Moderating:
This is getting heated and personal.
Please ratchet it down, both of you, and remember to discuss the content, not the commentator.
An input appears to have been a PlayStation controller. They may or may not have other methods of controlling the device. Moving on…
This topic was automatically opened after 9 minutes.
Sorry puzzlegal, won’t happen again.
I have to agree with @Princhester. Nothing in that guy’s self-reported bio suggests he has any special insight into deep-submergence vehicle design.
It may be a stupid design, but he’s not the one to be able to say so authoritatively, absent some deeper experience or education beyond being a US Navy submarine vet.
Observable evidence? They’re still missing! For my part, I have my fingers crossed for “if not found, then have been dead since they went missing.” Of course the media is going to report on how many days of oxygen they may have assuming the hull is still in tact: doesn’t mean we have evidence, let alone observable evidence, that they are still alive and facing a cold, dark death as power and oxygen die out.
No. it’s easier to build a space crew cabin than a deep sea crew cabin but it’s much harder to launch a spacecraft. That’s why any moderately rich person can buy a ticket on a leaky deep-sea tub for $250K, but the fare to ride a spacecraft runs well into the tens of millions.
Anything can be a submarine once without much effort. But to even try to be a spacecraft, you need a whole lot of explosives first.
Let’s say for the sake (or bourbon) of argument the submersible is resting on the bottom at 12,500 feet down, the crew is for now, safe and alive. How would a rescue be effected? What other types of submersibles or craft that are readily available that could connect a rescue tether or hoist or whatever? Sounds like they are fooked, even if still alive
They have the right equipment.
BBC news feed
If I was on it, I wouldn’t want the CEO of the company being the guy operating the vessel. Especially one who is quoted as saying “It should be like an elevator, it shouldn’t take a lot of skill.”
A regular J. Bruce Ismay.
Smapti: your video is listed as private.
All the submersible has to do is to release the ballast and it will float to the surface. So to me that the reason this hasn’t appeared to happen is that the hull was breached.
Nothing can be done to rescue them at that depth, especially since we’re probably talking 50 hours of oxygen as of right now - maybe less if they are hyperventilating in panic and depleting O2 more rapidly than normal.
No rescue subs that currently exist go even half that depth.
The only way these people can realistically survive is if they are currently at a shallow depth or floating on the surface and just not yet found, or if they can somehow find some way to un-snag themselves on the seabed or get their ballast out, whatever it is that’s keeping them from getting to the surface.
It’s probably about a 99% chance that they’re thoroughly, thoroughly fucked.
Unfortunately, I think that’s the most likely scenario at this point.
On the other hand, I was listening to news reports on the radio this morning, and it was pointed out that the submersible is not only quite small, but when it’s on the surface, it doesn’t ride particularly high in the water – thus, even if it is on the surface, it’d still be extremely hard to spot from a search plane.
I think the odds are they were rapidly crushed to death but there is still some hope they are floating on or near the surface. The details on communication were not clear, but there’s some reason they though communications were lost so they must have been expecting to receive messages on the host ship. I’m amazed if a transponder wasn’t on the vessel just for the case of ascending after losing power.
If a cable could somehow be attached to the vessel, could it be pulled up?
I think that’s the outside chance they are hoping for. Find the sub, attach a cable, haul it up. I heard someone mentioning even just dragging a cable and goping to snag the sub.
This sounds to me like an incredible longshot, but you do what you can while you can and don’t give up until there’s no longer any possibility they are alive. But I suspect that everyone on the rescue knows they are just going through the motions.
The cable would have to be guided precisely to be able to latch on to it. Maybe some unmanned submersible with a claw arm could do it.
But the missing sub has to first be even found, and then the gear rigged-up/Macgyvered to do so, and with the clock ticking, it’s far likelier that all 5 people first suffocate.
The SOSUS system isn’t what it used to be (mostly replaced by mobile platforms now), but I think some of the hydrophones are still in active use for tracking whales and such by research orgs. If there was an explosive decompression of the submersible, I wonder if it would have been picked up?
Just to be sure, have read this and would like to know if it can be confirmed: this was a sub designed for extreme depth, 4,000 m or almost 13,000 ft, and has no windows, because windows are prone to break at those depths, is that right? The only way to look outside is via a camera, when there is electricity. They could have watched the Titanic just as well from a command centre in the mothership. Or did the sub have one tiny window, with glass thicker than the window is wide, like the bathysphere?