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Tourist submarine exploring Titanic wreckage disappears in Atlantic Ocean

CDA 455 II said:
Interesting🤔

Was it early in the dive and they were heading to the wreckage?

Or was it post-touring heading back to the mother ship?
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Some early posts in this thread said that the sub had not been down long enough to reach the wreck when contact was lost.
 
aczlan said:
I was reading the story on that one. Sounds like he did it right, he went to a company who builds mini subs and they built that one with the intention of it being a prototype for a new class of small commercial deep subs, apparently he wanted to build without windows/viewports and they insisted on them so that they could sell them commercially with the same design.

Aaron Z
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there was a good show on its construction.
you can search for videos on forming the titanium shells that make up the sphere.
also had to go to Russia to be tested as that was the only place on earth that could do it.
and tested to 46000 feet :laughing:

“The pressure hull was designed so that it would fit in the pressure chamber,” he says. “It was absolutely at the limit of what would fit.” A dive of 14,000 metres was then simulated. While this depth is 20% deeper than the deepest point on earth (the Challenger Deep stands at 11,000 metres) it is a requirement for submersibles intending to dive the full ocean depth multiple times. Needless to say, Limiting Factor passed the test, becoming the only submersible in the world certified to dive to 11,000 metres an unlimited number of times.
 
Vacuum implosion on the surface isn't quite the same as an implosion on the sea floor.

Vacuum implosion ends when the hull is breached, on the sea floor it begins when the hull is breached and doesn't end until everything is squished.

It's much more catastrophic on the sea floor.
 
nahmus said:
Completely guessing and making wild assumptions here.

I can't find how many times this sub made that journey but do you think that wear and tear on the sub from going up and down played a factor and that nobody caught it?
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First thought on a failure point is the port hole glass wasn't rated for the pressures they were operating at. The titanium hatch ring being bonded to the carbon hull with epoxy would be a fatigue point in my mind, not to mention various through hulls etc.
 
Joez said:
www.wsj.com

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago

Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first heard the suspected implosion just hours after the submersible began its voyage.
www.wsj.com www.wsj.com

Us navy detected it when it happened.
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But why let a perfectly good crisis go to waste?


CDA 455 II said:
The owner's on camera saying he thinks safety has it's limits.

I can easily see him skipping a ton of post dive inspections.
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And pre-dive inspections, which will kill you just the same.
 
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nahmus said:
Completely guessing and making wild assumptions here.

I can't find how many times this sub made that journey but do you think that wear and tear on the sub from going up and down played a factor and that nobody caught it?
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Based on all the corners these guys cut I'm guessing their inspections between trips probably resembled someone kicking tired on a used car.
 
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway:

When this thing imploded under the surface, would there be any physical detection of it happening on the surface?

I'm picturing bubbles floating to the surface, or something like that? Or, is it just a silent "crunch" and thats the end of it?
 
CDA 455 II said:
Interesting🤔

Was it early in the dive and they were heading to the wreckage?

Or was it post-touring heading back to the mother ship?
Click to expand...
It's been said to have happened 1:45 in and it's a 2-hour ride down, so probably they hadn't gotten there quite yet.
From the debris field description, it sounds like it must have happened before they got to the bottom from how it spread.

CDA 455 II said:
So they possibly never made it.

I wonder if all commo was recorded?

Wasn't the only way to commo with the submerged sub was texting?:confused:
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I would assume that it was recorded, I don't know that I would trust a recording that was held by the company though, from what's been said about them I wouldn't trust them to not alter it in their favor.
Sounded like it was an acoustic data protocol of some sort, if that's the case, they should have had location data, depth, speed, etc at the time of the implosion.
mdmike said:
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway:

When this thing imploded under the surface, would there be any physical detection of it happening on the surface?

I'm picturing bubbles floating to the surface, or something like that? Or, is it just a silent "crunch" and thats the end of it?
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If it was down almost at the Titanic, I don't think there would be enough volume to make anything visible on a surface, it would all disperse by the time it got up to the surface.
Assuming that they were using a audio link to transmit data, there's a good chance that the ship heard the implosion on that and had a pretty good idea what had happened, so this whole "search to find them before they run out of oxygen" was BS and they should have known fairly shortly after it happened what had occurred IF someone was actually listening on the acoustic link (and knew what to listen for) and not just a computer looking for data.

