Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

a reply to: beyondknowledge2

I'm currently zeroing in on the ballast tanks. Or the jerry rigged emergency systems. The sub had emergency blow capabilities but something prevented that after a distress signal. They were 15 minutes from the wreck. This is doom upon doom.

I hate to be the doomsayer on this, but the CEO was on board, and that just seems like the way this company would end, if it is indeed a vehicle loss. Taking with it the overconfidence in the experimental craft. Maybe I'm too cynical.

But it's just a feeling... as old as sailing itself.

a reply to: Oldcarpy2

The square cornered windows caused too much stress in the windows and metal around the windows. This was only shown after many repeated pressurisations. All windows in jets have round corners now. They just did not know about it when they designed and built the Comet.

This sub, being just a pressure tank with minimal systems, may have had a similar flaw.

The fact the hull is mostly carbon fiber hinders the search also. Less signature for a magnetometer to locate.

a reply to: Degradation33

No, they had no 'energency blow' capabilities. From what I have see, they just drop the pipes that they use for ballest to rise normally. The automatic emergency system is just to drop the pipes on a timer. Like I have said above, loss of power should have automatically dropped the pipes. They evidently did not design it this way so they cannot adjust the boyancy without power.

Emergency blow is a procedure where high pressure air is used to push water out of tanks to make a sub boyant. This sub did not work that way and could not have enough air on board to make that work with the water pressure at that depth.

I had a thought...dont they still have ALVIN? Why not send a drone to search like that?

a reply to: beyondknowledge2

That sounds right. So amend that to say "what ever they used to surface quickly". I just assumed this one worked like larger subs. I honestly thought all subs used Ballast tanks of some size. Learned something new.

*as it turns out, what I thought were it's ballast tanks were part of the launch platform.

What remains is the gutting feeling I have Imagining being on that sub, assuming they still have air until Thursday.

a reply to: yuppa

DSV Alvin is possible. I haven't been able to locate its current position but it is in operation after a recent major upgrade.

Drones mostly are not able to go that deep ether from pressure or just cable length. The drones used to explore the Titanic were driven from the subs and not from the surface.

To relocate a research sub like Alvin, it usually takes months of planning and legistics operations. They might possibly get it there in a week or so by rushing it. The problem is if the people are alive, they don't have a week.

Latest update from the US Coast Guard.

The US Coast Guard says search efforts that are under way to find the missing Titan vessel "have not yielded any results".

In an update, Captain Jamie Frederick, of the First Coast Guard District, said the search is "complex" and "requires multiple agencies".

He says the Titan vessel has approximately 40 hours left of oxygen for five people on board. The coast guard previously said the vessel could stay underwater for up to 96 hours.

Since Sunday, he adds, the Coast Guard has coordinated search efforts with a number of other agencies "covering 7,600 square miles - an area larger than the state of Connecticut".

Officials say Titan lost contact with research vessel Polar Prince approximately one hour and 45 minutes into the vessel's dive on Sunday morning.

Five people are on board.

US and Canadian ships and planes have swarmed the area about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, some dropping sonar buoys that can monitor to a depth of 13,000 feet, the coast guard said.
news.sky.com...

a reply to: DBCowboy

No kidding. I'm getting claustrophobic thinking about it.

Also someone has definitely taken a #2 by now...

a reply to: Jeebs

Eeeeewww!

3.8 km deep or thereabouts?

Stuff of nightmares.

a reply to: Jeebs

BBC News - Titan sub: Cramped vessel is operated by video game controller
www.bbc.co.uk...

"Unusually though, it includes a private toilet for customers at the front of the sub. A small curtain is pulled across when it is in use and the pilot turns up some onboard music."

Doesn't bare thinking about.

originally posted by: gortex
NATO have said their rescue sub can't reach the depth of the submersible so even if it's accessible rescue seems unlikely.

There is a sub on its way that recovered a fighter jet from about the same depth last year. From what I'm reading if they can find it they might be able to recover it. I wouldn't count on it.

a reply to: bastion

According to Daily Mail the sub is built like a Tinker Toy with parts from EBAY

The "toilet" is bunch of Zip Lock Bags ........

Most likely imploded from the pressure

www.dailymail.co.uk...

originally posted by: Jeebs
a reply to: DBCowboy

No kidding. I'm getting claustrophobic thinking about it.

