I’ve been wondering about that from the beginning. Don’t know if the particular noise it would make would be recognized if anyone was listening. I imagined the US Navy was constantly listening for certain activity in the water, but not likely listening for that sound coming from that depth, if it could be distinguished from other noises at all.
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
The signals are usually logged for later review - IF something was recording sounds AND capable of picking it up, there would be a timestamped blip. I’m not sure of the range either before it would get lost in the background, I believe the site is about 900 miles from the coast of the US.
There’s a window at the very front. Difficult to tell from photos but I’d estimate it at about 15-18" in diameter.
Years ago I read a great book about similar scenarios: The Terrible Hours, by Peter Maas (the same author as for the book about Frank Serpico, the honest NYC cop). This was a book about subs that sank before DSRVs and such were created to rescue downed subs with people still alive in them. Before that, sometimes all you could do was agonizingly listen to men banging on the hull’s interior, and sometimes screaming voices, until they slowly faded away as the oxygen dwindled to nothing. A Navy sailor named Swede Momsen created devices to perform the first successful rescues of downed submariners. A fascinating story, and there are many similarities to this situation.
More: it was in 1939, and the USS Squalus.
I don’t know about that, the Squalus was a submarine that sank in 250 feet of water.
That’s how the Trieste worked for its descent to the Challenger Deep back in 1960:
Nine metric tons (20,000 pounds) of magnetic iron pellets were placed on the craft as ballast, both to speed the descent and allow ascent since the extreme water pressures would not have permitted compressed air ballast-expulsion tanks to be used at great depths. This additional weight was held in place at the throats of two hopper-like ballast silos by electromagnets. In case of an electrical failure, the bathyscaphe would automatically rise to the surface.
It’s been reported that the Titan has a number of ballast systems, some of which are indeed fail-safe:
In an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered, Pogue said there are seven different ballast mechanisms that can help the Titan rise from great depths.
“Some of these work even if the power is out or even if everyone on board is passed out,” Pogue said.
It was the first time men were saved from underwater. Before Momsen, those guys would be dead. Yes, in only 250 feet of water.
Well that much is true, I suppose. I remember a relative talking about training with a “Momsen lung” at New London, Conn. iirc, for submarine school, they had a tall cylinder there filled containing hundreds of feet of water to practice underwater egress and surfacing.
I went through submarine school at the New London submarine base (which is actually located across the Thames River in Groton, CT). The escape tower was no longer used by the time I went through training in the early 1990s because they were losing more sailors due to the occasional drowning than were being saved by its use. (However, the legacy of the escape tower remains in that it is still on the logo of the base.)
We instead exited a mock-up of a submarine escape trunk that emptied into an ordinary swimming pool. Also we utilized “Steinke hoods” which by then had replaced Momsen lungs.
ETA: Looks like there is a more elaborate replacement now:
Except for the perhaps grim parallels to one possible scenario here (dying after being trapped for a period of hours or days without hope of rescue), it’s not really relevant. Because no way, no how will these people be saved by anything but a towline hauling them to the surface, and that’s assuming they didn’t die within moments of losing contact with the surface (which, frankly, seems most likely, except that “5 people likely dead, not much to be done about it” doesn’t make for a very good headline if you want to generate ad revenue through views).
ETA: To some earlier comments, I also don’t really understand what SOSUS could possibly tell anyone at this point. Nothing useful, surely. It’s not like this thing went missing with its whereabouts completely unknown and we might use recorded data to narrow the search area from an entire ocean to a hundred mile radius: while it surely is missing, there is a pretty tight search area already, even assuming it’s not resting on the bottom. This also isn’t a giant submarine that would rival a WWII-era light cruiser for size: this is a small submersible. I have to imagine that a breach in its pressure hull isn’t going to generate nearly as much noise as something like Scorpion or Thresher in any event.
I’m as willing as anyone to criticize the media when they deserve it – and Lord knows they deserve it often – but in this case, where there’s no actual knowledge of what happened, I think there’s something of a moral obligation to maintain a positive outlook. I do agree that a catastrophic hull failure is the most likely explanation for why there’s been no trace found of the vessel, but that’s not a helpful possibility to dwell on. Everyone involved has every obligation to treat this as a time-critical rescue mission, and the media is just reporting that fact. The media is certainly frequently guilty of sensationalism, but this ain’t it.
I won’t criticize anyone for doing that, but I think it’s important to keep this discussion in perspective. Although, frankly, I am borderline indifferent to the fate of at least three of those on board. I do have sympathy for the teenage son of one of them, and also the researcher. But the billionaires? This to me is something like “play stupid games [with your money], win stupid prizes.” If only they’d been taxed more by their governments, they might all still be safe and sound right now, enjoying lives of mere semi-luxury as ultra-millionaires, with the remainder of their money going to more worthy causes for the public good.
I saw a documentary about submarines that covered Momsen and his work to rescue submariners. I believe they were talking about the Squalus and the men trapped in it. They rejoiced when informed that Momsen was on his way to help.
Several things bother me about the design of this sub:
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It is a special ‘lightweight’ sub, and the developers bragged about their fancy hull monitoring system which would show the stresses on the hull and allow the operator to abort if any thresholds were reached, Presumbly this allowed them to make a thinner, lighter hull rather than just overbuilding. So, active rather than passive safety in a sense.
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The deepest it was tested to was 13,128 ft. And yet they are making regular tourist dives to 12,500. That seems like an awfully small margin. Maybe their ‘hull monitoring’ system gave them the confidence to routinely take civilians down almost to the max tested deoth. A false confidence, perhaps. I wonder how those repeated intense pressure cycles affected the material properties of the pressure vessel. Maybe their models were invalidated and they didn’t know it.
All in all, after reading how the thing was built I’m even more inclined to think that it imploded.
As for the use of the SOSUS network, I think the only value would be to look for tye sound of an implosion around the time they lost contact. I don’t know if an implosion at that depth would be detectable.
Momsen Shmomsen - has nobody asked Elon Musk for help?
That was a thought I had, it was constructed of a wound carbon fiber hull, with titanium end caps, and a window.
Something that hasn’t aged well: “At some point, safety is just pure waste”
That’s just agile development right? Next time add them back in.
Thanks for the correction of the rumor I had read: so there was a window and they saw their surroundings for real, not just on a monitor. And I think I see a circular weak point, about 15-18" in diameter in that picture.
My take on this is that it’s an example of irresponsible media taking a few ill-chosen words out of context. I read the transcript of the whole interview, and Rush just seemed to be elaborating on the theme that if you want perfect safety, you wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning, and saying that there’s a point after which further pursuit of safety provides only diminishing returns. Which is definitely true. Even in the area of passenger airline safety, there are a few learnings from previous accidents that haven’t been implemented because they’re just too costly for the perceived benefits. Such as, for example, potential interference in radio communications due to simultaneous broadcasts which was a contributing factor to the historic disaster at Tenerife – but just one of many contributing factors.
Ocean Gate has a tweet thanking Musk for the use of StarLink for internet access while at sea.
Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection we need to make our #Titanic dive operations a success - thank you @Starlink! pic.twitter.com/sujBmPr3JD
— OceanGate Expeditions (@OceanGateExped) June 1, 2023