Mystery Titanic Tourist Submarine Lost * Found as Debris

Remove this Banner Ad

Batteries running out, or failure of the cable that links the controller to what is being controlled, are probably the most common points of failures in game controllers (from my experience using them).

FWIW there's also a video of the CEO mentioning that there are spare ones kept onboard.

Highly unlikely a controller is at fault here, more likely (as far as I've read) that the hull has failed in some way or that it's stuck on some wreckage. Little to no chance of retrieval any time soon at that depth given they've not already located it.
 

Log in to remove this ad.

  • Thread starter
  • Moderator
  • #57
I hope not :(. Where's the humanity, rather than schadenfreude :mad:

We can't get around it that the CEO of Ocean Gate was a sea cowboy who not only bragged about being a rule breaker on safety but challenged others at the same time by telling them not to bother getting off their couch.

I don't think that's quite crossed the line in to schadenfreude if there is some of it out there.

The memes started early in too .. this is such a frightening situation that people cope differently trying to process it.
 
  • Thread starter
  • Moderator
  • #58
You’d think for $360,000 you’d at least get a seat for the journey

It's the dumbest and most reckless thing I think I've ever seen, truly. Exploration okay, fine be an explorer but do not sell tickets to tourists and put teenagers on your unregulated, uncertified jerry built experimental sub.
 
Yes you would. Even being in a boat on top of the ocean has plenty of risks let alone what these guys were doing. Like going into the outback with little water and no gps or way of communicating.
It's the lack of redundancy that's really concerning.
In your example above, experienced travelers would have an emergency distress beacon and a SatPhone. You don't rely on just one comms device.
Ships carry lifejackets at 110% of crew capacity. There are plenty of examples.

What we know about this sub so far indicates there's zero redundancy in anything they've done.
 
It's the lack of redundancy that's really concerning.
In your example above, experienced travelers would have an emergency distress beacon and a SatPhone. You don't rely on just one comms device.
Ships carry lifejackets at 110% of crew capacity. There are plenty of examples.

What we know about this sub so far indicates there's zero redundancy in anything they've done.
would any of these work 4km underwater?
emergency beacon should be onboard in case they are floating in the ocean somewhere though.
 
would any of these work 4km underwater?
emergency beacon should be onboard in case they are floating in the ocean somewhere though.
EM radiation is quickly absorbed in water. You need sonar pings to communicate.

Edit: obviously a cable to the surface enables video feed and decent comms
 
would any of these work 4km underwater?
emergency beacon should be onboard in case they are floating in the ocean somewhere though.
They're examples of redundancy being integral to planning, not submarine-specific examples.
There definitely should be a mains-separate EPIRB (or similar) device on any ocean going vessel. Emergency oxygen supplies at a minimum.

This craft seems to have no emergency surfacing equipment on it at all and if the engineer (who was fired) reports are true, inadequate pressure testing as well. It's a shambles of an operation.
 
From what I read they have several ways of surfacing, but if comms were lost during the descent my guess is they imploded. The implosion of USS Thresher was detected, but this vessel is considerably smaller and much further down.
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

It's the dumbest and most reckless thing I think I've ever seen, truly. Exploration okay, fine be an explorer but do not sell tickets to tourists and put teenagers on your unregulated, uncertified jerry built experimental sub.

An interesting article below on submersibles regulation (lack of).

'JUNE 21, 2023

The Murky Regulations Governing Submersibles'

By Clio Chang
...
As a historian, what parallels do you see with the Titanic?
The major seafaring nations get together in London two years after the disaster and pass the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS), which set the standard by which vessel construction and rescue is done. SOLAS basically mandates things like having enough lifeboats for everybody, the standard for what distress flares look like, everyone having radio, the radio being monitored 24 hours a day, and requirement by law to render assistance. The Titanic really set in place vessel rescue on high seas and the question is if the Titan gets us an update to SOLAS regarding submersibles.

...
Even weirder, there was a book written 14 years before the sinking of Titanic that basically foretold the sinking of Titanic — the ship sails across Atlantic, strikes an iceberg, and sinks. The title of that book was The Wreck of the Titan.'

 
There are reports through the press that it took OceanGate over six hours after last contact with the Titan, to call the Coast Guard.

That seems too long to my mind.

Anthony Koletti would probably say that was a very quick missing persons report.

 
It's the lack of redundancy that's really concerning.
In your example above, experienced travelers would have an emergency distress beacon and a SatPhone. You don't rely on just one comms device.
Ships carry lifejackets at 110% of crew capacity. There are plenty of examples.

