Titanic tourist sub goes missing

[WLJ]

Update

Human remains found, maybe

and a little bit more info

'There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It's all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It's pretty clear that's what failed.'

US Coast Guard says 'presumed human remains' have been found in wreckage of Titan sub recovered from 12,500ft below the Atlantic surface after 'catastrophic implosion' killed Titanic Five
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12244711/Presumed-human-remains-discovered-wreckage-Titan-sub-officials-say.html

[Hawkmoon]

I know that these things are expensive, but as far as I know this is the first CF cylindrical submersible ever built.

Second, I believe. Isn't their earlier, smaller submersible, the Cyclops, also carbon-fiber?

[JTHunter]

I seem to recall you having issues viewing images before and I recall asking what you browser and settings were but don't think you ever answered. And why are your posts always in an odd font?

Font is Times New Roman, 14 point, Firefox is latest version (114.0.2) and for whatever reason, those posts are blank until I clicked "reply" and I saw the link.

[WLJ]

Font is Times New Roman, 14 point, Firefox is latest version (114.0.2) and for whatever reason, those posts are blank until I clicked "reply" and I saw the link.

Check Firefox's security settings for the site. (shield emblem in the address bar).
If set too high it can sometimes interfere with images on this site. If on max turn off just for this site since I assume you can trust this site. 

[MillCreek]

I will be interested to see what form the human remains are. Fractured pieces of bone? Teeth? Orthopedic hardware?

[WLJ]

I will be interested to see what form the human remains are. Fractured pieces of bone? Teeth? Orthopedic hardware?

"presumed human remains" in my mind strongly implies they got something but not really sure what probably akin to goo that probably got blasted along with parts of the CF hull into the hemisphere. Highly doubt they'll release photos.

    'There were two titanium end caps on each end. They are relatively intact on the sea floor. But that carbon fiber composite cylinder is now just in very small pieces. It's all rammed into one of the hemispheres. It's pretty clear that's what failed.'

The amount of force that hit those people most people can't wrap their brains around.

[MechAg94]

Sidebar. The outfit that recovered the debris.  Interesting that they could get down there and fiddle around.  Ummanned, of course, but apparently capable of quite delicate operations.  And communicate with the surface... acoustically, I presume.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Pelagic+Research+Services&t=brave&ia=web

(Search engine results.  Contains several packages of info.)_

The sacred cow shipyards video I posted earlier addressed the communications side.  It seems there are known and reliable communications methods and known reasons why the comms they used are unreliable.

I am no expert on sub design.  Just commenting based on what I have seen with chemical plant operations and design. 

[Ben]

And communicate with the surface... acoustically, I presume.

ROVs have cables. Makes comms a lot more straightforward.

[dogmush]

Sidebar. The outfit that recovered the debris.  Interesting that they could get down there and fiddle around.  Ummanned, of course, but apparently capable of quite delicate operations.  And communicate with the surface... acoustically, I presume.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Pelagic+Research+Services&t=brave&ia=web

(Search engine results.  Contains several packages of info.)_

I'm pretty sure the Odysseus 6k is a tethered ROV.

[WLJ]

Noticed in a photo of the front end cap the view port was missing and a lifting strap was running through the hole. Did it blow out when the sub imploded or the failure point?

[AZRedhawk44]

I think it's more appropriate to leave the remains on-site at the Titanic.

Perhaps the families of those involved wish otherwise... but it's a worthy tomb for those with a fascination for the wreck.  It's also a gentle active reminder for the next company that thinks they're going to sell tickets to the sea floor.

[MechAg94]

Noticed in a photo of the front end cap the view port was missing and a lifting strap was running through the hole. Did it blow out when the sub imploded or the failure point?

I am curious as well.  I have heard comments/accusations elsewhere that the viewport was made of a material not rated for that depth.  I haven't seen details of it so I don't know.

[WLJ]

I am curious as well.  I have heard comments/accusations elsewhere that the viewport was made of a material not rated for that depth.  I haven't seen details of it so I don't know.

Seen some harping on the fact it was made from acrylic. In doing some reading on the Trieste, which dove (35,797 ft) down to the Challenger Deep, it's view port was made from acrylic as well according wiki.

Something I found on the internet. Haven't confirmed the info yet.

Wow the mfg only certified the view port to 4265 ft depth, generally glass is designed with a 5:1 FS in pressure applications. Glass in pressure applications are prone to brittle failure... they can fail even at that design depth due to a minor scratch or internal flaw. Taking the sub to 12,500 ft depth where the FS would of been < 1.71:1. We use a 10:1 FS for Brittle failure if personnel are around a view window under pressure and then so with a protective cover if a brittle failure were to occur.

https://www.facebook.com/OceanGateInc/posts/titan-boasts-the-largest-viewport-of-any-deep-diving-manned-submersible-with-an-/1047919665393254/

He's talking like it was made of glass. So was it made from glass or acrylic? Note: It's facebook

[WLJ]

Straight from the, now decreased, horse's mouth

He "broke the rules".

