Agree, but I get the feeling that as much of it would happen in international waters (Titanic for instance is 370 miles off Newfoundland), it would be vulnerable to flag-of-convenience operators.
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
I’ve observed the reactions to this incident on social media to be very polarizing and full of class consciousness. Some of my friends have been posting memes mocking the hubris of the people who were involved, a lot of different jokes but mostly to the effect of “these people are dumb and they got what they had coming to them”. Others have been following the whole situation with great concern and seriousness. The former group tends to be blue collar and people my age (30s), the latter tends to be upper middle class or older. One of my friends, who I admit can be an edgelord, posted a lot of memes and another, mutual friend of ours really laid into him for it, to the point of implying that their friendship was over if he didn’t take them down. The edgelord is a plumber; the guy who called him out is an affluent architect who is only one degree of separation from one of the guys on the submarine.
I think if that submarine had just been a Navy submarine with regular sailors just doing their jobs, in a similar predicament, nobody would have been making any jokes about it. But because they were essentially wealthy tourists on a sightseeing expedition, voluntarily going down to a ridiculously dangerous depth for what amounts to fun, there’s way, way less sympathy for them and a lot of people feel like they have a license to mock them.
I think if it’s regulated via harbours by Canada and the US, it would be possible. Pass laws that require that any ship using Canadian or US harbours as a departure or termination point for deep-sea submersibles must meet regulatory standards for those submersibles. Get the UK, Iceland, France, Spain and Portugal to do the same, and it would become economically very difficult to visit Titantic, except by meeting the regulatory standards for submersibles.
There are fairly simple ways to find out, starting with Google.
The answer is: Yes, salt water can do “weird things” to adhesives, but not always. It depends on the adhesive. On the other hand, use of composite materials from fiberglass to more recent and exotic materials in marine applications have a multi-decade history. There are lots of adhesives, resins, and so forth that have been developed specifically for use in salt water environments. It’s not really new.
So the next question is: Did OceanGate use those designed-for-salt-water materials and adhesives?
The specific aircraft company is Boeing.
I expect Boeing sells expired materials as scrap to cut losses. I might use something like that for a non-structural thing, maybe to build something for the backyard or a camper shell for my pickup, something that won’t kill people if it fails, but definitely not for deep sea diving.
OceanGate was operating in international waters. There is no government there to impose or enforce regulations. Sure, within national borders this sort of thing IS regulated, but countries don’t have jurisdictions on the high seas. There is no mechanism in our world to enforce any sort of rule out where this guy was operating.
Yes, there are treaties - but those are between nations. They don’t involve independently wealthy guys with the resources to cobble together a homebuilt submersible and rent a boat to take them to the middle of nowhere. Regulations around advertising might apply and impair someone in the future financing their adventures by selling tickets to the uninformed adventure tourists. It won’t stop the next guy who can fund his own “adventures”.
Countries have whatever jurisdiction they allow themselves and can successfully assert against other countries, should there be any. In the US, all it takes is a statute. For all I know there already is one. Whether other countries will recognize another’s claimed authority is one thing. But if you’re dealing with citizens of your own country, or people residing in your own country, who or what but your own constitutional system is going to stop you from deciding you have jurisdiction over their activities in international waters?
Once someone is within a nation’s sovereign territorial borders, the exercise of jurisdiction over them for actions carried out beyond the nation’s borders is subject only to those limits the nation has accepted for itself.
That is true, but it’s also true that wealth buys privileges and influence. We all know the rich get away with dodgy things us peons don’t have a chance to do and evade consequences. More likely, the wealthy tech-bro gets away and the people who worked for him are the ones who suffer the consequences.
Neverminding the generalizations about who was joking and who was not, in your own situation…
Such a sub would have made the voyage, returned, and that would have been that. Also, see the referenced in this thread Challenger jokes; us people, we’re out there. We’re liable to joke about damn near anything.
The difference is that De Havilland did everything they could (AFAIK) to build a safe aircraft. The problems they ran into with the early Comets were due to the fact that not enough was known at the time about the nature of metal fatigue from pressurization cycles. Boeing explicitly acknowledged how much they’d learned from the Comet. Whereas OceanGate – and Stockton Rush specifically – received and ignored ample warnings about serious safety issues.
And the early 707s and DC-8s weren’t all that safe, either, compared to today’s airliners. There were some spectacular accidents. It took decades of experience to get to where we are today.
I agree. The whole thing is mainly about the psychology of actually being there and having stories to regale your friends with. There’s nothing practical about it. The right kind of ROV could even enter inside the ship, as indeed some have done.
Some do that.
Earlier in this very thread there was a digression running for 10-20 posts about varying folks’ varying emotional reactions to the event. If you missed that when it was fresh, you might find it interesting. It starts here:
Not to be flippant, but this thread keeps reminding me of this bit from Airplane!
Its that damn Geddy Lee again! Trying to sing when he is entirely unsuited to it, and should be focusing on playing his instraments. Hire a singer!, I hear David Lee Roth isn’t busy.
Actually, isn’t it even less than one sea-level atmosphere up that high?
Yes. According to a calculator I found online, 12,000 feet MSL is 0.64 atmospheres. Close enough. (And 400 atmospheres at depth is a guess. I haven’t used a calculator.)
Thanks. Of course, the major stressors on an airplane would not be pressurization, right?
Well… it depends on whether or not an airplane is pressurized, not all of them are.
But of those that are pressurization can and at times has failed, sometimes with fatal results, and pressurization cycles do cause stress on the pressure vessel portion of the aircraft.
But none of that is anywhere near as stressful at sub-surface traveling, even at relatively shallow depths. Even space ships, which must be thoroughly sealed, do not experience relative pressure differences anything like what submarines do. A ship in space experiences a maximum of 1 atmosphere difference (and not even that sometimes). Sub-surface boats experience a lot more than that as a matter of routine.
So it appears the pressure issue is exceedingly complex, necessitating detailed, careful, belt-and-suspenders testing and safety work, which does not appear to have been a top-of-list priority for OceanGate.
It’s starting to look it wasn’t on any list. When NOVA does an episode on this they will need an additional hour to show all of the people who warned Rush.
Oh, they’ll get to do a lot of that grim music and warning voice that they love so much.
Right now on NOVA:
Interestingly, it is also about engineers efforts to be able to detect collapse or what parts will fail.
While this could be a subject for NOVA, it looks to me that the saga of the Titan is more of a Frontline investigative reporting episode.
I think I’ve read the craft made approximately 25 or 30 dives in total, though rarely to the depths the Titanic is at, the last voyage being the third, something like that.
Was Mr. Rush generally always the one piloting these excursions? I guess my question is how many total alumni of the ill-fated Titanic 2.0 are out there? They must be mortified pondering about how close they were to suffering the same fate, the stuff of nightmares. Figuring four wealthy passeng, er “mission specialists” per patrol in addition to the pilot, maybe around 80 to 100 total?