Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 107 posts

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#71

Post by numpad0 »

silisili wrote: post #61
evgen wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the Chilean miners trapped for a couple of months back in 2010? The fact that all I need to do to remind you of the event is mention 'Chilean miners' should be sufficient evidence to prove an exception to your proposed rule.

I'll half concede, fair point. It was a lot of people (more than 30), and IMO wasn't covered as heavily as say, the Thai cave or this may be. There is definitely a disaster angle news latch onto, but it's pretty rare for a group of adults this small. There are small plane crashes with more fatalities multiple times a year... And it can't be the 'missing people' angle, there are like 400k kids every year reported miss…

The urgency tickles our savior complex. The situation makes us feel that we might be able to save those souls if only we could figure out the correct bash one-liner to solve it, and that grabs our collective attention.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#72

Post by XorNot »

atoav wrote: post #57
whythre wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a marine noise expert, but it’s my understanding that noise transmits horizontally underwater way better than vertically. Since this sub is going really deep, getting the pings to go ‘up’ to a meaningful degree is going to be difficult.

This is correct, the different temperatured layers of water typically develope quite well defined borders, these border regions act like any border between mediums with differing densities: they refract and reflect waves passing through them.

Right: but even in then, you'd still be able to drop a microphone down through the layers and rapidly survey the whole thing at once. Much easier if the target is making a racket.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#73

Post by HWR_14 »

ehnto wrote: post #18
HWR_14 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the vessel is not able to surface on its own. At its most buoyant, a small amount of the sub will emerge from the water, and that weight will push it back down, so the vast majority of the sub is underwater. This bobbing, which depending on waves can have a small amount or none of the sub above water at any time, would make them hard to detect but easy to retrieve if they were located.

Imagine being so close yet still not able to escape the vessel. I don't know what is standard for subs, but it strikes me as particularly terrifying that they have no way to open it from the inside.

I think, but based on nothing but news stories about this incident, that's common for very deep sea submersibles. It makes sense, the could opt out of a whole bunch of surface ship concerns and they expect to be launched and retrieved. It also helps simplify the design if you don't have to worry about opening hatches from the inside. That adds complexity and can introduce new failure modes.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#74

Post by HWR_14 »

iamtedd wrote: post #41
madaxe_again wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Air is great and all, but hypothermia will get them first.

And do they have water to drink?

They had 4 days of air When they launched. At $250k, they probably had some drinks on board for a 24 hour trip, and 3 days of no water is considered survivable. So air is most likely the limiting factor, but it's possible they messed up the drink provisions extremely badly.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#75

Post by ycombobreaker »

evgen wrote: post #58
silisili wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well sure, that was kids. We only remember that kids were trapped, barely if at all the adults involved. If that cave was just full of random divers, we'd probably not heard of that one either.

And the Chilean miners trapped for a couple of months back in 2010? The fact that all I need to do to remind you of the event is mention 'Chilean miners' should be sufficient evidence to prove an exception to your proposed rule.

I agree with your points. But just imagine the news cycle if the Chilean miners _were_ children!

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#76

Post by ip26 »

ak_111 wrote: post #69
nologic01 wrote: post #42

If they are indeed banging they should use morse code to communicate something

Interesting idea, I actually can't think of anything they are able to communicate that would aid in their rescue. They could probably signal if they are close to the surface, they won't be able to provide much more information on their exact location I think.

Identifying themselves to disambiguate from other random noises?

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#77

Post by upon_drumhead »

AustinDev wrote: post #3

Wow, this is the worst possible situation, if true. They're likely to run out of breathable air long before they can be rescued. I'm hoping they make it out but, I personally would have opted for an implosion if I was in the same situation. The suffering they're enduring, if actually alive, is pretty rare. I can't imagine what is potentially going through their heads. If they are alive the 8 hour delay from Oceangate…

According to Wikipedia

> The vessel was expected to resurface at 18:10 ADT.[16] Authorities were notified about the incident at 18:35 ADT.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Titan_submersible_incid...

One could argue that the delay once communications were lost is reasonable until the sub was overdue back.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#78

Post by Jcowell »

numpad0 wrote: post #71
silisili wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll half concede, fair point. It was a lot of people (more than 30), and IMO wasn't covered as heavily as say, the Thai cave or this may be. There is definitely a disaster angle news latch onto, but it's pretty rare for a group of adults this small. There are small plane crashes with more fatalities multiple times a year... And it can't be the 'missing people' angle, there are like 400k kids every year reported miss…

The urgency tickles our savior complex. The situation makes us feel that we might be able to save those souls if only we could figure out the correct bash one-liner to solve it, and that grabs our collective attention.

this seems so weird to me since the majority of the planet isn’t doing anything to save these people.

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#79

Post by benjaminwai »

prmoustache wrote: post #20

I am not even sure why we are looking for them, I don't think there is any way to setup rescue equipment that can go low enough to help them and drag that submersible out of the water before they would run out of oxygen.

The French research ship Atalante is almost there:

"It carries the Victor 6000 autonomous robot, capable of descending to a depth of 6,000 metres, beyond the 3,800 metres of the wreck's position"

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/france-send-ship-titani...

Last I checked on MarineTraffic Atalante was about 100NM away from site. Would it not help?

Re: Banging sounds heard during Titan search, according to internal government memo

#80

Post by slowmovintarget »

HWR_14 wrote: post #74
iamtedd wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And do they have water to drink?

They had 4 days of air When they launched. At $250k, they probably had some drinks on board for a 24 hour trip, and 3 days of no water is considered survivable. So air is most likely the limiting factor, but it's possible they messed up the drink provisions extremely badly.

Carbon dioxide levels will do them in before lack of oxygen.
Post reply on HN