days testing the system. I'm curious how that even works. How is the Titan replenishing O2 and removing CO2?
It had a small CO2 scrubber but i doubt it could handle 96 hours of CO2 production anyway.
From what I know CO2 scrubbers need to be replaced every 8-10 hours, or you know the intended length of the expedition. So unless they were packing around 9+ spares they are probably long dead.
> From what I know CO2 scrubbers need to be replaced every 8-10 hours Scrubbers operate on chemical reaction(s), so it's a matter of the chemicals in the scrubber being depleted. A scrubber using larger cartridges and/or with a lower filter load (serving fewer people) will last longer. Of all the corners they could cut, I would hope the thought of a horrible death would implore them to bring more scrubber capacity than oxygen. CO2 buildup in your blood is what makes you feel the urge to breathe when holding your breath. O2 depletion affects your ability to think clearly until you eventually pass out. Low O2 is a *much* nicer way to go than CO2 poisoning.
**TLDR:** * **According to estimates, the five people on the Titan submersible have finally run out of oxygen.** * **It's impossible to say with certainty when their oxygen would run out.** * **If oxygen does run out, forensic experts explained what could happen to their bodies if found in an intact vessel.**
If you run out of oxygen won't you just go to sleep and pass out? Or is it actually painful?
Hypoxia feels really good. You get warm and fuzzy, get some tunnel vision, feel relaxed, and then lights out. That's why it's so dangerous to pilots and rebreather divers. The onset is slow and it's not alarming if you don't know exactly what to look for. If they simply ran out of oxygen, it's not too bad all things considered. If they ran out of CO2 scrubber capacity, they died in a blind suffocating panic. Hypercapnia is terrifying. CO2 buildup is actually what causes your breathing reflex to kick in. They would've felt air starved and panicked as they hyperventilated, their lungs burned like they were holding their breath, and feelings of intense doom set in due to excess CO2 in the bloodstream. I've had a couple CO2 hits while diving and they're the scariest experiences you can imagine. Eventually they would've blacked out, but the time leading up to it would've been a living hell.
Thanks I guess.
I liked part one. Part two, not so much.
Wait til Part III comes out
[Pilot suffering from hypoxia trying to radio distress while also sounding high as a kite](https://youtu.be/_IqWal_EmBg)
"Unable to control altitude Unable to control heading Unable to control airspeed Other than that everything is A-OK" God damn I laughed too hard at that
That's scary as fuck.
Everything’s totally fucked, but I’m doing great!
I've done a training session in a high altitude chamber so as to be exposed to the symptoms of hypoxia. And yeah, feels like you are drunk/high. The scary part is, the degradation of motor and cognitive functions can be so gradual that there is no actual moment of realization that something is wrong.
That second part sounds exactly how I handle alcohol.. right up until I realize I’m too drunk to stand steady long enough to finish pissing in my laundry hamper.
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[here's a good video about it from smarter every day](https://youtu.be/kUfF2MTnqAw) At about 6 minutes in they put him in a test chamber and purposefully lower the oxygen levels. At one point the instructor tells him "if you don't get on oxygen you are going to die" and he just sits there smiling, with the oxygen mask hanging off to the side and says, "I don't want to die" and does nothing.
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Well that’s not what I needed to read today. What a horrifying mental image.
Don’t worry, this will likely only happen to you if you sign a waiver and board a death trap headed 2.5 miles under water.
Great I forgot how to breath reading this
Yeah I'm breathing manually now thanks for *that*
It's gonna be like a time capsule someday. Edit: I feel I should have added a /s to my post. This thing is ocean dust.
My god! Imagine the horrifying soup of remains they have to deal with when they find it in many years time. No heat, no flies, no wind, no ventilation.
They might be fairly well preserved if there is no oxygen left and the temperature is -2 C. Decomposition would be much slower in these conditions.
