Titanic sub

[Rommie]

Pretty wild story, huh? So gruesome, but mesmerizing somehow. (I will say, I've thought about it, and will not be spending my spare $250k to visit the Titanic.) I guess the parallels of someone with hubris to cut corners and take risks in designing an underwater sub dying while visiting a ship famous for doing the exact same is just next level.

One longer term thing I've been thinking about in all this though is how there are so many parallels to what's currently going on with space tourism- lots of money to be made in it, in a really hostile environment, and the next year is going to have a lot of companies in an industry without too many regulations. Sure, if you're an expert you'll know who's sketchy and who isn't... but a week ago I highly doubt any average person paying money knew the significant safety issues or lack thereof around various companies that go to the Titanic. And I suspect in ten years or so we can easily read a similar headline to the ones this week in regards to space tourism.

[geonuc]

Yeah, I followed the story too. With my navy submarine experience (this thing was a submersible) I sort of knew that after two hours incommunicado that they were dead. And I was waiting for the Navy to chime in with reports of an implosion from the SOSUS network, which they did but not publicly, only to the Coast Guard incident commander.

[Rommie]

That's the wild thing though- the sub's comms were so bad they routinely were out of contact with the surface for that long! Like apparently they'd just lose touch for a few hours as a matter of routine, which was a huge reason they didn't report they were missing for so many hours. Crazy in itself to have something like that and think it's NBD, really.

And yes, I'm nowhere near as experienced but found it really hard to believe it could be anything but that they were already dead. I guess there was a 1% chance they weren't, but who bets on those odds.

[geonuc]

Yes, you're right. I should have written "incommunicado for a few hours past the time when they were due back on the surface." When we first heard of their difficulty, that was the situation.

The reason that I concluded the worst is that there is always a last resort with regard to communicating underwater: banging on the hull. That sound can be picked up a fair distance. Their main hull section was a composite material but the end caps were titanium. Banging on the titanium should be heard on the surface. Without any indication such as that, it would suggest the passengers were most likely not conscious and after such a short time having elapsed relative to their air supply, an implosion was almost a certainty. That was my thinking.

[Thumper]

I may sound harsh, but I was hoping for an instantaneous massive implosion vs. sitting on the bottom on its side for three days waiting to die because nobody knows where you are.