POGUE:   And I guess the last thing, we should talk about the view port.

RUSH:   So the view port is seven-inch-thick plexiglass, acrylic, and that's another thing where I broke the rules. A lot of the submersible industry is run by Pressure Vessels for Human [Occupancy] standards, which acts like a standards body, but it's not a standards body; it's a volunteer group that has come up with some rules.

And there was a very well-known person, Clarence Statue (PH), was, like, the king of acrylic. And so he wrote a book—well, he had several books, but one of these is sort of the Bible. And even he admitted that he was super conservative. It has safety factors that—they were so high, he didn't call 'em safety factors, he called 'em "conversion factors."

You know, for most things, safety factors are one-and-a-half, two-and-a-half…and it's four to ten. And most of what he was looking at was lower-pressure applications. And so when you look at the charts, we're off the charts.

One of the things about acrylic that's really great is, before it fails, at one-third its failure pressure, it will start to "craze." So it'll often be distorted. So you know when that thing's gonna fail. And so when I was looking at this, that view port is—according to the rules, it is not allowed.

So there's these weird rules that are out there.

It will shrink. It's a semi-solid, the plexiglass; it'll come into the cabin by about three-quarters of an inch—all of the pressure that's there.

POGUE:   Oh, man. And that's a good thing?

RUSH:   Well, that's what it is. But the great thing about plexiglass that I love is, you can see every surface. And if you've overstressed it, or you've even come close, it starts to get this crazing effect.

POGUE:   Okay. And if that happened underwater—

RUSH:   You just stop and go to the surface.

POGUE:   You would have time to get back up?

RUSH:   Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's way more warning than you need.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-submersible-interview-transcript-with-oceangate-ceo-stockton-rush/

"You just stop and go to the surface"

Note: The Trieste's viewport  cracked ~30,000ft according to wiki
BUT

I also saw something about him bragging how large the view port is compared to other submersibles which makes me think. So another possible failure point

[AZRedhawk44]

I understand this is a fictional reference, but do you guys remember the underwater laboratory from the show Lost?

It was about 100 ft under water and had a moon pool in it.

By having a moon pool, does that mean that the air inside is pressurized to more than 1 atmosphere?

Are there sneaky submarines that have flood-able rooms with moon pools, or air locks to the ocean, where a diver would have to transition from one atmosphere to 2 or 3 (ore more!) atmospheres of pressure in air (a pre-compression chamber?), then get into water for a task and return to the submarine and go through decompression?

[WLJ]

From wiki on the Trieste viewport cracking

The descent to the ocean floor took 4 hours 47 minutes at a descent rate of 0.9 metres per second (3.2 km/h; 2.0 mph).[15][16] After passing 9,000 metres (30,000 ft), one of the outer Plexiglas window panes cracked, shaking the entire vessel.[17] The two men spent twenty minutes on the ocean floor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_(bathyscaphe)

Note: They often use plexiglass and acrylic interchangeably in many articles

Brave or stupid having your viewport crack ~30,000ft and saying F it keep going? I will note the Trieste only ever made one dive to the  Challenger Deep.

Note how they say outer panes as in i guess means it had multiple layers. Wonder if the Titan's was one layer knowing this guy. You know, breaking the rules.

[230RN]

He keeps talking as if it were a pressure vessel, and that seems to have colored his thinking.  It was not a pressure vessel, it was a vacuum vessel compared to the outside pressures.

At the risk of encountering boos and hisses and rotten tomato throwing, the device sucked. 

I've been pointing this out here and there, but I know first-hand what happens when a big TV picture tube implodes.  Here it is in slo mo

https://youtu.be/iqLNskTt1Zs (1:32)

I note there are several vids out thee now demonstrating this kind of event.

[RoadKingLarry]

I understand this is a fictional reference, but do you guys remember the underwater laboratory from the show Lost?

It was about 100 ft under water and had a moon pool in it.

By having a moon pool, does that mean that the air inside is pressurized to more than 1 atmosphere?

Are there sneaky submarines that have flood-able rooms with moon pools, or air locks to the ocean, where a diver would have to transition from one atmosphere to 2 or 3 (ore more!) atmospheres of pressure in air (a pre-compression chamber?), then get into water for a task and return to the submarine and go through decompression?

On the boats I served on we had what were optimistically called "escape trunks". A basically spherical chamber, large enough for about 6-7 people as long as they didn't mind a little crowding, with two hatches, inner and outer, so essentially an airlock. All hands were trained in the operation of the escape trunk.
During a Mediterranean deployment on my last boat we shipped a bunch of SEALs on board and they did some training going in and out of the hatch while we were submerged to periscope depth which would have put the outer hatch depth at maybe 25' or so below the surface.  Theoretically the escape trunks were usable to about 600'.  Newer boats can have "swimmer delivery" systems which is a structure mounted externally to the top of the hull and accessed through an escape trunk. I admit I know very little about how they operate.