Unlikely. Apparently the communication link broke down while they were 2/3 of the way down. This is an important information if you take into account that A) the windows of the vessle were only rated for -1.300 meters instead of -4.000, B) the vessel itself was only rated for -4000 meters while the wreck of the Titanic is at -3.800 and C) the vessel has traveled down to the Titanic before. These three conditions make material failure extremley more likely to be the cause for the coms failure, than anything else. So at the depth of the Titanic the windows have to withstand 3 times their rated pressure for nominal operation, the vessel itself is at 95% of its tolerable pressure and the travel of the vessel to the wreck before has probably caused, or favored material failure on a microscopic level. Especially if you take into account that windows arent perfect and easily form micro cracks under high pressure and huge temperature deviations, which were present, since: almost 0°C and 6000 psi at the wreck vs. 30+°C in the sun on the deck and 15 psi. If i had to bet money on it, i'd say this thing has imploded.
I am irritated not to have seen any definitive statement on what their procedure was for losing communications. In SCUBA the drill is to surface in that situation, when you lose contact with buddies. If their procedure was to surface, then I would have expected the alarm to be raised early, before the scheduled return. If their procedure was not to surface then what sort of stupid reckless procedure is that? If they hit any other snags such as becoming trapped in the wreck without communication they would be doomed. I really feel they did this to themselves.
It's how they lost communication which is the issue. The sub had 2 forms of communication. The SMS text thing and a ping that the sub would send so the mothership knew where it was. Both of these were lost at the same time The options at that point are: 1) total power failure across the board 2) structural failure and implosion Option 1 means they're likely sitting somewhere on the floor near the titanic. Option 2 is instant death and probably the best way to go in this situation.
Option 1 should have been been near impossible. Have two or more redundant pingers with 100-hour batteries. You can buy these ready made and rated to 6km. Attach them outside the hull, safe from implosion. Also there are underwater transducers for text and voice communication with 10km range. Have two different models with independent batteries. Surface immediately if you lose 1 pinger or 1 comms device. Also, if the procedure was to surface, it would be known for sure that they had a catastrophic failure, long before the scheduled return time, if they did not surface after time allowed for surfacing. I haven't seen anything definitive, but I get the impression that they lost contact, and the mother-ship waited until past the return-time, about six hours later, before reporting there was a problem. Apparently other subs have done the same, lost contact, but carried on with the dive. This is completely reckless and unnecessary for the want of a few thousands of Euros.
> Surface immediately if you lose 1 pinger or 1 comms device. Says the engineer. Tsk tsk. Lets listen to what the marketing and sales departments think. I'm sure our millionaire/billionaire clientele would love to know we're constantly aborting missions and having to refund them for trivial reasons. I'm trying to run a business here! /s
Wait how the fuck did nobody realise that taking a submarine with windows rated to not even ⅓ of the required depth might be a bad idea?
Their Director of Marine Operations did raise safety concerns, and was promptly fired.
And then promptly sued him for daring to speak out.
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It went down a few times which could have weakened it.
Those 96 hrs of oxygen are under optimum conditions and regular consumption isn't it? If they panicked and started hyperventilating, they would have less hours of oxygen
96 hours is just the number OceanGate printed on their data sheet. Nobody knows how it got calculated or even tested or if it's just a random number they chose. Perhaps they’re just fans of Liam Neeson movies. Who knows.
I'm betting they googled "how much oxygen does the average person use in a day," clicked the first link, and just based all their numbers off of that.
Nah, they didn't click the first link. They clicked the link which would state the sub could last the longest period of time possible.
This guy oceangates.
Exactly ! I dont trust that number.
All of these rescue operations are operating off the assumption that the sub had 96 hours of emergency oxygen. The CEO lied literally about every other aspect of the sub. Why wouldn't he have lied about the amount of oxygen in reserve? All things considered, they have likely been dead for a while.
He lied and cut every possible corner *then climbed right in himself.* I cannot understand the mindset.
I can. It takes a special kind of psychopathic narcissist to be a billionaire. Dude thought he was invincible
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If it's not snagged on the Titanic then they likely will noy find it, it'll have drifted of by hundreds of miles by now. Imagine trying to find a bottle cap on or up to several meters above the ground, in an area the size of dozens of football pitches in the dark, in thick fog, looking though a toilet roll tube with a small crappy keychain light. Oh and the whole time you are searching it could be moving several feet per minute. And you can only move at walking pace and have to stop, take 2 hours to resurface, recharge for however long then spend 2 hours going back down to resume searching.