Those seem like pretty big ifs from what's been reported about the company so far, that would explain though why the Coast Guard wasn't rushing to send resources to search as they had a pretty good idea it was recovery not a rescue from the start.
I'm curious, if they had all this data being streamed from the sub, why not also drop a hydrophone down (keeping it well above them, but close enough to be in the same thermal layer (thermocline?) as the sub)?

Aaron Z
 
mdmike said:
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway:

When this thing imploded under the surface, would there be any physical detection of it happening on the surface?

I'm picturing bubbles floating to the surface, or something like that? Or, is it just a silent "crunch" and thats the end of it?
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know. In a normal situation, sure. But several thousand feet under the surface? I'm guessing there's a decent chance the glasses would be absorbed by the water before it reached the surface or become so diffuse by then that you wouldn't notice it.
 
CDA 455 II said:
Interesting🤔

Was it early in the dive and they were heading to the wreckage?

Or was it post-touring heading back to the mother ship?
Click to expand...

SanDiegoCJ said:
Some early posts in this thread said that the sub had not been down long enough to reach the wreck when contact was lost.
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The sub launched at 8 a.m. lost contact at 9:45 a.m, the Navy listening post heard a something at 9:45 a.m. the estimate decent time to travel down to the wreck is roughly 2 1/2 hours so it was not at the deepest point when it imploded. Maybe 8ooo =/- feet ?
 
F2504x4 said:
The sub launched at 8 a.m. lost contact at 9:45 a.m, the Navy listening post heard a something at 9:45 a.m. the estimate decent time to travel down to the wreck is roughly 2 1/2 hours so it was not at the deepest point when it imploded. Maybe 8ooo =/- feet ?
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That's pretty much the gist of the earlier posts as far as timeline to lost comms.
 
mdmike said:
I'm sure this is a stupid question, but I'm going to ask it anyway:

When this thing imploded under the surface, would there be any physical detection of it happening on the surface?

I'm picturing bubbles floating to the surface, or something like that? Or, is it just a silent "crunch" and thats the end of it?
Click to expand...
Yep, a huge burp of a bubble breaking surface and a sound like a giant fart, but the crew was looking upstream and didn’t see or hear it. :flipoff2:
 
Rooney77 said:
Vacuum implosion on the surface isn't quite the same as an implosion on the sea floor.

Vacuum implosion ends when the hull is breached, on the sea floor it begins when the hull is breached and doesn't end until everything is squished.

It's much more catastrophic on the sea floor.
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There has to be a video out there of this.

Maybe sub tests where they intentionally blew a little chunk out after it reaches depth? Just to study what happens.
 
Southernfriedcj8 said:
You would think something that janky would-be pressure tested after each voyage.
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he took the uncertified not sanctioned status of the craft and used it to market his 'ride'.

I think he did what he and his team thought made sense to them all based on emotion and making sure the masses were satisfied.
 
east_beast said:
Based on all the corners these guys cut I'm guessing their inspections between trips probably resembled someone kicking tired on a used car.
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I disagree, he wanted people on the cutting edge of designs, people who think out side the box.Not oh you cannot do it types who are set in there ways. This guy had big money and did not spare expense , the hull was built and tested and there were testing producers in place but think about it though how do come up with procedures with a one of a kind design ? Trial and error comes to mind. Look at the modern materials we use today, there was many failures along the way.
 
nahmus said:
guess it's not a secret anymore
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why would you do that? What benefit is there to saying " we knew they were dead all along, we just didn't want to tell anyone"
I can understand if you knew, and kept it to yourself even after it was confirmed, but why blab about it afterwards?
 
Roc Doc said:
Well it's not like the US has the ocean floor wired for sound...oh right, they do. I'm sure some technician heard the big smush and through triangulation knew exactly where it happened.
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They probably knew where the pieces landed as well. I kind of doubt the just happened upon them a full mile away on the first day.
 
F2504x4 said:
I disagree, he wanted people on the cutting edge of designs, people who think out side the box.Not oh you cannot do it types who are set in there ways. This guy had big money and did not spare expense , the hull was built and tested and there were testing producers in place but think about it though how do come up with procedures with a one of a kind design ? Trial and error comes to mind. Look at the modern materials we use today, there was many failures along the way.
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That was his sales pitch. I think it's probably more likely that he simply wasn't willing to pay the market price for the level of experience and expertise he actually needed to be hiring.
 
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