Sub lost contact over Titanic

JOhnH said:
I agree to a point.
But where would we be if throughout history, people did not take risks.
And who is to choose who can take what risks? Do they all have to be government approved and sanctioned?
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Well, there's also the risk/reward ratio. Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to summit Everest. Each year, now, dozens of people do it...is the reward the same?

Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Now they pack tourists into cans to push them above 100 km so they can claim the same. Is the reward the same?

I have no problem with people trying to joint the tourist hordes on Everest, or ride into space in a fake ****, or dive down to the ocean floor. I just have little sympathy for folks that do these dangers activities with no scientific or exploratory aspects.

What really gripes my wagger is the fact that the company did all they can to avoid US regulatory or safety oversight...and do you want to bet that the families and companies of the deceased are going to work like hell to get their lawsuits into US courts?

Ron Wanttaja
 
Piperonca said:
How about if they actually did tap at 30 minute intervals, just like stranded submariners are supposed to do, and then things started getting real bad inside the crew compartment (stinky, can't breathe, dark, cold, etc.)? With no hope, maybe the capt. pulled a special cork and scuttled the vessel so as to not prolong suffering. Stranger things have happened. But it's doubtful the searchers would want that information public. Coming soon on Netflix.
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Did they tap to the left when it was after the 1/2 hour mark, and tap to the right when it was before the 1/2 hour mark?
 
One of the Wright brothers crashed and was killed in one of their planes. Obviously, a Darwin Award Winner? Or trailblazer?

I have been corrected, neither Wright brother died in a plane crash. Memory playing tricks on me.

The customers on board knew there were large risks, and signed 3 different documents accepting the possibility of their death. Still, they paid an amazing fee for the opportunity to take the dive. I sympathize with their families, but the end must have been quick for those on board.

If they offered me 10 times the fee to get me to go down to the Titanic, I would have passed. Even at my advanced age, not worth the risk, I am still enjoying life. I have also seen plenty of rusting hulks on the beaches of war zones.
 
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GaryM said:
There were a lot of sonobuoys in the water by Tuesday, with more constantly being added. As was stressed in the press briefing, they did not capture the sounds of a catastrophic failure.
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The sonobouys can’t hear something that happened before they were put in the water.
 
geezer said:
One of the Wright brothers crashed and was killed in one of their planes. Obviously, a Darwin Award Winner? Or trailblazer?

The customers on board knew there were large risks, and signed 3 different documents accepting the possibility of their death. Still, they paid an amazing fee for the opportunity to take the dive. I sympathize with their families, but the end must have been quick for those on board.

If they offered me 10 times the fee to get me to go down to the Titanic, I would have passed. Even at my advanced age, not worth the risk, I am still enjoying life. I have also seen plenty of rusting hulks on the beaches of war zones.
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I will argue though, did they really understand the risk? I've done lots of activities that require waivers...had to sign one once to rent a golf cart. But were the passengers in this case really aware of how this operation was truly run? Sounds like a lot of concerns were raised in the past, and promptly buried. Did any of them have the knowledge of underwater operations to spot the real dangers.

Was there the pressure to go, because the money was already spent? Have you ever been in a situation where your gut told you something was off, but you pressed ahead anyway due to some external pressure?
 
midwestpa24 said:
I will argue though, did they really understand the risk? I've done lots of activities that require waivers...had to sign one once to rent a golf cart. But were the passengers in this case really aware of how this operation was truly run? Sounds like a lot of concerns were raised in the past, and promptly buried. Did any of them have the knowledge of underwater operations to spot the real dangers.
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If you want to parse it closely, then no none ever really knows any risk.
 
So now that they know it imploded, what we're the noises heard that were previously reported on?
 
Half Fast said:
The sonobouys can’t hear something that happened before they were put in the water.
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I think the reply about the water being full of monitoring devices was saying this scenario was impossible, as the sonobouys would have heard it happen:

Piperonca said:
How about if they actually did tap at 30 minute intervals, just like stranded submariners are supposed to do, and then things started getting real bad inside the crew compartment (stinky, can't breathe, dark, cold, etc.)? With no hope, maybe the capt. pulled a special cork and scuttled the vessel so as to not prolong suffering. Stranger things have happened. But it's doubtful the searchers would want that information public.
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If you look into the pictures and available technical specs of the submersible, though, I'm pretty sure that including a special cork never even occurred to the guy who made it.
 
Got a
EdFred said:
Did they tap to the left when it was after the 1/2 hour mark, and tap to the right when it was before the 1/2 hour mark?
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Got a 50/50 chance of getting it right.
 
geezer said:
The debris field is wide enough to indicate that the failure occurred well above the ocean floor.
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Another question/conspiracy theory: what if the sub made it to the bottom and somehow went inert, would the 'automatic surfacing' feature get it above the ocean floor when the pressure change could have presumably caused the structural failure? Then the scattered debris field. Another potential plot twist.
 
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Sad. If you're grabbing at straws, it was a fast way to go.

I guess this answers my question about carbon fiber's resilience to pressure cycles and the ocean environment.
 
bflynn said:
Sad. If you're grabbing at straws, it was a fast way to go.

I guess this answers my question about carbon fiber's resilience to pressure cycles and the ocean environment.
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Yes, it could have been the last straw...
 
