Submarine boat missing - on the way to the sunken "Titanic"

[Red Gold]

Have you heard of this case?

 

[Red Gold]

What might have gone wrong?​

It is too early to say what has happened but experts have offered several of the most likely scenarios, from becoming tangled in wreckage of the Titanic, to a power failure or an issue with the sub’s communications system.

Missing Titanic submersible: what is the Titan tourist sub and what might have happened to it?

The five-person craft has 96 hours of oxygen on board and can dive to depths of 4km to explore wreckage of the Titanic

www.theguardian.com

 

[Red Gold]

What we know about the tourist submarine that disappeared on an expedition to the Titanic wreck​

 

[durangodawood]

I hope theyre ok down there and can get hoisted up.

That said, I dont understand taking all that risk to view..... a shipwreck.

 

[Nithavela]

I hope theyre ok down there and can get hoisted up.

That said, I dont understand taking all that risk to view..... a shipwreck.

Not just any shipwreck, but the most well-viewed shipwreck that ever shipwrecked. There's even a VR simulation both of the intact ship and of the wreck. Costs a lot less than 250k, too.

 

[Nithavela]

Interesting video of the "submarine". Seems like this disaster was bound to happen sooner or later. Hopefully this will lead to tighter regulation on such things.

 

[jayem]

Interesting video of the "submarine". Seems like this disaster was bound to happen sooner or later. Hopefully this will lead to tighter regulation on such things.

Mega dittoes to that. I can't imagine how terror-stricken the passengers must be. I'd suspect there must have been some mechanical or electrical malfunction. Can't blame this on an iceberg.

 

[Lost4words]

Please Lord God, let them still be alive and rescued and brought to safety...

 

[Red Gold]

@ scenarios

The scenario most feared is that the vessel suffered a catastrophic failure. At such depth, a hull breach would be devastating. “If something’s gone wrong, there’s a good chance it’s gone very wrong,” said Williams. “If the pressure vessel has failed catastrophically, it’s like a small bomb going off. The potential is that all the safety devices might be destroyed in the process.”
Such a fate would probably trigger signals in military hydrophones that are deployed throughout the world’s oceans. When an Argentine submarine was lost in 2017, hydrophones off Ascension Island and the Crozet Islands detected an acoustic signal consistent with a catastrophic failure of the submarine. “Just knowing where the vessel is is a big consideration,” said Williams. “The best case scenario is that the vessel has popped up and can be found visually or with radar.”

Best and worst case scenarios to explain Titan’s loss of contact with surface

The missing submarine had enough oxygen to sustain those onboard for four days, but limited air is far from the only hazard

www.theguardian.com

 

[Ceallaigh]

It's been big local news because the sub was built here in Everett.

 

[Ceallaigh]

I hope theyre ok down there and can get hoisted up.

That said, I dont understand taking all that risk to view..... a shipwreck.

Yeah, I'm mind boggled over people paying $250,000 dollars to get in something like that which only has a single tiny porthole to see anything from. I'm not claustrophobic. But getting in something like that to go to the bottom of the ocean, wouldn't be on my to do list, even if I was given a free ticket.

 

[Red Gold]

Yeah, I'm mind boggled over people paying $250,000 dollars to get in something like that which only has a single tiny porthole to see anything from. I'm not claustrophobic. But getting in something like that to go to the bottom of the ocean, wouldn't be on my to do list, even if I was given a free ticket.

Never ever!

 

[Ceallaigh]

I don't understand peoples obsession with the Titanic. There's an identical ocean liner called the Britannic which sank in 1916. By comparison hardly anyone pays attention to it or even knows about it.

 

[Nithavela]

I don't understand peoples obsession with the Titanic. There's an identical ocean liner called the Britannic which sank in 1916. By comparison hardly anyone pays attention to it or even knows about it.

Probably because only 30 people died. Also, it was destroyed by a mine in wartime, which is pretty much an expected event.

 

[Ceallaigh]

Probably because only 30 people died. Also, it was destroyed by a mine in wartime, which is pretty much an expected event.

Personally I don't see how that makes a difference between the sunken ruins of two identical ships.

 

[Nithavela]

Personally I don't see how that makes a difference between the sunken ruins of two identical ships.

I don't see the attraction of visiting either wreck, so I can only speculate on the motivation of someone who wants to visit one of the wrecks, but not the other. But consider the following things that make the titanic wreck more interesting:

More dramatic sinking, both in position, cause and number of deaths
Hype in pop culture (movies, documentaries, books)
Far less accessible, both in position and in depth (one can actually dive down to the Britannic in scuba gear, and people do)

I guess that if you compare the number of people who dive down to the wreck of the Britannic in scuba gear against the ones who went down to the Titanic in a submarine, the Britannic is vastly more popular.

Diving the HMHS Britannic - Can you Dive to the Wreck?

Do you want to experience the wreck dive of your life? Dive to the Britannic and discover history. Click here for more information.

www.deepbluediving.org

 

[Ceallaigh]

Pop culture sums it up.

 

[wing2000]

It was January 2018, and the company’s engineering team was about to hand over the craft — named Titan — to a new crew who would be responsible for ensuring the safety of its future passengers. But experts inside and outside the company were beginning to sound alarms.

OceanGate’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, started working on a report around that time, according to court documents, ultimately producing a scathing document in which he said the craft needed more testing and stressed “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.”

Two months later, OceanGate faced similarly dire calls from more than three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — who warned in a letter to its chief executive, Stockton Rush, that the company’s “experimental” approach and its decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission.

OceanGate Was Warned of Potential for ‘Catastrophic’ Problems With Titanic Mission

Experts inside and outside the company warned of potential dangers and urged the company to undergo a certification process.

www.nytimes.com

Lochridge was subsequently fired...

 

[wing2000]

Question: Do you think the company should pay for the extensive search and rescue operations underway? The U.S., Canada and France have deployed extensive (and expensive) resources....

 

[jayem]

It's being reported that underwater noises were detected in the area under search.

A Canadian aircraft heard "underwater noises in the search area," the U.S. Coast Guard announced on Twitter early Wednesday. The noises prompted remotely operated vehicle operations to search for the origin of the noises...

Three vessels arrived on the scene Wednesday morning, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Twitter. "The John Cabot has side scanning sonar capabilities and is conducting search patterns alongside the Skandi Vinland and the Atlantic Merlin," the Coast Guard said. Side scan sonar is used to detect and image objects on the seafloor, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Let's hope this is good news.

Missing Titanic submarine live updates: Noises detected in search; company faced safety questions