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Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

bbc.com

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Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#451
post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL, Guardian published information about documents describing the danger of this thing, the lack of regulations and how deep sea exploration of this kind is probably finished for many years to come. Him saying "it's obscenely safe" just sounds like a Silicon Valley CEO saying they're going to save the world by selling their users' personal data under the table. EDIT seems like I interpreted this wrong according to c…

The "obscenely safe" remark was directed at "regulated" vessels, not at his own sub. He was acknowledging that he was taking risks by not conforming to regulations.

Thanks, my bad.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#452
post #305

Well that's better than slowly asphyxiating or dying of hypothermia, probably didn't even know what hit them.

Can someone walk me through what would have happened, physically, to a human body in the moment this happened. I’m curious. Similar to wondering what happens to people in space.

At that depth, the pressure is quite intense - around 6000 psi. That means 6000 pounds pr square inch - that's almost a Ford F150 truck pr square inch, everywhere. And now imagine how many square inches the surface area of a human is - especially your upper torso where your lungs are located.

The sub (hull) is made of a carbon fiber and titanium mix - and I'm not sure how that would react, if it buckles / collapses like regular metal, or if it simply shatters into millions of pieces like glass.

If the sub just collapsed / imploded into itself, well - that's that. The crew got crushed to death in an instant.

If the sub explode, then that would be a very violent reaction. Probably enough to kill them, purely from that - but let's say they don't die instantly from the crushing influx / wave of water:

Air / gasses in the body would compress significantly, if not allowed to exit the body. Your lungs would collapse in an instant, and your chest cavity would collapse on itself, until all air has escaped, and then replaced by water. Your ear eardrums would also rapture in an instant. With a severely collapsed upper torse, which would happen in an instant, I think your heart and major arteries would also become destroyed in an instant.

All that space would instantly get filled up with water.

I personally think that the violent process would kill them instantly - as in milliseconds...and then when all air has escaped the body, water would fill that space, until the pressure has reached an equilibrium.

EDIT: I personally don't think they suffered. The sub likely imploded in an instant, without little prior warning (noises) if the material behaves in the way I suspect it does. Just lights out, and that's that. Brain didn't even get time to react.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#453
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if the window remained intact. This seemed like a logical failure point.

My guess would be that the window wasn't the failure point, assuming that pressure hull was indeed found in many pieces. If the window did go first, the pressure delta on the rest of the hull immediately begins to equalize, so the amount of force the hull is under immediately goes down, making failure of the hull instantly less likely. The inertia of all the water rapidly entering the vessel might do some damage, but…

https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/titan-could-have-vulnerabilitie...

> the submersible was designed to reach depths of 4,000 metres, but Lochridge said the passenger viewpoint (window) was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 metres

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#454
post #308

It is notable how much news-coverage this received (for understandable reasons [1]) relative to the almost simultaneous disaster in the Mediterranean [2], where a shipwreck killed hundreds of people. [1] What springs to mind: Dramatic search action well suited for live blog coverage; psychological impact of the idea of people stranded in a submarine for days; And of course the average person here is probably a lot cl…

I would not read too much into it. Media coverage in this context is mostly about how sensentional and novel the news is. People get lost at sea all the time, in particularly in fishing and shipping industry. The average person is very similar to those people and yet such events dont generally create international news.

It is less about the media but more about the response of officials. How many boats were send to look for a single submarine? All the way from the France? When they could have been sent to Mediterranean sea as well.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#455

The conversation around this event is incredible. Why can’t I do something risky and deal with the consequences myself (i.e. death)? I want to climb K2 alone in shorts, don’t cry my loss. I’ll die doing what I love.

You absolutely can - so long as you don't get other people killed in the process. The CEO of this company convinced customers to join him on his death march, which IMO is a worth crying about.

We don’t know the details, they could have been well aware. I’d buy a ticket in this death trap if I could afford it.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#456
post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real-world training for the newbies, exercise for the journeymen, and teaching moments for the experts. That alone is worth my tax dollars for keeping a robust search and rescue force. At least some of the CEO's estate should go to paying for it, but pay out to victims' families first.

Exactly. Same reason that, even setting aside basic humanitarian ethics, it made sense for fire departments from all over America to send their crews to help out after 9/11 even though the victims didn't fund them; the experience is well worth the expense.

Which of the victims asked those planes to be sent their way?

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#457

It is notable how much news-coverage this received (for understandable reasons [1]) relative to the almost simultaneous disaster in the Mediterranean [2], where a shipwreck killed hundreds of people. [1] What springs to mind: Dramatic search action well suited for live blog coverage; psychological impact of the idea of people stranded in a submarine for days; And of course the average person here is probably a lot cl…

I think the migrant boat disaster is horrible. But I was more interested in this missing sub because it was a bit mysterious what happened to it initially. Then it all comes out how badly built it is, how it's a death trap, etc. It's just more interesting personally. It doesn't mean it's worse than the migrant boat, it's just more interesting and I'd rather read about it. Mysterious cases always get more traction on…

Do you have any details about why it was a death trap?

I watched one video that complained about off the shelf parts being used, but the two examples was an RV light (not safety related) and the gaming controller (which they had multiple back ups).

They also claimed to have been reviewed by Boeing and University of Washington. There was 7 different mechanisms that could force a return. Some of those were purely mechanical.

Clearly the sub wasn’t safe enough, but I’m not seeing anything that makes it obviously badly built.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it seems like this ROV doesn't have sonar, and can only search visually at a short distance. They claim a distance of around 20 feet. I'm surprised they could find a debris field so fast with such a small range of observation.

Turns out that the debris field was only a few hundred meters from the bow of the Titanic which is approximately where they lost contact in the water column, so I suspect their search consisted of diving to the last known location of the Titan and then just going to the sea floor from there.

For a two mile journey, I'd say they basically made it to the Titanic.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#459
post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Two months later, OceanGate faced similarly dire calls from more than three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — who warned in a letter to its chief executive, Stockton Rush, that the company’s “experimental” approach and its decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us…

I don't understand why they didn't just drop it to the bottom of the ocean without people hundred times to see if it still holds. Who experiments with a crew in the age of remote control sensors and computers?

I'm guessing they couldn't afford to without going bankrupt.

Re: Debris found came from missing Titan sub, says friend of passengers

#460

Stockton Rush (OceanGate's CEO) was known in the Seattle tech community [0] My understanding (very much not first hand) is that he was seen as an expert in the specific engineering disciplines necessary to safely build and operate deep sea submersibles like Titan. He was also apparently a father to members of the Seattle tech community, who are no doubt grieving at the moment. Please remember that, for some members o…

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