Submersible used to take tourists to view wreck of Titanic goes missing in Atlantic Ocean, sparking search and rescue mission.
Unless they are coming up on their own, it takes about 2.5 hours to get down to the wreck, and what I’ve read online is that these subs carry like edit:12 hours of oxygen. Docs on the submarine show 96 hours of oxygen, this was wrong of me to guess
They need to get a towing vessel to the area, they need to get the rescue sub down to the bottom, winch up, and get back up. 6 hours of work once you’re there. That means they have less than 4.5 hours to get on station. It’s 1000 miles from Boston. Ain’t no ship in the world sailing at under 200 knots.
Bad news only from this. They gotta get up on their own.
You don’t think the host ship they depart from has an emergency vessel ?
I’d hope that they would, but if they are relying on the coast guard to help out, they aren’t gonna get there in time
I’ve read a probable scenario about accidents with small DSVs in the book Below(Edit) the Edge of Darkness (about marine biology of bioluminescence and the tech developed by the author to film/record it):
There was a small leak in a valve, used for emergency operation IIRC and the author noticed that going down - she was still light enough to ascend but she said had she been a few hundred meters deeper, she never would have made it back up due to the extra weight.
What you’re describing is similar to the leading theory for what happened to the USS Thresher. Flooding occurred and then when the sub went to emergency blow its ballast to surface, ice formed in the piping blocking the pressurized release of ballast water, causing the sub to sink uncontrollably. There’s a good gif doing a better job explaining it on the wiki. Interestingly, the evidence used to determine this theory was gathered by Robert Ballard the famous oceanographer who then went on to be the first to find the remains of the Titanic. It all come full circle!
The whole Ballard titanic story thing is closely related to the Thesher. He was being funded by the navy to find the thresher under the cover of searching for the titanic. Ballard convinced them to allow him to use some of the time, provided he found the thresher, to Actually look for the titanic.
nformation declassified in the 2008 National Geographic Documentary Titanic: Ballard’s Secret Mission shows that USNR Commander (Dr.) Robert Ballard, the oceanographer credited with locating the wreck of RMS Titanic, was sent by the Navy on a mission under cover of the search for Titanic to map and collect visual data on the wrecks of both Thresher and USS Scorpion.[30] Ballard had approached the Navy in 1982 for funding to find Titanic with his new deep-diving robot submersible. The Navy conditionally granted him the funds if the submarine wrecks were surveyed before Titanic. Ballard’s robotic survey showed that the depth at which Thresher had sunk caused implosion and total destruction; the only recoverable piece was a foot of mangled pipe.[31] His 1985 search for Scorpion revealed a large debris field “as though it had been put through a shredding machine”. His obligation to inspect the wrecks completed, and with the radioactive threat from both established as small, Ballard then searched for Titanic. Financial limitations allowed him 12 days to search, and the debris-field search technique he had used for the two submarines was applied to locate Titanic.[32]
Eh, here’s a question from the bbc article in question:
The vessel weighs 10,432 kg (23,000 lbs) and, according to the website, can reach depths of up to 4,000m and has 96 hours of life support available for a crew of five.
they must have edited it since then. I have updated my post to reflect the actual info
Great! I’d still not at all want to be stuck there. Also, just loosing contact with the sub feels like a majorly bad sign.
Id say that it indicates a catastrophic failure most likely, a far more preferable fate if you ask me rather than sitting on the bottom waiting for air to run out.
Oh totally, I’d rather die quickly in a submarine than slowly. Another reason to not be in a submarine.
The BBC article says the sub usually dives with a 4 day supply of oxygen.
The issue is less the oxygen and more the carbon dioxide removal. assuming the sun has good scrubbers to clean out the co2 then okay, however it can depend how they are powered. There are comparisons to the Apollo 13 situation here.
BBC article must have been edited since my original post. I have edited my post to reflect the new info.