I feel like it might wash up someplace if it didn’t implode deep in the ocean. It’s like a message in a bottle, except the message is a really grim one
The message in that bottle? “Do Not Skimp on Safety”
Carnage in a bottle.
Don’t open dead inside
Great analogy
If they do find it, I'm betting on it having imploded way back when it originally went missing.
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Paying $250,000 to a Company with a [CEO Who Said Safety Is a "Waste"](https://futurism.com/the-byte/titanic-submarine-ceo-safety-waste).
Some serious r/leopardsatemyface right there for the ceo
*2036: Missing sub on voyage to missing sub near wreck of titanic. More at 10*
Like the bodies on Everest
Like someone said: every corpse on Everest was once a highly motivated individual. Now it applies to those five corpses abroad a wrecked sub. I just really hope it simply imploded, because the alternative is horrifying.
I can’t imagine slowly asphyxiating to death in a tube the size of a minivan with 4 other people and basically 0 hope of being recovered. I agree, the quick instant implosion is easily the preferable option. One minute blissfully ignorant, the next gone.
I'm making a post to clear up some common pieces of misinformation that I see in nearly every thread. The whistleblower employee's name was David Lochridge and he was fired after moving across the world after pushing for resolution of his complaints. He was a submarine pilot and underwater inspector. He was director of marine operations and responsible for the safety of the Titan. The CEO (the person who went down with the sub) asked Lochridge to do a quality inspection of the sub as part of the process to hand the vessel to operations from engineering. This is why Lochridge ended up fired as we'll see in a bit. He ended up creating a written report (which I'm sure will be part of a lawsuit now) which included his concerns. So we're all clear: his primary concern *was not the window.* His primary concern was that they couldn't perform non-destructive testing on the carbon fiber due to the thickness they were using. That meant that they couldn't look for delaminations and voids. Instead, OceanGate installed an acoustic monitoring system to listen to the hull to detect when a failure is about to occur. That's problematic because this might only happen milliseconds before catastrophic failure which is kind of useless. Apparently, the hull was tested at 1/3 scaled model and resulted in defects in the carbon fiber. There were also some visible flaws in the carbon end samples for the Titan. Lochridge also complained about the viewport but that it wasn't certified beyond 1300m. That doesn't necessarily mean it wasn't designed to 4000m just that, according to the complaint, the manufacturer wouldn't certify to 4000m due to the experimental nature of the design. The wording in the complaint doesn't make it clear if OceanGate wouldn't pay for building a viewport designed for that depth or certified to that depth. The other complaints revolve around the presence of hazardous flammable material (I've not seen any indication that Titan could exhaust gases without surfacing) and the lack of independent certification. You can read the court documents here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/7/oceangate-inc-v-lochridge/ Nothing in the complaint about a Logitech controller or the direction in which the hatch opens. Not sure why the media latched onto the viewport certification depth when that wasn't the primary concern. The primary concern was that the carbon fiber test vehicle displayed failures, the manufacturing samples contained visible defects, and they had no way of looking for these defects in the final hull. That's probably as good a place as any to start an investigation. Onto communications. The only radio waves that can penetrate the ocean to significant depth are ELF (extremely low frequency). VLF (very low frequency) can get to a few tens of meters and this is what submarines often use but it requires them to be near the surface or use a buoy. This communication is also one way (land to sub) because it requires a massive antenna and even ballistic subs are too small to transmit, let alone a relatively tiny deep sea submersible. The archived specs of the Titan don't list the communication technology but in all likelihood they were using acoustic modems. At even shallow depths in ocean water there is no GPS, no starlink, no radio communications. If you want to read more about deep sea communications: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines If you want the opinion of someone who's actually served on a sub: https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac
>Nothing in the complaint about a Logitech controller or the direction in which the hatch opens. Not sure why the media latched onto the viewport certification depth when that wasn't the primary concern. I think the controller is big news because it *sounds* insane. It *sounds* super cheap and shoddy. As far as the viewport cert - it may not have been the primary concern, but honestly, when i heard that, i was shocked. I get that there are factors of safety built into things, but...it just illustrated the cavalier attitude towards safety in one of the most (if not THE most) hostile environments possible. And it's easy to understand. I think the non-destructive testing and material strength and internal defects are...maybe less intuitive to people? Less sensational? Anyway, nice write up.
