Titanic submersible

Releasing ballast won't bring it to the surface if it is holed, (bit like dumping sand out of a hot air ballon with a hole in it) it only makes it more boyant if it is full of air.

It would need somthing like lifting bags that could be filled with a bottled gas to bring the weight up.

An American journalist who went to the titanic said it has 7 ways to surface and one of those will work even if the crew are unconscious so maybe it is snagged on debris. Another fella on the news this morning said his sub was caught in a current once and got wedged up by the propellers. He thought he was going to die for a few hours but they managed to unwedge it. Seems utterly crazy to me though going down there I wouldn't even get in that thing on the surface.

It is, when the person in it meant something to you.

But getting in the car, driving across the country, parking nearby, beating your way through bramble hedges and admiring the gravestone of Cedric Arthur Tollbutstone(born 1883, died 1912) by the light of a torch would be considered a bit odd...

I don't think it's unreasonable to say that the people who died on Titanic mean something to a great many people.

The same can be said about the occupants of Commonwealth war graves, which people still visit in large numbers, sometimes travelling large distances to do so, and without necessarily having any close or even distant family member interred or memorialized in the cemetery they're visiting.

Even ordinary civilian cemeteries can have much larger visitor numbers than you might expect; taphophilia isn't all that odd, you see, statistically speaking at least. Whether you or others approve of it is another matter.

In Titanic's case, seeing the wreck in person is surely something countless people would want to do if they could do so reasonably safely and affordably. Having to beat their way to it through bramble bushes and rely on torchlight to see it at all would deter practically no-one if that was all that stood in the way of this particular goal.

I sincerely hope they are found alive and well.

There is also a part of me that wonders if someone in Holywood is already writing a script, and waiting to write the ending.

We often have people visiting the church and churchyard in looking for ancestors, often Americans but also one time locals who have moved away. Also around 30 candles a week are lit in respect of this. Last year some Americans came to see the tomb of a relative from 1637. Few mention the 40 war graves though.

It appears that the design of this thing was not even validated by a second party let alone properly tested. Under these circumstances it could not have been insured. Try that with your 5" gauge steam locomotive running on a public/club track.

Often people visit graves for good reason. I have an uncle who died during the Michael Offensive and I visit his battalion's plaque whenever I am passing. I know that battlefield tourism, almost as old as the battlefield, has included cemetery visits but this is hardly so for the Titanic. As for the citizen science justification........... It is just a tick on an extreme bucket list.

JA

I cannot understand why the search is over such a large area as surely if the sub was going down over the Titanic, it should be close to it. It should not have moved far from the site on which it was diving.

I don't think repeatedly going from unstressed to compression causes fatigue, and cracks do not propogate through carbon fibre matrices if they are properly designed/constructed. You can get low cycle fatigue, but it is more often associated with thousands or millions of cycles. This thing won't have done anything like that.

The usual way to make electronic things work under external pressure is to fill them with non conducting oil. Might be a bit more difficult to make them buoyant at the same time

I don't think repeatedly going from unstressed to compression causes fatigue, and cracks do not propogate through carbon fibre matrices if they are properly designed/constructed. You can get low cycle fatigue, but it is more often associated with thousands or millions of cycles. This thing won't have done anything like that.

The usual way to make electronic things work under external pressure is to fill them with non conducting oil. Might be a bit more difficult to make them buoyant at the same time

Bryan,

The USCG ships and planes can only search the sea surface. They need to expand the surface search area to account for time and tide. They have no deep water search capability. not until the French research ship arrives, later this evening, with it's deep water ROV. Too little, too late.

My rather nebulous "bucket list" is to visit the WWI cemeteries. That would not be to gawp, but to pay my respects. I don't think that those billionaires went down there to pay their respects: they could perfectly well have done that on the surface.

THIS is encouraging:

A submarine expert says “banging” noises detected in 30-minute intervals by rescuers searching for the Titan submersible were “encouraging” rescuers that the five people on board were still alive. … submariners are taught that if they’re stuck in a disabled submarine on the hour and the half-hour they bang the hull for three minutes, then they stop. They don’t make any more noise.

He added, “So the fact that we’re hearing banging at 30-minute internals tells me that the people inside are sending a message that says, ‘We understand that you would be looking for us and this is how you might expect us to react.’ So, it’s very encouraging.”

Let's hope they are still alive down there and that the rescuers can hook a cable onto them sometime soon while they still have oxygen.

It does indicate that the Titan must be snagged on something and unable to break loose, rather than suffering a mechanical malfunction. As the article linked to in the OP of this thread says, they have seven different ways of manually dumping ballast or inflating a balloon to get to the surface in an emergency.

So good news they may well be still alive to be found, but bad news they will need to be untangled from whatever they are snagged on before they can be surfaced.

Can not imagine what it would be like to be sitting down there waiting.

Edited By Hopper on 22/06/2023 06:18:51

For £200k they didn't even get a seat. Just a place on the floor.

Is the USCG in charge of coordinating the rescue mission, or is it a bit of a free for all?

And why has an aircraft carrying a UK team of deepwater rescue experts (+ equipment) sat on the tarmac since Monday awaiting 'paperwork' clearance? .... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/06/20/missing-submarine-titan-titanic-rescue-mission-blocked/

I know this is a rare event, but at least let anyone who might be able to contribute get as close to the scene as quickly as possible, and then assess if they can contribute.

Ches

Not sure who the top cocky is. It is in international waters, closer to Canada than US. Seems to be US and Canadian coast guards involved, plus various navies. According to THIS there are already three good submersibles on the job so they may consider that enough without getting in each other's way? But you would think more units could cover a larger area without crossover.

I have to say the three submersibles (one is a robot) detailed in the link all look a heck of a lot more sophisticated than the length of drain pipe the billionaires are stuck in. Laughable by comparison, if it were not so tragic.

Edited By Hopper on 22/06/2023 07:42:08

THIS latest report says the Magellan is now being loaded on a plane in Jersey after FINALLY getting permission. But it will take 48 hours to get to the site so too late to save any lives. Delayed by red tape. Government efficiency at its finest.

If I understand rightly comms was lost after 1h 35m yet the decent takes 2h+ so how is entanglement possible ? Discarded nets ?

One system of ballast detachment was automatic after 16h ?

It has no means of comms on the surface ?

Why is it not painted yellow or orange ?

No means of escape, even if on the surface ?

The "designers" had never hears of Sods law ?

I just pray for the poor souls on board. Noel.

I thought about air bags but a scuba cylinder at about 200 bar can't do much inflating when the water pressure outside is 400 bar

No, obviously the designers were ignorant of Sod's Law. Not much in the way of extra safety system redundancies or emergency standby gear like extra CO2 scrubber chemicals to keep the levels down in the unvented vessel. No mention of thermal insulation or clothes etc to help withstand the 0 degree conditions for days at a time. All operating on the assumption nothing will go seriously wrong. Or if it does, you are dead. And people never really believe they are going to die until they are looking it in the face.

Possibly a lost trawler net entanglement, yes. Lots of them out there drifting around the world for years on end before they disintegrate. And Newfoundland is a big fishing area, or was. Usually those "ghost nets" are killing the wildlife. Might be a bit different this time.

The lack of comms is very strange. The lack of some kind of underwater emergency position beacon "pinger" even more so. If they did become entangled in a ghost net, they could have drifted many many miles away by now along with it, if they were unable to lodge on the bottom or come up to the surface.

No mention of further banging noises. Not looking too good.