Well, also, those scenes are usually from movies about military submarines, which are both more durable (including multiple airtight compartments) and operate at a much shallower depth than the Titan.
The Abyss did have a pretty memorable scene of what happens when you lose hull integrity at crush depths. If nothing else, at least it would be very quick.
Here is a video of a railroad tank car imploding in a split second, at only a tiny fraction of the pressures involved with a submersible under the ocean.
I once went camping in a backpacker’s tent that was suspended from two fiberglass rods forced into an arch in an X shape. One morning the weather prediction was rain so I zipped everything up and threw the rain fly over all and cinched it down. Instead of rain it was clear and sunny all day and when I got back the top of the tent looked… peaky instead of round.
Pulling back the rain fly revealed that, trapped between the fly and the tent in the hot sun, the resin in the poles had softened to the point of letting them kink at the top of the two arches, the point of highest stress.
For this reason you’ll notice that most composite aircraft are painted white (as was the sub). Dark colored composites can reach dangerous surface temperatures in the sun, causing delamination and severely weakening the material.
Cancel. Already covered.
I remember my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Kapchinsky, getting pissed at me for repeating the Needs Another Seven Astronauts joke.
My first thought is that the thin spray should have had enough pressure behind it to cut him in half. Instead, we see Coffey get creamed.
Yeah, I suspect the “cracking glass” part wouldn’t actually happen like that - as soon as the first crack formed, I suspect the entire dome would shatter. I don’t think a passenger would have enough time to notice it was failing before they were turned into paste.
Isn’t negative buoyancy one of the issues the craft needs to overcome?
I went to high school with Michael Jackson. (No, not that Michael Jackson. This one changed his name later to avoid confusion.) He aspired to be a stand-up comic. In 1986 he was on stage at the Antelope Valley Fair. He made a paper airplane, lit it on fire, and threw it. He said something like ‘And there’s the Challenger…’
For those who don’t know, the Antelope Valley is in the western Mojave Desert where the Space Shuttles were built, tested, and often landed. His ‘joke’ did not go over well.
A really insensitive person would say it crashed and burned.
Wow! and “tiny fraction” doesn’t do it justice. That tank was subject to one atmosphere of pressure, the Titan is probably subjected to 400 times that.
Yeah, that crush scene is OK (minus the cracking glass), but the opening act of The Abyss has a military sub crashing underwater and sinking beyond its fail depth, and as the hull ruptures we get lots of scenes of water slowly flooding through compartments as sailors flee in terror. It’s a very intense scene, but it’s not really a documentary. That said, I love The Abyss a lot, despite its wonkiness and cherry-picked realism.
Perhaps the banging noises were the passengers brawling with each other out of sheer frustration, or in the interest of oxygen theft?
My question is, if they are recovered alive, will these billionaires say “thank you” or will they say “here’s $10M to help with the cost of the S&R” ?
Neither.
They didn’t get rich by writing checks…
The cost of the search operation should be charged to the guy who made the decisions to cut corners on safety – and that cost is considerable, involving ships and aircraft and other resources from at least three countries.
Yes, at certain pressures, hull failure means the hull ceases to factor into the equation, for all intents and purposes (“it is reasonable to ignore the influence of structure on implosion,” as one paper puts it, after mentioning ceramic pressure hulls turning into powder). USS Scorpion imploded in 37 milliseconds. You would not notice anything before being crushed (or incinerated due to the air compression—at 3500 meters that’s something like 1300°C). So if that were to happen (as was noted, the 2018 legal complaint says the porthole was only certified to 1300 meters when they planned to dive to 4,000) there would not be any meaningful time to notice.
(Hopefully it is not what happened and Stockton Rush can be hauled up to the surface to account for all this. But that seems like a long shot, unfortunately)
Overall I find it fitting the CEO is down there, not one of his employees. if by some miracle they get out alive, I expect Stockton Rush’s attitude to safety features will be … changed … by his experience.
As to jokes, my all-time favorite Challenger joke was this one:
Q: What kind of teacher was Christa McAuliffe?
A: Science. But by noon she was history.