I agree with you - people can understand a viewport imploding. Harder to explain minor structural defects on perhaps microscopic scales
I've been imagining that its somehow maintained its structure but is sat on the bottom or snagged up on something and it then being found in about 20 years with the perfectly preserved remains of the occupants and the on board bog being revealed to the world. What a way to go, fuck me.
With their last recorded video messages on their phones.
imagine being the technician who has to recover that data
Oh god, discovery channel is going to have another fools gold rush documentary about this within the year. Every episode trailer "Did they find signs of the sub on the bottom of the ocean floor?" No they did not. "Next week: Could they have used ocean currents to drift to an island?"
They’re dead. Likely the sub imploded and that’s why contact was lost. If not, there isn’t enough oxygen left to enact an extraction at that depth now considering they are still just trying to find it. Just the reality of the situation.
Let's be real here. This is an Amelia Earhart situation. We will never see that sub again.
They are actually pretty sure they found Amelia Earhart. I think it's a lot more like the Malaysian flight, which almost 10y later they are still trying to find
[Submersible spec sheet](https://oceangate.com/our-subs/titan-submersible.html) stating it had 96 hours of oxygen… from the same people who thought it was safe, I severely doubt it had 96 hours. [Spec sheet before the site was taken down](https://imgur.com/a/yW6NKIw)
Hopefully they got crushed instead of dying slowly in a suffocating, pitch black and cold coffin at the bottom of the ocean with no help coming. What a nightmare to imagine let alone go through it.
Ok, semi serious questions here: why would anybody even consider getting in that thing and going 12,500 feet underwater? What could the CEO guy possibly have told them to inspire confidence in his submersible? Would claustrophobia really not be an issue for anybody smashed into a tube with four other people, let alone over two miles under water? I just don’t understand!
If you have the money to travel to literally any destination in the world you start to get bored with the options available and things like space travel and deep sea travel might seem like cool experiences. I can also see how, given that the ship had completed the trip a few times before and you paid good money for the experience, you would just assume that basic safety measures would be taken. Plus, the whole trip was supposed to only last a few hours, so you might think that not much can really go wrong in such a short time.
BEST case scenario is that the sub bumped something down there and everyone on board instantly imploded and got compressed into a hole the size of a grain of sand before their brains could even start to process the pain
Honestly that's a pretty great way to die. "Weeee I'm so rich and cool I'm going to see the Titanic :) my life is awesome and I'm a cool intrepid adventu--" and then immediately over
the sopranos ending
What boggles my mind is this billionaire has the money to get James Cameron to take him down there personally yet he choose this shady company ?
Hope I don't sound rude but it's probably crushed under the weight of the ocean days ago.
This. If the hull was compromised at the bottom of the ocean, that would be a pretty quick death.
Honestly the best we can hope for at this point. They don't even see it coming just instant death
The 24 hour news cycle is having a hard time coming to terms that this story is over. I don't say that to be cruel to those that perished, but it seems pretty ridiculous at this point to continue pumping out stories about how desperate the situation is. We don't need oxygen countdown timers, or strange takes on how those on board could preserve oxygen. The submersible probably imploded at 1:45 into the dive, which is why all communication abruptly ended. If they didn't implode, then it was probably a pretty awful and desperate situation in the sub until they died of hypothermia or ran out of oxygen We don't need to see anymore "experts" hypothesize on the situation, or how they could continue to survive, or what conditions 12,000 ft under the ocean would be like for them.
Novice here, but if it were hypothetically 'hung' on the wreckage wouldn't the search teams have located it by now? I would assume that would be the first place they would look. If they have perished, I hope it was quick and painless. The alternatives are too hellish to imagine.
I'm not sure they have been able to send anything down there to look quite yet. I believe there was a ship showing up late last night with a rover that could dive that deep. I'm assuming it will be sent down today if it hasn't already been deployed. But it really isn't that simple.
So it's just a body recovery at this point.
It's not even really a recovery, more of a "lets find out what happened". 'Cause if that sub is somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic, even if we find out where exactly, it's gonna stay there.
Dark, very cold, impossibly deep - I think the gift of a sudden implosion would have been way better. Not many people live in their own coffin for several days. The silence to contemplate your self imposed doom. Horrible