Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Getting back to the topic at hand, I'm surprised (as of midnight west coast time) that this is still up.

OceanGate Expeditions

oceangateexpeditions.com

You'd think that would have been taken down quickly after the Titan was lost.

 

[Manatee Diver]

Getting back to the topic at hand, I'm surprised (as of midnight west coast time) that this is still up.

OceanGate Expeditions

oceangateexpeditions.com

You'd think that would have been taken down quickly after the Titan was lost.

Why? Internet Archive almost certainly has a copy.

Honestly my question is why the comm silence about the implosion sounds being recorded by SOSUS and other ocean listening networks? James Cameron reports that those in his network knew about this Monday, and so did the USN who informed the USCG.

I understand continuing the surface search until you can confirm with the ROV but it gave a lot of people false hope that they were still alive, why?

 

[Brett Hatch]

From the perspective of the Navy and the Coast Guard, yeah, they heard a loud noise just after the mayday call. Anybody with both of those pieces of information is going to think it's pretty likely that the Titan failed catastrophically. But, "pretty likely" ain't really good enough, they needed to go out there and find concrete evidence of what happened. Until then, there is a chance that the noise was a coincidence. Like many folks upthread have said, if they called off the search as soon as the loud noise was heard, would the public be satisfied? Would the agencies be satisfied with themselves? Of course not

From the perspective of James Cameron, and the information available to him at the time, I think he put 2 and 2 together the next day, just like he said. But, notice that he did not walk around saying so right away. This is for exactly the same reason as the Navy and Coast Guard: a hunch, even a strong hunch, is not enough to call it while an international search is ongoing. If he had leaked his info out to the wider populace, would the outcome have been better? I think not. He was not certain, he was just "pretty sure." He made the right decision to keep his mouth shut publicly until the sub was found

As for how this was reported. Journalists do the best they can to achieve their goal of understanding the information and spreading it around. Their employers do the best they can to achieve their goal of selling consumers' eyeballs to advertisers. It's far from perfect, but it's the system we have

This is really not the topic to be bringing up unrelated debates about current and past politicians. Not sure how we got to that point after a good 40-odd pages of discussion on the lost sub. But I suggest that we try to stick closer to the topic at hand, fun as it is to throw a curveball into the mix

 

[Manatee Diver]

From the perspective of the Navy and the Coast Guard, yeah, they heard a loud noise just after the mayday call. Anybody with both of those pieces of information is going to think it's pretty likely that the Titan failed catastrophically. But, "pretty likely" ain't really good enough, they needed to go out there and find concrete evidence of what happened. Until then, there is a chance that the noise was a coincidence. Like many folks upthread have said, if they called off the search as soon as the loud noise was heard, would the public be satisfied? Would the agencies be satisfied with themselves? Of course not

A couple issues with that. They could've easily told the public about the likely result and continued the search until they had confirmation. Second is that we got the reporting of the banging on sonabuoys almost instantly after it was heard. Which likely turned out to be oceanic background noise, or the Titanic collapsing.

 

[berndo]

Honestly my question is why the comm silence about the implosion sounds being recorded by SOSUS and other ocean listening networks? James Cameron reports that those in his network knew about this Monday, and so did the USN who informed the USCG.

I understand continuing the surface search until you can confirm with the ROV but it gave a lot of people false hope that they were still alive, why?

That's my question too.

From the perspective of the Navy and the Coast Guard, yeah, they heard a loud noise just after the mayday call.

They didn't hear it after the mayday call but hours earlier. They must have know it was the sub after they got the call as soon as they got the call.
What Camaron said made the most sense. You look for stuff at the last know position. Dropping sonar bouy and doing that 'search' for what?
The minute I heard about the missing sub and saw that carbon tube I thought it must have imploded and wondered whether a loud bang had been picked up. Why didn't they report that they heard it. It's weird.

 

[OMyMyOHellYes]

Keep quiet about the 30 minute interval "distress call" noises. Probably whale farts. Maybe somebody on one of the nearby boats banging the door on the head. Or mishieviously tapping out an S-O-S...

So, report nothing until it is called, except maybe the initial sound of the implosion.

 

[BackAfter30]

I just ran across some astonishing info. There has been much talk about the forces involved in an implosion at the depth of failure. I've been unable to understand what kind of forces we are talking about when a catastrophic implosion occurs.

According to an article in US Naval Institute Proceedings Magazine, USS Thresher imploded at a calculated depth of 2400ft with a force equivalent to 22,500 pounds of TNT. That would be 1.125KT. The Hiroshima weapon was estimated at 15KT. Tactical nukes can be in the sub 1KT range. W25 is reported to be 1.7KT.

I understood that we're talking about huge pressure, but I didn't realize the violent nature of the actual event.

Thresher Freedom of Information Act Request Yielding Results

In a partial response to a FOIA request, the U.S. National Archives released a photo essay of pictures from the search for the Thresher in 1963–1964.

www.usni.org

 

[Wibble]

That's my question too.

They didn't hear it after the mayday call but hours earlier. They must have know it was the sub after they got the call as soon as they got the call.
What Camaron said made the most sense. You look for stuff at the last know position. Dropping sonar bouy and doing that 'search' for what?
The minute I heard about the missing sub and saw that carbon tube I thought it must have imploded and wondered whether a loud bang had been picked up. Why didn't they report that they heard it. It's weird.

SOSUS is a secret network.

First rule of fight club...

 

[Angelo Farina]

Again a collection of numbers with little physical meaning.
An explosion is characterised by the energy released, measured in J.
A ton of TNT means 4184 GJ (GigaJoules). Or a Giga-Calorie...
The energy released by an implosion is simply p×V.
Pressure at 4000m is roughly 400×10^5 Pa. Volume was around 10 m3.

So the energy released is 4000×10^5 J which equates to 95 kg of TNT.

 

[Still Kicking]

Just came across this video by a popular Youtuber:
Mostly personal observations but it humanizes the tragedy and illustrates the technical and weather-related obstacles that OceanGate was facing. More interesting content starts around 12:00.