Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I read online that the glass was only rated to 1400 meters and they were going to 3500 m , 2hen I saw the sub front being taken up it was the first thing I noticed , plus there was talk of a extra hole being bored in the hull which was never checked ?

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Apparently this happened while still on or near the surface, so I'd think it would be something you'd pull the sub straight out of the water and give it a very thorough check out. But apparently they just wrote it off as normal and went about their day.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

It was. They didn't want to spend the extra money, or the time to built a specialized glass that was rated to that deep.

a reply to: 38181

It was in 1932, when Otis Barton and William Beebe were testing their bathysphere with the third window installed instead of the steel plug. It flooded twice during unmanned testing, due to the plug not holding. It wasn't clear if it flooded at full depth under maximum pressure, or at some point during descent or ascent, or some combination of the two.

a reply to: Zaphod58


I Hope they throw the book at the owner for his negligence

OceanGate hired interns to design and build the electrical systems. Mark Walsh, who eventually joined as their electrical-engineering lead talked about how he and his team if interns designed the electrical system in 2018. He hired several interns from his alma mater.

www.insider.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Completely agree!

A couple interesting data points just for reference. No real conclusions, but interesting none the less.

1. The Titan submersible lost contact with its surface vessel, Polar Prince, at 9:45am, but wasn't reported 'overdue' until nearly 8 hours later (7 hours 55 minutes).

2. The submersible was supposed to return to the surface just over 5 hours from the beginning of the dive (or approximately 3pm).

3. The sub is not reported overdue until 5:40pm.

What's curious here is, it seems to me just about an responsible protocol would dictate, in the event of the loss of comms, a mission like this would be aborted and the submersible would return to the surface. Further, comms are more than just voice communications with crew, but presumably also data and telemetry from the sub itself. Loss of these comms would seem to be a mission-critical event. Yet, it seems from the timing like the decision to notify outside parties (i.e. Coast Guard) was driven not by the loss of comms at 9:45am, but rather by its failure to surface as scheduled 5 hours later. This is further borne out by the fact it takes nearly 3 hours after the sub was scheduled to surface for the Polar Prince to notify the Coast Guard.

The other thing which strikes me as odd, and this may be a leap of faith on my part, is the fact that one would think a research vessel like the Polar Prince which was involved in a deep see submersible operation would also have hydrophones deployed to monitor events taking place in the water column between the vessel and the seafloor below it. And/or, active sonar from the vessel itself. Yet there's no report of any such data of this sort.

And, it's not until the next day, nearly 18 hours later, that Royal Canadian Air Force P-3's (correction: CP-140's) start dropping sonobuoys in the area. Later, it is reported that these sonobuoys pick up several banging sounds reported at 30 minute intervals. Several hours after this more abnormal noises are detected (without any conclusion as to what the origin is). (Note - Previous MSM reports incorrectly claimed Canadian "P-3 Orion" aircraft, but the RCAF doesn't operate the P-3, they operate the similar Lockheed CP-140 Aurora).

After learning of the '30 minute interval' reports it occurred to me, wouldn't it make sense to have some sort of a water or pressure sensitive distress signal device mounted inside the pressure hull of the submersible to trigger in the event of immersion in water or exposure to extreme pressure?

I don't know, just some interesting facts and associated musings.

ETA - There may well be plausible explanations for all of these things, but as it stands now these details seem pretty curious and worthy of questioning.

On a side note, I also saw a report with an interview with James Cameron wherein he states that 'both comms AND navigation' was lost on the submersible. I'm not sure how he knows this, but if true (and the navigation was not a subset of the comms from Polar Prince), then this would seem to be all the more reason for a mission abort protocol.

In all likelihood, none of this would have prevented the loss of the sub as all evidence right now points towards a catastrophic hull failure of some sort, which would have been immediate and fatal. But...it does call into question why it took so long to notify outside parties of a potential event which would require outside assistance. In other words, none of this would have helped the doomed crew, but it might serve as a guideline for protocols in the future.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

I'm sure you could hold down a weather balloon with all the waivers and hold-harmless forms the occupants of an 'adventure' like this have to sign in order to be accepted. So, I don't think we're going to see a whole lot of book throwing as a result of this incident. Sure, something might come out of 'willful negligence' if that is found to be the case, but short of this I doubt it.

The refusal of the company's founder to subject the vessel to 3rd party destructive testing is probably where everyone is going to look for that 'willful negligence' element, and it may well be, but the fact that this data was not concealed and was available in the public sphere for consumption up to 2 years ago will not work in that pursuit's favor, particularly when it comes to 'acceptance of the risks' in the eyes of the law.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

The owner of the submarines wokeism cost them their lives , white 50 year old engineers and designers were not wanted on this progect , like Boeing aircraft they found out the hard way

a reply to: stonerwilliam

Can't. He was onboard when it imploded.

a reply to: WakeUpBeer

Poetic justice was served then

originally posted by: Flyingclaydisk
A couple interesting data points just for reference. No real conclusions, but interesting none the less.

1. The Titan submersible lost contact with its surface vessel, Polar Prince, at 9:45am, but wasn't reported 'overdue' until nearly 8 hours later (7 hours 55 minutes).

