Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic

[Jon]

@89th said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

So it sounds like the facts are in.

The Navy (using top secret tech) detected an implosion sound about 9,000 feet down, on the 13,000 feet trip. They knew about this immediately.

So this answers our question about the sonobuoy and related underwater listening technology. It was quite remarkable when I was around it in the mid 80s, of course 40 years later it will be indistinguishable from magic.

[Horace]

Link to video

[Jon]

@Jon said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

@89th said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

So it sounds like the facts are in.

The Navy (using top secret tech) detected an implosion sound about 9,000 feet down, on the 13,000 feet trip. They knew about this immediately.

So this answers our question about the sonobuoy and related underwater listening technology. It was quite remarkable when I was around it in the mid 80s, of course 40 years later it will be indistinguishable from magic.

From the NYT:

The U.S. Navy, using data from a secret network of underwater sensors designed to track hostile submarines, detected “an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” in the vicinity of the Titan submersible at the time communications with the vessel were lost on Sunday, two senior Navy officials said on Thursday.

[Renauda]

@bachophile said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

So now we know they were dead already on day 2, so what the hell was the rhythmic knocking heard after that….something else is down there playing drums….

My guess is ghosts banging on Davy Jones locker.

[LuFins Dad]

So if they heard the implosion at the time, why didn’t they say anything until yesterday?

[Mik]

The ocean is a noisy place.

[Jon]

@LuFins-Dad said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

So if they heard the implosion at the time, why didn’t they say anything until yesterday?

My guess is, while it was consistent with an implosion sound, they couldn’t know for sure if that’s what it was, and didn’t want people to call off the search based on any statement they made.

[Doctor Phibes]

@George-K said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

THey're also blaming the implosion on repeated stress on the hull.

I know nothing about undersea vehicles, but when we test for structural integrity under pressure there's a couple of things we do:

1. Test a sample to considerably higher pressure than it's actually going to be subjected to - i.e. 1.5 times or 4 times the rated pressure

2. We don't allow use of the prototype we've actually done the tests on in the field.

It looks like what these guys did was test the safety of the submarine by actually just using the submarine, and since it was ok, they just carried on using it.

William Kohnen, chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee, has told the BBC that regulations for building submersible vessels were "written in blood".

Yeah, these people just ignored all the data that was already out there. Also, they avoided having to comply with legislation by only operating in international waters. People should go to jail for this, except of course the guy making the decisions is dead.

[89th]

@LuFins-Dad said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

So if they heard the implosion at the time, why didn’t they say anything until yesterday?

To the public, maybe. I believe the Navy was coordinate with search and rescue efforts to narrow their search area.

[George K]

[Mik]

It was painless.

So what happens when a submarine implodes?

A sub descending to the depths of the wreckage of the Titanic is under enormous pressure from the water outside. If the submarine were to implode, the hull would be crushed at unimaginable speed.

A former submarine expert explained what this might be like. Dave Corley, a retired Navy Captain, said: "When a submarine hull collapses, it moves inward at about 1,500 miles per hour - that's 2,200 feet per second.

"A modern nuclear submarine's hull radius is about 20 feet. So the time required for complete collapse is 20 / 2,200 seconds = about 1 millisecond. A human brain responds instinctually to the stimulus at about 25 milliseconds. Human rational response is at best 150 milliseconds.

"The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapors. When the hull collapses it behaves like a very large piston on a very large Diesel engine. The air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion Sounds gruesome but as a submariner I always wished for a quick hull-collapse death over a lengthy one like some of the crew on Kursk endured."

John Jones, a former member of the US Navy Submarine Force, added: "Implosion events occur within milliseconds, far too quickly for the human brain to comprehend."

[George K]

[Doctor Phibes]

Somebody noted that at the depth we're talking about, if a diver's compressed air tank had a hole knocked in it, water would rush in rather than air rushing out.

Which kind of makes the lackadaisical attitude to safety even more shocking. It's like going to the moon and not worrying about safety.

[George K]

They lost coms with the submersible, what, 90 minutes into the dive. I assume that that's when the catastrophe occurred. If it was 90 minutes into a 2 hour descent, I wonder how deep they were.

Deep enough to be fatal, of course.

[Mik]

Navy said around 9,000 feet.

[Renauda]

Not a big fan of James Cameron, but he makes some good points in this short interview:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65994707

[Horace]

@Renauda said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:

Not a big fan of James Cameron, but he makes some good points in this short interview:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65994707

He said that on Monday, when he heard the sub had gone missing, "I immediately got on the phone to some of my contacts in the deep submersible community.

So that's why I was getting so many busy signals.

[George K]

Ben Shapiro: "Hard to think of a better way to undermine institutional credibility than to spend days pretending that a submersible may be at the bottom of the ocean and that the entire world should hold its breath, while knowing for days the thing imploded."

[Jon]

I’ll repeat what I said earlier - they probably didn’t know with certainty.

[Mik]

@Jon I'd agree. In all cases rescue efforts go the extra mile. Sometimes many extra miles, as evidenced by the four kids in the Amazon 40 days.