Though I heard at press conference that once submersible was put in water they had found pieces in 3 hours-that’s pretty fast.
Not sure who would plan on pulling debris up or investigate. Who pays for that?
 
kmacht said:
So now that they know it imploded, what we're the noises heard that were previously reported on?
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the media can does twist information to their liking.

rescue professional: "these sound detection devices, through the course of normal activity, pick up sounds like whooshing and sloshing and clanging and banging and it takes about a half hour to go through the results before we can even begin to know what we're listening to"

the media: "they are hearing banging every 30 minutes! they are alive......THEY ARE ALIVE AND BANGING ON THE WALLS OF THE SUB EVERY 30 MINUTES"
 
SkyChaser said:
I think the reply about the water being full of monitoring devices was saying this scenario was impossible, as the sonobouys would have heard it happen:
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I was responding to this:

GaryM said:
There were a lot of sonobuoys in the water by Tuesday, with more constantly being added. As was stressed in the press briefing, they did not capture the sounds of a catastrophic failure.
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If the failure had already happened, all the new sonobouys that were added wouldn't have heard it.
 
RyanB said:
Risk is all relative. An experimental manned submersible that is controlled by an Xbox controller, is bolted closed from the outside without an emergency escape and relies on a secondary source to get it back to the surface is beyond just a risk - it’s just flat stupid.
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Agreed.

Every good design engineer I've worked with has a mindset of barely controlled paranoia, constantly thinking about what can go wrong in the design and how that weakness can be mitigated. This submersible, from what we've learned so far, shows extremely poor engineering.
 
Half Fast said:
The sonobouys can’t hear something that happened before they were put in the water.
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Quite true. I was responding to a post speculating that after the tapping didn't bring help on Tuesday/Wednesday, those on board decided to scuttle the ship in a catastrophic fashion. Sonobuoys didn't detect such an event.
Which supports catastrophic failure earlier than Tuesday, probably when contact was lost on Sunday, before there were sonobuoys deployed.
 
GaryM said:
Quite true. I was responding to a post speculating that after the tapping didn't bring help on Tuesday/Wednesday, those on board decided to scuttle the ship in a catastrophic fashion. Sonobuoys didn't detect such an event.
Which supports catastrophic failure earlier than Tuesday, probably when contact was lost on Sunday, before there were sonobuoys deployed.
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Right.

If we shave with Occam's Razor, the simplest and (so far) most logical assumption (and that's all it is) would be that the failure happened at the same time comms were lost. I believe that was about an hour and forty-five minutes after the dive began.
 
geezer said:
One of the Wright brothers crashed and was killed in one of their planes...
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I know you've been corrected but just for the record it was Lt. Selfridge who died and it was in the Write flyer with Orville as pilot. He was the first person killed in an airplane crash. He also was a member of the Aerial Experiment Association along with Glenn Curtiss and Alexander Graham Bell where he designed the Red Wing and he also flew White Wing which was the first airplane to use Bell's new invention - the aileron.

trivia mode OFF
 
U.S. Navy Detected Titan Sub Implosion Days Ago
WASHINGTON—A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system designed to spot enemy submarines first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search said.

The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site discovered Thursday and reported its findings to the commander on site, U.S. defense officials said.
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Probably a paywall:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12
 
Half Fast said:
Agreed.

Every good design engineer I've worked with has a mindset of barely controlled paranoia, constantly thinking about what can go wrong in the design and how that weakness can be mitigated. This submersible, from what we've learned so far, shows extremely poor engineering.
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The more I think about this, I think about the parallels with the guy building the Raptor. He was so focused on the end result, he ignored physics, engineering, and sound advice from others.
 
eman1200 said:
the media can does twist information to their liking.

rescue professional: "these sound detection devices, through the course of normal activity, pick up sounds like whooshing and sloshing and clanging and banging and it takes about a half hour to go through the results before we can even begin to know what we're listening to"

the media: "they are hearing banging every 30 minutes! they are alive......THEY ARE ALIVE AND BANGING ON THE WALLS OF THE SUB EVERY 30 MINUTES"
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I am reminded of the Challenger disaster. The news media reported that parachutes has been sighted, and some of the crew probably survived. Chutes were the ones on the SRBs, of course....

The 24-hour news cycle is incompatible with accurate journalism.

Remind folks, as well, it could have been someone playing 'silly buggers.' After Earhart disappeared, there were radio operators impersonating her signals.

Ron Wanttaja
 
James Cameron and the other deep sea pioneer who actually found the Titanic, who's name escapes me now, said in the ABC News post-USCG newser interview there was some evidence the surfacing weight was released and they were on their way up. So there may have been some warning from the cracking and delamination sensors before the shtf. Not sure how they came to that conclusion.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
James Cameron and the other deep sea pioneer who actually found the Titanic, who's name escapes me now, said in the ABC News post-USCG newser interview there was some evidence the surfacing weight was released and they were on their way up. So there may have been some warning from the cracking and delamination sensors before the shtf. Not sure how they came to that conclusion.
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So much for them being blissfully unaware of their impending doom.
 
geezer said:
The customers on board knew there were large risks, and signed 3 different documents accepting the possibility of their death.
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And, much like we do when we read and sign TOS for every web site we visit, they probably parsed every word and made an objective risk analysis.
 
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