Fatality Western Australia & Sat divers injured

[dmaziuk]

Funny you should mentioned Skandi...was standing on deck of another ship admiring her flashy sleek high tech lines when I noticed my IPad had connected to an unsecured connection coming from her direction...can we go three human supervisors dmaziuk?

There was a guy recently who managed to take over some flight functions of an airbus (? or was it a boeing) by breaking into its entertainment system. Hanging all your systems off of a single bus is convenience and a cost saver, and I wold not be at surprised if you could get to their computer controlling the blowdown and at the very least jam it. (Obviously I'm not claiming that happened or is even possible, but judging by the state of the art in my profession...)

 

[Wingy]

The thought of that made me shudder - I only went on FB - but you are right, safety through a wireless signal is a bad thing.

Whenever I do LOBs (I sail also) I get as much $ value from being in the wheelhouse talking to the captain looking at the course etc because I value that humans role in keeping me safe. Upmost respect - I have a friend who is a master mooring pilot and in this world of dynamic positioning and remote system control and know how many people are on those big LNG tankers....and it scares me big time.

The efficiency drive to automate everything is not an idea we will look back on as one of our finer decisions as a species favourably I fear.

My one big diving fear has always been getting hit in the head by a cargo ship (I'm working on my situational awareness) .

 

[dmaziuk]

Well give it another century or so and most of those pesky humans like us who haven't been automated yet and can't hear the big tanker's wifi telling them where not to stick their heads will be out of the picture. Problem solved.

 

[Pinecube]

I'm just wondering, as someone who's knowledge of saturation/working dives comes from magazine articles and the occasional forum post, how is it that recreational (tech) divers have been able to reach these depths "seemingly" without the issues that these divers had? For example (though probably not the best example), Dave Shaw had dives to similar depths (260-270m) with much shorter dive times, roughly 10-11hrs for the entire dive so the compression couldn't have been any slower than these dives.

 

[w3dge]

There was a guy recently who managed to take over some flight functions of an airbus (? or was it a boeing) by breaking into its entertainment system. Hanging all your systems off of a single bus is convenience and a cost saver, and I wold not be at surprised if you could get to their computer controlling the blowdown and at the very least jam it. (Obviously I'm not claiming that happened or is even possible, but judging by the state of the art in my profession...)

The original claim was that the person (Chris Roberts) was on an Airbus. Unfortunately upon investigation it was found that the carrier he was flying with didn't operate Airbus, so the story changed to Boeing. Regardless, the 'flight functions' he managed to compromise was merely telemetry - altitude, speed etc. The very same telemetry that every passenger on the plane has access to when they look at the map function on the in-flight entertainment system - no wonder that data was floating around the IFE network. At no point did he - or could he - gain access to the critical flight control systems.

 

[KevinNM]

The original claim was that the person (Chris Roberts) was on an Airbus. Unfortunately upon investigation it was found that the carrier he was flying with didn't operate Airbus, so the story changed to Boeing. Regardless, the 'flight functions' he managed to compromise was merely telemetry - altitude, speed etc. The very same telemetry that every passenger on the plane has access to when they look at the map function on the in-flight entertainment system - no wonder that data was floating around the IFE network. At no point did he - or could he - gain access to the critical flight control systems.

Many years ago I worked for In-Flight Phone, which was developing and deploying one of the first seatback systems on commercial planes. They went chapter 7 a few years after I left. IIRC ,their system was rated by the FAA as a category 3 system, which meant that under no circumstances could it affect the safety of flight. Well, catching fire would but it never did that on a plane. Anyhow, they were audited on that by the FAA, the aircraft manufacturer and the airline.

 

[w3dge]

Many years ago I worked for In-Flight Phone, which was developing and deploying one of the first seatback systems on commercial planes. They went chapter 7 a few years after I left. IIRC ,their system was rated by the FAA as a category 3 system, which meant that under no circumstances could it affect the safety of flight. Well, catching fire would but it never did that on a plane. Anyhow, they were audited on that by the FAA, the aircraft manufacturer and the airline.

Yep, a LOT of effort goes into securing these things, from all parties involved. Of all the risks to worry about when flying, someone maliciously taking control of the aircraft's systems from somewhere outside of the flight deck isn't one of them.

 

[dmaziuk]

:shrug: A lot of effort's been going for decades into designing Intel CPUs to be secure and correct. And look what happened. And that's with qualified professionals doing the designing; one should hope Boeing and FAA both employ former NSA hackers to do penetration testing on their systems...

 

[kaerius]

I'm just wondering, as someone who's knowledge of saturation/working dives comes from magazine articles and the occasional forum post, how is it that recreational (tech) divers have been able to reach these depths "seemingly" without the issues that these divers had? For example (though probably not the best example), Dave Shaw had dives to similar depths (260-270m) with much shorter dive times, roughly 10-11hrs for the entire dive so the compression couldn't have been any slower than these dives.

Dave Shaw bounce dives, he doesn't fill up his tissues at that depth. Saturation divers work with maxed out(saturated) tissues, they can get decompression sickness by just ascending to a shallower depth than their diving bell, they've got decompression times measured in days or even weeks. The world record saturation bell dive(701 meters, on an experimental extremely hypoxic hydrogen/oxygen mix) had a 24 day decompression time.

In this case however, the problem was that they were descending faster than the helium could be added to the bell, they essentially got an extreme case of oxygen poisoning, think CNS oxygen toxicity on a massive scale, extreme PP02, and probably likewise of nitrogen narcosis.

 

[Akimbo]

This thread might help explain sat diving: What is Saturation Diving?

The world record saturation bell dive(IIRC 1700 meters, on an experimental extremely hypoxic hydrogen/oxygen mix) had a 6 month decompression time.

I think some of your numbers are a little mixed. Six months decompression can't be right, even 6 weeks for decompression would be too long. Six weeks for the total dive including decompression is reasonable. Here is the US Navy's sat decompression table for HeO2:

The US Navy, and many commercial operations, stop decompression during sleeping hours. That would be 18-19 days of decompression from 1700'. I'm not sure how Hydrogen compares to Helium outgassing rates. Comex typically uses more aggressive tables than the USN.

Comex set the open-sea depth record 1988 at 534M or 1,752' in the Med. They also set the human depth record in a chamber at 701M or 2,300' in 1992 during the Hydra 10 experiments. The PPO2 is typically around 0.3 ATA in the chambers and some operators will go up to 0.5 in the bell.