2. The submersible was supposed to return to the surface just over 5 hours from the beginning of the dive (or approximately 3pm).

3. The sub is not reported overdue until 5:40pm.

The sub had lost contact on previous dives, so apparently the crew decided to wait for them to surface before raising alarms.

What's curious here is, it seems to me just about an responsible protocol would dictate, in the event of the loss of comms, a mission like this would be aborted and the submersible would return to the surface. Further, comms are more than just voice communications with crew, but presumably also data and telemetry from the sub itself. Loss of these comms would seem to be a mission-critical event. Yet, it seems from the timing like the decision to notify outside parties (i.e. Coast Guard) was driven not by the loss of comms at 9:45am, but rather by its failure to surface as scheduled 5 hours later. This is further borne out by the fact it takes nearly 3 hours after the sub was scheduled to surface for the Polar Prince to notify the Coast Guard.

Communications appear to have been text messages from the sub every fifteen minutes.

And, it's not until the next day, nearly 18 hours later, that Royal Canadian Air Force P-3's (correction: CP-140's) start dropping sonobuoys in the area. Later, it is reported that these sonobuoys pick up several banging sounds reported at 30 minute intervals. Several hours after this more abnormal noises are detected (without any conclusion as to what the origin is). (Note - Previous MSM reports incorrectly claimed Canadian "P-3 Orion" aircraft, but the RCAF doesn't operate the P-3, they operate the similar Lockheed CP-140 Aurora).

After learning of the '30 minute interval' reports it occurred to me, wouldn't it make sense to have some sort of a water or pressure sensitive distress signal device mounted inside the pressure hull of the submersible to trigger in the event of immersion in water or exposure to extreme pressure?

The time delay would most likely have been getting organized and figuring out what was needed and where it was coming from. The banging is a mystery. It could have been something in the titanium hull that was moving around slowly, or god knows what.

A cameraman in 2021 said that the CEO got flustered when the sub lost communications and propulsion on a test dive at around 100 feet. He tried to make light of it according to Brian Weed. He said that he asked an unnamed consultant to the Navy to take a look at the sub design, and was told the carbon fiber hull might not withstand multiple dives. Before that, Weed and his crew declined the opportunity to take a full depth dive over concerns about the submersible. He said he felt that the hull would get weaker and weaker with every dive. The host of the show that was being filmed said they walked away because they felt it needed more time and testing. He said they had problems with the thrusters, communications, and computers on board.

A documentary cameraman who took a test-dive in the Titan submersible said OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush got "flustered" and tried to make excuses when its propulsion system failed and comms went out during a trial run.

Brian Weed, a camera operator for the Discovery Channel series "Expedition Unknown," told the Associated Press that the vessel's communication systems went offline and its propulsion system failed during a May 2021 test-dive. This happened in relatively shallow depths of around 100 feet, Weed said.

"You could tell that he was flustered and not really happy with the performance," Weed said of Rush. "But he was trying to make light of it, trying to make excuses."

www.insider.com...

a reply to: Zaphod58

Sure, lots of possible explanations, and certainly that is one of them. Again, my statement wasn't really any sort of a conclusion, more just a casual observation.

Yes, getting organized, and not wanting to raise unnecessary alarm are all plausible explanations. Just strikes me as an odd protocol for such a potentially deadly exercise. Clearly this Rush fellow wasn't a dummy; he might have been supremely arrogant, but I don't think he was stupid. Regardless of his outward refusal of 3rd party destructive testing and/or certification, certainly he must have inwardly at least considered some of these criticisms. Given he was willing to risk his own life on such an endeavor, one would at least think he would want to put into place protocols which would given his ego the greatest chance of survival. Admittedly though, ego and arrogance does often completely blind people.

a reply to: stonerwilliam

LOL! Interesting observation. You may be right!

a reply to: Zaphod58

Regardng the reported 'banging', my suspicion is it was other objects aboard the submersible crushing either as the (pieces of the) vessel continued to sink further and/or continued to fail structurally. There were numerous different tanks aboard the vessel for various purposes (i.e. ballast, air, hydraulic (and other) fluids). Once the sub self destructed, these other parts were probably impaired / damaged in some fashion. This damage probably led to their failure at differing times.

This would be my suspicion as to the origin of the banging sounds.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

Everything about this company is the exact opposite of how it should be. Using materials that aren't designed for pressures that high because they're "innovative", ignoring serious safety issues, everything. So it's not surprising that this happened, or that they ignored just about every accepted protocol when it came to reporting them missing, and waited just figuring that they'd surface on schedule and nothing could have gone wrong.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Valid point. I guess maybe I'm giving too much credit to other people beyond Rush himself. I mean, if you get in a taxicab and tell the driver to drive 100mph, even though you're paying the fare doesn't necessarily mean he'll do it. So, I guess my line of thinking was others may put some protocols in place (i.e. Polar Explorer owners, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, etc). Rush was clearly arrogant, but he wasn't Gawd.

Silly me I guess.

ETA - Having some experience with commercial diving, I do know that many diving vessel owners frequently put safety measures in place in addition to those of the company chartering the vessel, for their own protection. Having a bunch of fatalities associated with your vessel doesn't make for good PR and/or future business opportunities. ...or your insurance premiums, for future voyages!