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Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

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Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#541

Post by dtagames »

mcpackieh wrote: post #32
dtagames wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Did it not occur to anyone that it might be a bad idea? Of course the danger was considered, be realistic and stop letting class conflict cloud your judgement. Something being judged to be dangerous doesn't mean people won't do it, and people doing something dangerous doesn't mean they didn't consider the risks. People go skiing, base jumping down cliffs with wingsuits, cave diving and swimming with sharks. It's ok…

All of the things you mentioned are activities for the wealthy. Why does that matter? Because having a lot of money can make risk not as risky. Rich people know they will be rescued. They have insurance and fancy doctors. They can afford to be airlifted out of exotic places.

While it's not a conclusive link, it seems to me that people with a smaller financial safety net might not be as interested in such activities because they cannot stand the risk.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#542

Post by defrost »

dtagames wrote: post #541
mcpackieh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did it not occur to anyone that it might be a bad idea? Of course the danger was considered, be realistic and stop letting class conflict cloud your judgement. Something being judged to be dangerous doesn't mean people won't do it, and people doing something dangerous doesn't mean they didn't consider the risks. People go skiing, base jumping down cliffs with wingsuits, cave diving and swimming with sharks. It's ok…

All of the things you mentioned are activities for the wealthy. Why does that matter? Because having a lot of money can make risk not as risky. Rich people know they will be rescued. They have insurance and fancy doctors. They can afford to be airlifted out of exotic places. While it's not a conclusive link, it seems to me that people with a smaller financial safety net might not be as interested in such activities b…

It's not the risk, it's the eight unpaid days.

Offer up $5 USD p/hour and you'll be inundated with people with no financial safety net willing to take on great risk.

eg: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/6/19/cleaning-doha-wi...

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#543

Post by paganel »

noirbot wrote: post #263
bell-cot wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True about recreational divers. I'm trying to explain the sentiments which user paganel originally voiced - which I suspect are kinda common. My sense is that the strong negative feeling are tied to how much of a "just too many emotional points against it" corner case this is. A famous & famously tragic shipwreck, the dangers inherent in their extreme tourism, how very few people can imagine "it coulda been someone l…

I think some of the pushback that I feel to that is that it seems like a socially acceptable guise for just wanting to hate rich people. I'm fine if your opinion is "screw rich people who spend this much on weird things", or even "Rich people who died doing something this frivolous deserved it." But just own that . If this had been the original diving expedition to the Titanic to find the wreck for the first time, or…

Yes, it’s a combination of hating the rich people (which is a very valid sentiment, btw) and of invading a sacred “burial” space. If they had somehow gotten there on their own dime, like those divers you mentioned, then, yeah, it’s a little too morbid for me but whatever suits them.

But to sell tickets (worth a staggering 250k) in order to visit the burial place of a couple thousand people is just not ok, it destroys the place’s sacred aura.

Just imagine if they had left the ruins of the Twin Towers in place, including the dead and decomposing people under those ruins, and if they had started selling tickets in order to visit said place. Totally not ok.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#544

Post by dtagames »

defrost wrote: post #542
dtagames wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the things you mentioned are activities for the wealthy. Why does that matter? Because having a lot of money can make risk not as risky. Rich people know they will be rescued. They have insurance and fancy doctors. They can afford to be airlifted out of exotic places. While it's not a conclusive link, it seems to me that people with a smaller financial safety net might not be as interested in such activities b…

It's not the risk, it's the eight unpaid days. Offer up $5 USD p/hour and you'll be inundated with people with no financial safety net willing to take on great risk. eg: https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2023/6/19/cleaning-doha-wi...

Unfortunately, that's true also.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#545

Post by rkangel »

minedwiz wrote: post #267
systemtest wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there some sort of underwater "GPS" tracker they can use to track the sub?

Communicating with submarines is actually a nightmare. The saltwater ruins most radio communications, so you have no chance to receive GPS signals, which are pretty weak even on the surface. One thing the military does/did to communicate with subs is use low-bandwidth text-only very low frequency radio, but you need colossal transmitters and there's no way the mother ship carries one. Hydrophones are also an option,…

The important issue with VLF radio in this case is that what we need is sub->ship communication. VLF relies on massive antenna, often ground based to (very slowly) send message to subs. My understanding is that for comms the other way, the sub needs to raise an antenna above the surface (then possibly doing laser comms to a satellite so that no radio emissions give away sub locations).