Yeah every time I visualize this thing, I start getting heart palpitations.
I can’t stand being in a car on a road trip for more than a couple hours.

a reply to: putnam6

Actually "Raise the Titanic" was written using the level of technology that existed.

a reply to: firerescue

Every new article that is published about that sub i get more and more perplexed as to why any human would ever step their foot in that thing, i would not even let a hamster in there...

Jerryrigged, multiple problems leading up to the dive, even during construction the depth rating got reduced due to cyclic fatigue, not approved by any government body, experimental, signed waivers (not that unusual but in this case for grim reasons...), etc etc etc...

Who built it? Was it an experienced company that actually built it to spec that have previous experience building subs or did the expedition company built it themselves (it can't be that hard, right...right???)?

2 other things:

The article said that carbon fiber has never been used in this type of sub before? That + the cyclic fatigue...it's a warning sign, carbon fiber can absolutely withstand the pressure, one could probably even build a carbon fiber structure to get safely down to the Challenger Deep BUT they made a cylinder instead of a more traditional sphere, carbon fiber is notoriously bad at pinchloads in cylinders (the classic egg comparison: really strong if pinched top to bottom but much weaker around its "equatorial" circumference, same applies for CF, also, CF is very strong for torsion application, not applicable to this sub though), they claimed to have talked to NASA about it, but at which capacity? If cyclic fatique was witnessed, if it was in the CF part of the sub i would be "scared", the cyclic fatigue i've seen have almost exclusively ment delamination which i could see happening in a cylinder at high outside pressure, it does not require alot of deformation or size compression of CF to create micro-cracks and delaminations...CF cylinders are used in alot of applications, everything from struts, driveshafts to the fuselarge of the 787 and rockets etc etc but none of those experience even close to the pinch compression the Titanic depth would produce...

Then, that controller, in 99% of the jerry-rigged applications i would not have any problem with an off the shelf game controller, i've seen it plenty of times in robots, airplanes, automation (at work we program a 4 axis palletiser with a Playstation controller), no issues with that BUT in a submarine, for human use where safety is very important, why??? It has no IP rating so if some dingus in the sub spill some water on it, it can malfunction, the pots in gamecontrollers are notorius for high drift + plenty of other drawbacks...

A basic industrial remote controller cost $500 and have several safety features that a game controller lacks:

IP65 rating
Dual safety processors
Dual channel e-stop
Dual frequency TX & RX
Drop and idle detection
Built to 1 or multiple ISO & IEC safety standards

And that for just a basic one. Why save money on something that controls a multi-million vehicle? The CEO:s mentality on one of the article seems to be "Eh, whatever, if something fails, we have other systems..." which aren't even failsafes...and why not take EXTRA precautions to limit the reliance on other safety systems? The CEO treats the secondary safety systems as main systems, this sub should instead have been designed in a way that the actual main systems have redundancies (as the industrial controllers have) so as to reduce main failure modes and thus reduce the potential need to use another safety mechanism.


Yeah, from an armchair position and the limited info; i am baffled that that sub is even used for human use...

Going out on a limb here but is this ship hack-able in anyway ?

originally posted by: Ravenwatcher
Going out on a limb here but is this ship hack-able in anyway ?

You mean by using EM radiation such as radio waves? They work on the surface, but once submerged, seawater weakens radio waves quickly, which is why submerged submarines can't use radio frequencies to communicate.

Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

there was currently "no way" to communicate with the vessel as neither GPS nor radio "work under water".

"When the support ship is directly over the sub, they can send short text messages back and forth. Clearly those are no longer getting a response," Mr Pogue said.

It doesn't say how the text messages were sent, might be using some very low frequency EM radiation, but it would be next to impossible to hack with that I would think.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

VLF similar to what the E-6B and E-4B use to communicate with SSBNs underwater. If it's similar to the way the military does it, short code groups that match up with a code book and decode to preset messages.

originally posted by: Degradation33
a reply to: beyondknowledge2

That sounds right. So amend that to say "what ever they used to surface quickly". I just assumed this one worked like larger subs. I honestly thought all subs used Ballast tanks of some size. Learned something new.

*as it turns out, what I thought were it's ballast tanks were part of the launch platform.

What remains is the gutting feeling I have Imagining being on that sub, assuming they still have air until Thursday.

That's a ghastly notion. I hope it was quick. Temperatures at that depth are a few degrees above freezing.

It's a very small vessel and the search area is about the size of Connecticut. I am not optimistic that they'll find it.

Not sure if this was posted, but it’s pretty damming.

newrepublic.com...