You’re flying across the ocean
When you hear your engines spit
You see a prop come to a stop
The goddamn engine’s quit
The ship won’t float, you cannot swim
The shore is miles behind
You’ll be a dish for happy fish
But you will never mind
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
We should not let the media off this easily. No, I don’t think they were covering for Hunter Biden - that’s stupid. But they have a habit of finding sensationalism to drive stories where it isn’t warranted.
“Sub accident kills five people” is a half day story at best, and probably doesn’t drive a lot of eyeballs to media sites.
“Sub Missing! Five people aboard, search and rescue alerted!” Is a story that can (and did) drive the media cycle for days.
I just did a search, and almost every media site reported the noise the Navy reported as ‘banging sounds’ instead of ‘an implosion, or large bang was heard’. The difference is ‘banging sounds’ implies people alive banging on the inside to be heard, and ‘large bang’ means they are dead.
The other possibiity is that whoever originally reported this is too stupid to understand what the Navy said. These days with the media, stupidity is always a possibility.
But my money is that some editor changed the report to ‘banging sounds’ to keep the story alive, and once one source did it, the rest followed suit for the same reason.
It’s inexcusable, and the first person who changed the description of an implosion into ‘banging sounds’ should be fired and never work in media again. Once again, terrible reporting led the world to waste several days of attention on something that wasn’t even true (survivors hoping to be rescued). Shame on them.
I think the banging sounds are separate from the implosion sound.
A plane first detected the banging sounds, and that was announced within a few hours of detection.
I don’t think that anyone confused the “banging sounds” with the possible sound of the implosion. These were independent events, detected and reported independently.
I think you’re confusing two different things, Sam. My recollection is that the first report of banging sounds said that it came from some of the sonar equipment dropped by one of the Canadian search planes, but with the caution that the ocean is a noisy place.
The first mention of the USN detecting a possible implosion was only made public a few days later, probably, as indicated above by some posters, to avoid giving out just how much info the USN system can pick up, and how quickly.
ETA: yes, this Guardian article says that the banging sounds were picked up by a Canadian search plane, after the search began, with the caution that the noises were inconclusive:
So, not an editorial decision by the news media.
Yes, but the question of a waiver normally includes two things: 1. Has there been full disclosure of the risk? 2. There are limits to the ability to waive gross negligence or criminal negligence that poses a real risk to life.
Yeah, it appears these are two different events. Thanks for the correction.
From the Guardian:
Still not clear if the Coast Guard informed the media or not. But either way, I can understand witholding “they are dead” information while there’s an active search and rescue going on just in case.
I thought it was established that the banging noise was a Group of Orcas with pots and pans… 
Excellent post. The gameboy controller, whatever else it is, functions perfectly here as a symbol of tech-bro hubris. That, for me, aside from the human horror, is what this story’s been all about.
ETA:
Yeah, it’s a little suspicious that they announced that the search had ended at just about the same moment the oxygen would have run out.
You don’t stop a search based on an unknown noise that might have been an implosion. There was little reason to hope these people would survive but look at those kids stranded in the jungle and the kids stuck in a flooded cave in Thailand that survived when there was little reason to think they would.
No, the search ended at just about the same moment that the wreckage of the sub was located.
The kid, Suleman, is the only one I feel sorry for. Apparently, according to an aunt, he was terrified, but his dad bullied him into going.
Though, he actually was old enough to legally drink. Drinking age in the UK is 18
I’ve seen several statements in articles and interviews where the submersible was “tested” to a certain depth, or it was “rated” to a certain depth. I also seem to recall that the device was “cycled” many times to check for weaknesses.
Is there a big test tank somewhere that simulates water pressure at these depths? If so, it sounds vaguely terrifying to work around.
It’s always in the last place you look.
Thanks. But yeah, I quoted @Cervaise’s post in mine.
No. James Cameron rejected the product because there was no way to evaluate it. They relied on acoustic sensors detecting minute failures within the composite tube that would indicate problems from cycling it through pressure changes. In this final dive they may have heard the sounds of the composite breaking and delaminating briefly before their fortunately instantaneous death. They could have physically tested it with repeated unmanned dives. I don’t understand why they didn’t do that.
It was tested from 2018-2019 and it had survived the tourist dives on 13 previous occasions from 2021-2022. But it also had to rebuilt after showing signs of fatigue damage previous to this in 2020 after all of those test dives. I assume, based on not a lot admittedly, that this is the most likely reason it popped this time.
In regard to the US Navy hearing the implosion. I almost wondered if they didn’t… I think it’s possible that the Navy didn’t hear squat. Then after the Coast Guard found the debris field, and it was obvious that Titan had imploded, the navy had to act like, of course they heard it. They couldn’t let Russia or other enemies know they hadn’t heard something like that.
Coast Guard: “We found a debris field consistent with an implosion and have positively identified the wreckage as that of the Titan’s”
Navy: “uhhh, yeah, of course, sure, as a matter of fact, we heard an implosion sound back on Sunday on our super sophisticated underwater microphone array that stretches to every corner of the ocean that hears every fish fart from 100 miles away… We informed the Coast Guard immediately, Isn’t that right, Coast Guard, we let you know back on Sunday, didn’t we… that we heard that noise and told you where to look, right. Remember when we told you that?” wink, wink, nudge nudge
Coast Guard: big sigh “sure, yep. that’s right. Thank goodness for the US Navy!”
That is conspiratorial thinking, completely unsupported by facts or logic.