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#546

Post by manarth »

fastball wrote: post #521
manarth wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard scuba cylinders are typically pressurised to around 230 bar, with a small proportion taking 300 bar as their standard working pressure (with margin for over-pressure). It's not too much of a leap from there to the 380 bar pressure at Titanic's depth.

Indeed, this company[1] seems to sell COPV's that are rated for 414 bar, so my assumptions were wrong in this case. As such, I will revise my theory, and posit that the actual issue with this strategy at Titanic depths is keeping the water out of the ballast tanks once you've evacuated them. This seems plausible given that the hatch must be bolted on from the outside. If they had a method to keep 382 bar of water dyn…

> If they had a method to keep 382 bar of water dynamically out of the ballast tanks

By filling the ballast tanks with 382 bar of air.

The human-interior of the sub is maintained at 1 bar to avoid compression demands (hyperoxic seizure triggers at approx 7.6 bar when breathing atmospheric gases; HPNS (High Pressure Nervous Syndrome) is common after 16 bar on a helium-oxygen mix), and decompression requirements.

Equalizing the inside-outside pressures would help a lot with the composite materials, and somewhat less so with the fleshy meat bags inside.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#547

Post by gymbeaux »

fredoralive wrote: post #488
gymbeaux wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think those are somewhat forgivable/reasonable things for an experimental craft. My bigger concern is all of the current and ex-employees on Glassdoor talking about how morale is incredibly low and all the experienced folk were driven out and replaced by eager, young recent-grads willing to work 60+ hour weeks in the desert for what they seem to say is below-market pay. The only thing anyone really says ab…

But Virgin Galactic isn't supposed to making an experimental craft, that was SpaceShipOne. They're supposed to be making the production version to carry passengers. You can't really have "ship blows up" levers once the public is on board.

Well they did address the “ship blows up” lever, which… it’s not fair to call it that, as though it were a self-destruct button, it’s a lever for controlling the orientation of the wings, since sometimes the ship is a glider and sometime’s it’s more like a rocket. If that lever is pulled too soon, it’s sort of like deploying extreme flaps on an airplane, it immediately and drastically changes the flight control surfaces and puts sudden force on the plane to go a different direction than it’s currently going.

It’s experimental in the same way commercial airplanes could be considered experimental until accidents went down to “basically zero”. Flying commercial was kind of risky until the ~70s.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#548

Post by jacquesm »

wnkrshm wrote: post #486
jacquesm wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt he built the sub.

They copied the glass fiber + titanium rings idea from the Deepflight Challenger that Virgin wanted to dive with. [0] Virgin deemed the design not safe enough for more than a single dive and quietly scrapped the diving events: "Based on testing at high pressure, the DeepFlight Challenger was determined to be suitable only for a single dive, not the repeated uses that had been planned as part of Virgin Oceanic service…

That makes very good sense. Pity they didn't copy the conclusion too.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#549

Post by belorn »

ck2 wrote: post #430
Retric wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are perfectly happy to accept some risk. However you can’t expect normal people to take on extreme risk and expect a profitable long term business. If the actual risk are close to BASE jumping then you’ve failed.

All the dead frozen bodies on Mount Everest are a testimony to risk hand-waving. But I short-circuit trying to figure which is more stupid, visiting Everest or Titanic. People want an "adventure" and to learn useful things about themselves? Okay train to run a marathon. Now train to run it faster.

Running is a very high injury rate sport. Depending on what study you look at, novice runners has an accident rate of around 3.3 (that requires medical attention) per 100h of running. It is not without its own risk. Lower risk than climbing Everest or visiting Titanic, but still fairly high risk activity in a city environment with city traffic.

Swimming is a bit better if one want to a lower-risk sport.

Re: Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

#550

Post by animinog »

Lacerda69 wrote: post #493
jacquesm wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with renting?

Its a slur for prostitutes in German ;-)

And with that in mind, you may want to re-read the post you replied to.

(That's about as close to explaining the joke as I'm willing to go.)

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