Posted on 06/21/2023 11:18:17 AM PDT by Red Badger
Aircraft black boxes send out an ultra-sonic ping that sonar equipment can pick up if the box is underwater. The technology is there, and I’m guessing not super expensive. Seems like basic equipment for a commercial submersible designed to carry passengers.
He really SAID THAT??
He’s an IDIOT!
OMG...
Sum of all fears...like being buried alive.
Yes. “A bunch of 50 year-old white guys with military submarine experience” would have quickly determined that the ‘adventure’ was far too risky, and kept a few people alive. Middle-aged while guys just don’t know how to have any fun...
Only a 50 year-old white guy would think of such a thing!.........................
International waters... Also most ships have their feet held to the fire by the folks who insure them - not by the flags they sail under.
My guess is the company was NOT able to get insurance. Companies that insure ships don’t mess around ...
I’m scratching “seeing what’s left of the Titanic” off my bucket list ...
... or maybe just moving “dying in a minisubmarine” down to the very bottom of the list ...
“The Titan is made of a combination of carbon fiber and titanium...”
Yeah and those were combined with an adhesive. I don’t know, maybe it really is a “super glue” but I, for one, wouldn’t trust an adhesive to keep the hull of my submersible together at 4,000 feet. I just have a mental image of a elephant stepping on a model airplane....
“I thought all vessels had to be certified by the coastguard or government they are registered with.”
Well, what if they just didn’t register it?
Checkmate, governments!
“I wonder who is paying for the millions to send in the recovery vessels.”
I’m going to take a wild guess and say probably the family of the billionaire who was onboard.
That’s what I thought as well. I saw the video of when they put it together.
The titanium front dome with window is not, according to one article, guaranteed by it’s manufacturer for the depths that the Titanic is at...................
I know a guy (also in Seattle, and a 60 year old white guy) that designs and builds submersible drill rigs that can be propelled to the ocean floor and drill into the sea floor a ways (100 feet?).
He was showing me the control system which was based around a gaming chair and gaming controls which he also bragged about how inexpensive they were compared to other systems.
Of course the chair and operator are on a nice ship at the surface while the drill rig is just a “robot” down in the depths.
Plus the heat. You might think it would be freezing on the bottom of the ocean but remember the gas laws. Lots of pressure on a fixed volume of gas = lots of heat too.
“One could say it’s a good training exercise for the Navy & CG.”
Maybe they’ll finally find that missing MH370 aircraft.
It was only used in international waters. A loophole I suppose.
They've had problems, but they've kept it safe with frequent inspections, disassembling and reassembling it over and over again.
It was built by General Mills of all people, but it's made out of more than cardboard and glue.
I do not believe you can deliver oxygen or any gas mixture through a hose to 12,000’ depth.
Some better informed FReeper please correct me if that’s wrong.
It looks like a big grub. Maybe a giant squid tried to take a bite.
The gravity of this situation aside it annoys me a bit when some ‘reporter’ offers his less than helpful opinion of the design of such a complicated device. Most folks in the ‘journalism’ business don’t know a crowbar from a cow but he feels that using scrap metal pipes for ballast qualifies as jerry-rigging. What does he think ballast is for? Ballast is usually dropped when the sub wants to return to the surface. Is the sub owner supposed to use custom designed gold bars for something that is going to be dropped into the depths and never retrieved? idiots ...
The same for the game controller that manages the sub’s navigation. Has anyone watched their kids play video games? There are more than enough switches and buttons to control a small sub’s attitude, speed, and direction. IMHO the game controller is a far better option than a laptop running Windoze 11.
Also from the article.
The Titan is operated from the inside by a single round button that turns from red to green when pushed: “It should be like an elevator,” CEO Stockton Rush told Pogue in 2022, adding: “It shouldn’t take a lot of skill.”
Later in the video, Rush points to some piping inside the vessel saying he purchased it from RV supplier Camping World, and says “we run the whole thing” using a video game controller—Pogue also shows the vessel uses construction pipes as ballast.
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