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Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

bbc.com

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Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#91

Post by dongaudreau »

noirbot wrote: post #63
paganel wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crass but maybe other rich people will also get hold of this sentiment and will avoid doing stupid stuff like this in the future. Also, they were there visiting a place filled with dead and probably long decomposed people, can’t say I’m very sympathetic.

Isn't visiting places filled with dead and decomposing people a fairly normal tourist activity? Various catacombs, graveyards, temples, battlefields, memorials, Pompeii... I've got no real thoughts on the "stupidity" of doing this, but visiting the wreck of a famous ship doesn't seem an obviously unsympathetic thing to do compared to visiting the ruins of a city.

i believe the ocean has long dissolved any human remains

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#92

Post by ilamont »

kibwen wrote: post #87
comrh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was curious too. > Contacted by CBS News, the Canadian Coast Guard said the rescue operation was being managed by the Boston Regional Coordination Center, and a map showing jurisdictions for the various coastal search and rescue agencies off the North American coast shows the location of the Titanic wreck within the Boston center's area of responsibility. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-submarine-missing-rescu…

The search and rescue jurisdiction map is fascinating, although some of those areas are so huge that I wonder how much it really means in practice. If you're lost off the coast of Ecuador, are you really supposed to call the San Francisco Coast Guard?

There are some very strange areas on that map. Check out the large swathe of the East China Sea near China, the Koreas, and Taiwan, the responsibility of Russian search and rescue in Vladivostok.

https://sarcontacts.info/srrs/ru_pac/

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#93

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

riversflow wrote: post #64
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a strange sense of scale on that thing. You wouldn’t immediately look at it and say that two people can fit inside for 30 days. EDIT: 30 days between maintenance. I’m a dirty skimmer.

What? > Alvin enables in-situ data collection and observation by two scientists to depths reaching 6,500 meters, during dives lasting up to ten hours. Maybe you misskimmed: > Alvin is a proven and reliable platform capable of diving for up to 30 days in a row before requiring a single scheduled maintenance day

I did skim! :) Don’t do that.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#94

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

imglorp wrote: post #53
ralphhughes wrote: post #40

Skimming the website, I assume this submersible is using electromagnetically attached drop-weights so that if anything goes wrong and power is lost, the weights drop off and the submersible floats up to the surface again? And 96 hours of life support sounds good, but unless there is another submersible nearby that can dive down, find them AND attach a line, the number of hours of life support will be irrelevant. Of c…

A location pinger would be a no brainer but like you say, it only helps if there's another sub with a grapple in range, in time. I understand why oceanographers /might/ want to do this, but not in person when ROV tech is so good now, for biology and tourism. There are so many things that can happen to fragile humans in that complex machine: drowning, freezing, asphyxiating, crushing, oxygen narcosis, nitrogen narcosi…

People do all sorts of risky things. We're human.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#95

Post by floxy »

pge wrote: post #82
floxy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon fibers are strong in tension. That's why it is good for pressure vessels that are trying explode. Your wrap the fibers on the outside of the pressure boundary. Same concept that you can only pull on a rope, not push it. I'd be interested to see how they are using carbon fibers in compressive applications like deep sea vessels. Is that more of a marketing thing? "Carbon fiber" sounds sexy, so we'll advertise th…

The CBS news article referenced in another reply says the body of the sub is 5-inch thick carbon fiber with titanium used in the rounded ends. I am surprised it’s just carbon fiber in the body.

Here is an article with a few more details on the construction of the Cyclops vessel:

https://www.compositesworld.com/articles/composite-submersib...

...still not seeing what the carbon fiber is buying here, other than historical reasons / "that's how we do composite pressure vessels". Maybe it adds some slight rigidity when it is being raised up out of the water?

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#97

Post by moralestapia »

scarnz wrote: post #30

This appears to be the vessel in question: https://oceangate.com/our-subs/titan-submersible.html Pressure hull made from titanium and carbon fiber, capable of diving to 4000m (13,000 ft). I recall that one reason SpaceX switched from carbon fiber to stainless steel pressure vessels (fuel tanks) was the difficulty of detecting structural flaws. Can any engineers comment on whether that task is easier for a vessel expo…

>The most significant innovation is the proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system. [...] provides early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.

Interested to know more about what happened.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#98

Post by kotaKat »

engineer_22 wrote: post #48
dtagames wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That's a particularly crass thing to say about someone while their life is in jeopardy. >Did it not occur to anyone that it might be a bad idea? It's hard to be sympathetic in the face of such arrogance The company advertises the safety of their submersible and an active suite of sensors to detect and prevent failures.

https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=157

Having been linked this elsewhere in the thread I don't quite like the fact that they're so brazen that they bought internal lighting from Camping World and drive it with a Logitech USB gamepad and using half-ass construction piping as a ballast.

Or the fact that they scrubbed a Titanic launch for the media due to weather (presenting from some kind of briefing room where they presented from a laptop on top of a Breville cooker box), went elsewhere, then scrubbed THAT launch while in the water because the launch platform floats detached...

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#99

Post by ciguy »

This section from their website is interesting:

"Real-Time Health Monitoring The most significant innovation is the proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system. Titan is the only manned submersible to employ an integrated real-time health monitoring system. Utilizing co-located acoustic sensors and strain gauges throughout the pressure boundary, the RTM system makes it possible to analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure. This onboard health analysis monitoring system provides early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface."

I am surprised that real time monitoring of the hull is even a consideration, I would have expected it to be designed an built with massive safety margins and then inspected very thoroughly after each trip. The above paragraph seems to indicate that they would monitor hull health during the trip and stop descent if it showed signs of stress. But I am skeptical that they would see signs of stress before it simply imploded at depth.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#100

Post by ajessup »

vrosas wrote: post #54
the__alchemist wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also of note, the pressure differences are much higher in submersibles.

Professor: Good Lord! That's over 150 atmospheres of pressure! Fry: How many atmospheres can the ship withstand? Professor: Well, it’s a spaceship, so I’d say anywhere between zero and one…

I love this line - one of my favorites of the show. Thanks for sharing.
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