What we know about this sub so far indicates there's zero redundancy in anything they've done.

Don't understand why there's no tether cable. Gives you communications & a way to reel in the submersible if it breaks down. Seems like they had no contingency plan for a simple breakdown and/or the submersible becoming stuck.
 
  • Thread starter
  • Moderator
  • #69
Don't understand why there's no tether cable. Gives you communications & a way to reel in the submersible if it breaks down. Seems like they had no contingency plan for a simple breakdown and/or the submersible becoming stuck.

I was thinking about that, then thought a tether might become tangled but they probably shouldn't get that close anyway and it could come with a release.

Sorry for butting in, hard to resist though because it had been playing on my mind.
 
I was thinking about that, then thought a tether might become tangled but they probably shouldn't get that close anyway and it could come with a release.

Sorry for butting in, hard to resist though because it had been playing on my mind.

Previous ships did have tethers I believe and releasing them should be pretty straightforward if needed.
 
a simple breakdown and/or the submersible becoming stuck.

Stuck in ghost nets.

'An Australian woman’s dream was to explore the Titanic. It almost ended in disaster

By Angus Dalton

June 22, 2023 — 4.54pm
...

Ghost nets are fishing nets abandoned by trawlers that wend through the ocean, even at 4000-metre depths. They can be kilometres long and more than large enough to entangle whales.

“They are a serious threat to navigation both above and below the water.”
...
Ghost nets are fishing nets abandoned by trawlers that wend through the ocean, even at 4000-metre depths. They can be kilometres long and more than large enough to entangle whales.

“They are a serious threat to navigation both above and below the water.”
...
Ghost nets are just one of the hazards that could have caused the Titan submersible to go missing during its descent to the Titanic wreckage on Sunday night (AEST).
 
'OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said he didn't want to hire a bunch of "50-year-old white guys" like other submarine companies, because he wanted his team to be "inspirational."

Former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge -- one of those "50-year-old white guys" Rush wanted to avoid hiring -- was fired by Rush in 2018 after he reportedly blew the whistle on OceanGate by raising safety concerns over their first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems.

Lochridge was terminated in 2018 after presenting a scathing quality control report on the vessel.

Lochridge's worry that "visible flaws" in the carbon fiber supplied to OceanGate raised the risk of small flaws expanding into larger tears.

Lochridge recommended that non-destructive testing of the Titan's hull was necessary to ensure a "solid and safe product." Lochridge was told that such testing was impossible, and that OceanGate would instead rely on its much touted acoustic monitoring system. The company claims this technology, developed in-house, uses acoustic sensors to listen for the tell-tale sounds of carbon fibers in the hull deteriorating.

Lochridge responded that the system would not reveal flaws until the vessel was descending, and then might only provide "milliseconds" of warning before a catastrophic implosion. Lochridge also strongly encouraged OceanGate to have a classification agency, such as the American Bureau of Shipping, inspect and certify the Titan.

A day after filing his report, Lochridge was summoned to a meeting.... He was informed that the manufacturer of the Titan's forward viewport would only certify it to a depth of 1,300 meters due to OceanGate's experimental design. OceanGate refused to pay for a viewport that would meet the Titan's intended depth of 4,000 meters.

At the end of the meeting, after saying that he would not authorize any manned tests of Titan without a scan of the hull, Lochridge was fired and escorted from the building.

Lochridge, who claimed he was discharged in retaliation for being a whistleblower, made his filing after OceanGate sued him in federal court. OceanGate accused him of sharing confidential information with two individuals, as well as with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In the lawsuit, OceanGate characterized Lochridge's report as false, and accused him of committing fraud by manufacturing a reason to be fired.

 
Don't understand why there's no tether cable. Gives you communications & a way to reel in the submersible if it breaks down. Seems like they had no contingency plan for a simple breakdown and/or the submersible becoming stuck.
Tethers can become tangled but mainly at those depths they can act as a bit of sail for the submersible, dragging it around and occasionally getting them into spins. The mother ship can end up dragging them too.
 
A common sentiment I feel.

View attachment 1718877
Being a Titanic enthusiast i'll have to go into bat for it here. She was beyond safe for the time, met every regulation and even went beyond in some cases, including having more life boats than required (life boats in those days were not meant for whole ship evacuations, more for transport to other vessels). She was wounded by the iceberg in literally the only spot that could have sunk it that quickly. Part of what makes it such a fascinating and tragic story.

And there were far more poor people on board than rich people.
 

Remove this Banner Ad

Mystery Titanic Tourist Submarine Lost * Found as Debris


Write your reply...

Remove this Banner Ad

Back
Top