Trapped in a sub amongst the wreckage of the Titanic is nightmare fuel. I don’t think I would have even came up with that on my own, I thought they only send robotic subs down that far.
Wow - those tourists paid $250,000 to be on that submersible.
It reads like there are no tourists on this trip, just crew. Or the firm is cruel in only caring about retrieving the crew.
I felt like they were calling the passengers crew as like, an umbrella term? The one guy I’ve seen named is a tech billionaire.
It reads like this ‘tragedy’ is marketing to other people that have a quarter million dollars for a submarine ride.
Hopefully this incident kills the entire notion of extreme vacationing… but it probably wont
The guy in this CBS video points out how shitty the sub “seems.” Dude drives the thing with a Madcatz controller!
Jesus Christ, in reading about this, I had been imagining a sleek, high-tech marvel of engineering.
That thing is a slapped-together mess.
Pretty sure the middle is just PVC pipe from the mix-and-match pipe aisle at Home Depot.
I would pay $250k to go down in a sub with parts sourced from home Depot /s
Just being bolted into that thing is nightmare fuel.
Looks like I can’t watch that from Canada :(
I wouldn’t get inside anyone’s submarine at this point.
There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
The US military literally uses Xbox controllers for a lot of their drones and tech.
It’s kind of a rare move by the Pentagon of actually spend smartly.
Why spend millions on R&D to develop something that already exists and has been iterated based on massive operator feedback a dozen times over decades? It’s literally a platform that has been designed and honed to operate vehicles of every shape and size.
Well isn’t that horrifying…
Makes my skin crawl even thinking of having problems in a submersible.
I do hope everything is ok.
Same
I initially thought this post was about a reddit sub going missing, and I was very confused about why anyone would pay to be part of it, or why there would be a search.
I feel like a terrible human. I thought exactly the same, and had already scrolled on past. My short-term memory loop made me scroll back up a couple seconds later.
Yep, I thought it was another maliciously compliant reddit sub ‘going missing’ instead of private.
“You guys are taking this stuff way too seriously.”
Oh that kind of sub, I was trying to figure out what the mods were doing at reddit now.
A Titanic tourist sub. There really was a niche sub for everything.
I mean…that would be kinda weird
If I had a penny for every time the Titanic caused a rescue mission, I would have two pennies. Which isn’t a lot but it’s curious it happened twice.
first time was the time the titanic sank? hahha
Rumor has it, the band is still playing
They are also playing Nearer, My God, to thee
Unfortunately, they have only kazoos due to space constraints. Frankly not what you want to hear in what might be your final moments.
I’m hoping that their engine went off and they’re camping nearby titanic
Pressure is so big down there that one micro problem on submarine and whole submarine is gone.
They really protesting reddit. That sub decided to go dark forever.
Wow…I can’t imagine how terrified they must have been. If the sub was destroyed I hope it was quick for them.
I think if the sub was destroyed, it was definitely quick for them.
Article says it carries 4 days of life support and oxygen on board so there’s still some chance they’re okay. Maybe rescuable, one hopes.
Suddenly losing contact usually implied catastrophic failure… that would be the preferable scenario in my opinion.
The second one must have hit an iceberg!
The iceberg tasted blood 100 years ago, and it wasn’t satisfied. It is a cold-blooded killer.
It’s like these guys didn’t even watch Titanic 2.
I had no idea that the Titanic made it that close to North America and/or that icebergs are that far South (relatively) in the Atlantic.
Would it make you feel any better if I told you that’s probably not a threat for much longer? I’m not a scientist, but my understanding is that spot is probably at a gentle simmer by now.
TBF I don’t think they planned on seeing an iceberg that far south either.
Same. I always sit down to watch a doc on the titanic, but this was my first time seeing it on a map.
$250,000 a seat tourist submarine… The ocean can have them.
I mean no disrespect to the dead and all, but this has the same vibes as those rich idiots plugging up Mt Everest with their corpses.
