Sub visiting Titanic lost

Gomez Adams

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Dec 1, 2020
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They lost contact with the sub 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive to Titanic, which sits 12,500 feet down.


First off, I think paying 250,000 dollars to do it is stupid. Once again people take something extraordinarily dangerous and make it a common occurrence for profit.

Being somewhat claustrophobic, I would never do it. I can't imagine how horrific it is for them if they're still alive, which I doubt.

If they lost power, they were probably at around 11,000 feet. They would slowly sink to the bottom right by the Titanic. They'd never see it in the extreme blackness, but they'd know they're right next to it, waiting to die when the oxygen runs out.

Some things are better left alone. Titanic is one of them.
 
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I'd be very surprised if it wasn't a negative buoyancy submersible with mechanical weight detachers. And it is.


In the case of becoming tangled, or a power or communications failure, the Titan would be equipped with drop weights, which can be released in an emergency, creating enough buoyancy to take it to the surface. The Titan has an array of signals, lighting, reflectors and other equipment it can use once on the surface to attract attention.

“If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” Greig said. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”

Chris Parry, a retired rear admiral with the British Royal Navy, told Sky News a seabed rescue was “a very difficult operation”.

“The actual nature of the seabed is very undulating. Titanic herself lies in a trench. There’s lots of debris around. So trying to differentiate with sonar in particular and trying to target the area you want to search in with another submersible is going to be very difficult indeed.”

There's also the possibility of a catastrophic collapse. With no one to release the weights, it would also stay submerged.




An aside. I've overflown and flown in that area a lot for training and ops. I remember reporting a Wood's Hole vessel as practice one trip and two days later there on the news was Ballard announcing the discovery of the Titanic's resting place. They also announced they were keeping the location a secret at that time. I remember also distinctly thinking 'Oh, I know where you are' lol.
 
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So the admiral mentions a Canadian P-8 as well as our C-130 (Herc). We don't have P-8's (a 737 derivative), but we do have P-3's (turboprop, which we designate as the CP-140 (internal Canadian parts) but elsewhere around the world it's the P-3 for ease of recognition). We haven't upgraded our fleet yet but most like the Admiral was briefed it was a Canadian sub hunter which he assumed was now the P-8 model like you have.
I've got a couple hundred flight hours right over that area.
 
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Well, this may sound awful, but if the sub imploded at least it was over very quickly and they didn't have to sit there for days knowing they were going to die.

Can you imagine sitting in that damn thing in the blackness with your own son knowing you're both going to die?
 
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Yep. That's them. One of the men confirmed that the landing frame and rear cover were visible in the debris field.

There's supposed to be a presser with the Coast Guard to announce the findings in 30 minutes.
 
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Bob Ballard and James Cameron are letting Harding have it over his complete lack of certification and his use of carbon fiber. From memory as best I can as I'm watching it live:

"Look, we've been doing this since the late 1950's. Us, the French, the Russians, no matter whose vehicle it was they were all built in a very similar fashion, undergoing the same testing, the same certifications, and we never lost anybody. This has never, ever happened. We had some failures, we had some events, but nobody died. That sub is the first that did it differently and this is the result. That speaks for itself." - Bob Ballard

"...the man had several engineers point out to him the issues that were prevalent with carbon fiber and the concerns that they had. One actually sued over it. Didn't matter. Just like the captain of Titanic that was warned there were icebergs ahead, he went on full steam ahead and they all died as a result." - James Cameron
 
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