[dogmush]

I understand this is a fictional reference, but do you guys remember the underwater laboratory from the show Lost?

It was about 100 ft under water and had a moon pool in it.

By having a moon pool, does that mean that the air inside is pressurized to more than 1 atmosphere?

Are there sneaky submarines that have flood-able rooms with moon pools, or air locks to the ocean, where a diver would have to transition from one atmosphere to 2 or 3 (ore more!) atmospheres of pressure in air (a pre-compression chamber?), then get into water for a task and return to the submarine and go through decompression?

If it has a moon pool, then yes, the structure's atmosphere would need to be pressurized to whatever the surrounding water's pressure is.  If it's an airlock system, then the atmosphere could theoretically be at 1 atm, and they pressurize or depressurize the airlock as required for the direction of travel.

I watched a "making of" show about The Abyss, and they actually built the Deepcore 2 rig and submerged it in a tank of water.  The moon pool in it was real, and since it was at 33ft the air in the set was at two atm.  The tank they were filming in was deeper than that, but they built the set on a concrete column in the tank specifically to keep the air at low enough pressure in the set that the actors would not need to decompress.  James Cameron and the camera operators would do long days at the bottom of the tank and have to stop for hours long decompression stops halfway to the surface before they could get out.

[AZRedhawk44]

Now I'm remembering the recent Godzilla movie where Watanabe is on a submarine that is supposedly transiting the tunnels between our ocean and Hollow Earth, and gets into a micro sub in a moon pool.

Obviously physics in the Monsterverse has to be radically different for Hollow Earth to exist and have variable direction gravity like we see in the GvK movie, so the sub perhaps wasn't exposed to 400+ bar pressure... but that open moon pool on that sub, with everyone standing around it at 1 atmosphere, was cracking me up.  I was wondering why the sub wasn't filling with water through the moon pool.

[WLJ]

Now I'm remembering the recent Godzilla movie where Watanabe is on a submarine that is supposedly transiting the tunnels between our ocean and Hollow Earth, and gets into a micro sub in a moon pool.

Obviously physics in the Monsterverse has to be radically different for Hollow Earth to exist and have variable direction gravity like we see in the GvK movie, so the sub perhaps wasn't exposed to 400+ bar pressure... but that open moon pool on that sub, with everyone standing around it at 1 atmosphere, was cracking me up.  I was wondering why the sub wasn't filling with water through the moon pool.

How tall is Godzilla now, 400ft? Think King Kong is suppose to be about the same height now. Both him and King Kong keep getting bigger and bigger. Think the big ape started out somewhere around 40ft.

[Hawkmoon]

Font is Times New Roman, 14 point, Firefox is latest version (114.0.2) and for whatever reason, those posts are blank until I clicked "reply" and I saw the link.

If you are running Firefox v. 114.0.2, you are using the experimental/developmental channel. The current version in the Extended Support Release (meaning long-term stable) is v. 102.12.0esr

[WLJ]

If you are running Firefox v. 114.0.2, you are using the experimental/developmental channel. The current version in the Extended Support Release (meaning long-term stable) is v. 102.12.0esr

?
I'm running 114.0.2 and I'm not on the experimental/developmental channel

[WLJ]

Whoops

OceanGate's website still includes pages advertising trips to the Titanic - 11 days after five people, including the company CEO, were killed on one of the journeys.

A page titled 'Titan Expedition - Explore the Titanic' was still available on Thursday which offered a chance to dive to the shipwreck in the company's submersible.

'Intrepid travelers will sail from the Atlantic coast of Canada for an 8-day expedition to dive on the iconic wreck that lies 380 miles offshore and 3,800 meters below the surface,' the page states.

'Your dive will provide not only a thrilling and unique travel experience, but also help the scientific community learn more about the wreck and the deep ocean environment.'

It lists two 'missions' in June 2024 and says the June 2023 mission is 'currently underway'.

Thrilling and unique!

The page also lists renowned French explorer PH Nargeolet, who perished on board the Titan, as an expert 'who may join you on [the] expedition'.

About that....

OceanGate Expeditions is STILL advertising $250,000 trips to the Titanic wreckage - 11 days after five were killed in implosion on doomed Titan
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12247875/OceanGate-Expeditions-advertising-250-000-trips-Titanic-wreckage.html

[dogmush]

AZRedhawk44's post got me curious so I wondered how deep pressurized moon pool having habitat's got.

The deepest one I can find in a cursory poke around the internet is the US Navy's SeaLab II that had a moon pool and was set at 195ft, or right about 6 atm.

Deep Saturation divers can operate pressurized up to about 1000ft (30 atm) but I couldn't easily find out if that was normally using submerged habitats, or the presurized habs on the ship we talked about earlier in the thread.  At those pressures the breathing gas mix gets pretty exotic too.

Now my curiosity is satisfied


......The More You Know