I got to thinking about that at work today and decided there had to be a solid structure underneath because the outer structure simply couldn’t work. Good catch on both your parts.
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
I was thinking about this today, and wondered if it might become like Malaysia Air Flight 370…a disappearance with no satisfactory answers. The sea is vast and deep!
It’s certainly not going to happen like in the movies, but it’s also not true that a single crack would instantly doom the vessel. The bathyscape Trieste suffered a crack in the window at 30,000 feet with no ill effects:
As the boat approached 30,000 feet deep a loud snapping sound roared through the Trieste. In that split second, Piccard and Walsh must have believed they were about to die, if only for a split second. The cracking sound jarred the whole boat and caused everything to shudder.
A Plexiglass window pane on the outside of the boat had shattered under the pressure. But the underlying hull had not been harmed. The boat was still retreating downwards and the two men were still alive.
A crack might just have relieved internal stresses without really having any structural effect. The pressure is still keeping the thing together.
I would think that a billionaire taking such a huge risk would have had some sort of rescue team on standby in the area. When you can easily afford backup, why wouldn’t you have it?
Dang. Wrong link. Take 2:
At T+1:45:00, when contact was lost, they would have been about halfway through descent (probably around 5000’). If the ballast was dropped right then, it would have taken a couple hours to surface. What is the gulf stream current flow rate – how far would they have been carried on the way up, and how much farther would they have been carried on the surface since then?
(I assume S&R has done these estimates.)
Because that would mean you don’t have 110% confidence in your own “genius,” and they can take away your rich guy egomaniac card for that.
I’m talking specifically about the scene I linked to, where the pressure cracks the glass of the cockpit and water starts squirting in before the whole thing gets smashed like an egg.
When I build my elevator into an active volcano and charge $250,000 a ride, the passengers will also enjoy the thrill of operating it themselves.
Well, yes. See “Byford Dolphin” for an example of just how gruesome sea accidents can be. I’m trying not to dwell on the worst-case scenario here.
If time is not of the essence then remote control machinery could probably do whatever is necessary to hook it up to a big enough winch to raise whatever remains of the sub. After all, objects have been retrieved from the Titanic itself. No need to risk another human life.
Or they can remain down there, if that is the wish of the families. It really should be up to them.
I don’t think a person has to be a billionaire to think along those lines.
What’s the saying? Better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6…?
An escalator terminating at the cusp of the caldera would last longer. No need to replace it after every tour.
Understood. It wouldn’t happen exactly like that (I mean, the “cracks” in the scene are obviously just crumpled cellophane), but some level of cracking without immediate failure isn’t crazy (since it has already happened). As for the water squirting in–actually, it looks like it comes in from the ring where the glass mates with the rest of the hull, and a failure in the bonding material could conceivably not be immediately catastrophic. Haven’t done the math to see if the level of spray is reasonable. My intuition is that it would be much worse than shown. Like, enough to slice his arms off.
Don’t if you haven’t had dinner yet.
If the CEO insisted on using the best standard window (1300 meters) offered by that company instead of having a custom window made rated for 4000 meters, he should have at least bought several and replaced them on a regular schedule. How many times did that window go down to that depth?
The article you linked to does say it was an “external”’ window that broke, and that the hull never lost integrity. Which I assume means that the window was layered, and the underlying layers held? But once you’ve got water entering the vessel, I don’t think it’s going to hold together for more than a millisecond before it crumples.
You know, the FAA lets you build and fly an aircraft you design yourself while cheerfully ignoring over a century of accumulated aviation wisdom… but they don’t let you take passengers in it. You want to risk your own life? Have at it. But you’re not allowed to risk anyone else’s.
It strikes me that the CEO of OceanGate did something similar, except he did bring passengers along. I’m not really comfortable with that.
Hubris
Really. Go through all of the trouble and risk to bring someone up from thousands of feet in the ocean, just to make plans to bury them a few feet in the ground. I’m with you.
That’s probably accurate. It’s sorta ambiguous what it means by “external,” but it seems like it most likely was just an outer layer. I’d guess you’re probably right that there would be no time gap between water coming in through the cracks vs. the whole thing failing.
However, that’s not quite what’s shown in the clip. The water is coming from the edge, not the crack. That’s a tiny bit more plausible than it might be otherwise.
I saw that.
WTF?? This is over. Hull breach, window crack, out of water, oxygen low… these people are dead. I really hope I’m wrong. I feel bad for the kid. The others are explorers and researchers or whatever, but they do risky shit for a while. It’s all nuts why they went there in the first place.