Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search

[HalcyonDaze]

Interesting to contrast OceanGate's Titan with a commercially available submarine rescue vehicle.

View attachment 788807

F

Well, admittedly the LR isn't designed for 4,000 meters; it is designed to do more than look out the windows.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

I like his sonar recordings he has on the channel, but what is worse is he KNOWs he is wrong about Thresher and is hyping it up as a navy cover-up to prevent WW3 in some Clancy like novel.

I think his angle was more "they were trying to claim the crew didn't suffer." Problem was that version of events ignored the laws of physics; subs in trouble either go up if they can or go down if they can't. I've never heard of a disabled sub (one with a flooding casualty, no less) just hanging near neutrally buoyant in the water column, especially not one that somehow still has power to run active sonar.

 

[gamon]

Well, admittedly the LR isn't designed for 4,000 meters

Apparently neither is the Titan.

 

[telemonster]

Interesting to contrast OceanGate's Titan with a commercially available submarine rescue vehicle.

View attachment 788807

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Now *THATS* a sub! I bet it has two rackmount TVs in the bathroom even.

It could use some leather seats instead of sitting on the batteries in the middle or whatever those are.

 

[HalcyonDaze]

Apparently neither is the Titan.

Submarine rescue vehicles are designed to recover the crews of military subs; even the couple of Soviet SSN classes that had titanium pressure hulls were only rated to about 1000 meters. I think the old US Navy Mystic-class DSRVs were rated to 1500 meters, which was considered excessively overbuilt.

 

[Jared0425]

Hmmmm.
From physics it will be remembered that when gas is the transmitting medium, the denser the gas, the slower the speed of sound, and yet the speed of sound in water is about four times greater than that in air. Although this seems contradictory, it is not, because there is another more important factor that influences the speed of sound. In truth, the speed of sound is determined primarily by the elasticity of the medium and only secondarily by the density.

From PRINCIPLES OF UNDERWATER SOUND Chapter 8

Long story short, sonar (sound) moves faster in water than air, however the speeds that the sound waves travel through the medium causes friction in between the mechanical wave and the water which diminishes the return on the sonar. The higher the frequency of sound, the lower the range that the sound can return.

 

[reddeaddiver]

CNN reports banging sounds were heard.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/20/us/titanic-shipwreck-vessel-missing-tuesday/index.html

 

[Dan]

Even if it surfaced they’re screwed because they can’t open the hatch from the inside.

The design of opening the hatch from inside has been done for DSV Limiting Factor Super Sub and successfully proven to withstand 3x the depth of Titanic. At least they could have used such hatch design.

The deepest-ever dive to the bottom of the Mariana Trench found litter there

The dive to the ocean’s deepest point turned up some surprises. The news: During a four-hour exploration of the Mariana Trench, retired naval officer Victor Vescovo piloted his submarine to 10,927 meters (35,849 feet) below the sea’s surface, making it the deepest dive on record. He spent four...

www.technologyreview.com

 

[Gone for diving]

Even if they could open the hatch. The pressure hull would flood. They appear to be using the pressure hull as flotation. The main reason to use carbon fiber.
It needs to be lifted clear of the water to open the hatch...
If they flood the pressure hull it probably going to sink before you can get out. You need the surface support no matter what.

It seems to me the whole design is a pressure tube with no hull piercing for wiring etc.
I think they are using radio waves to control everything by having the receiver in a separate housing just outside or against the pressure hull. (They better have at least 2 redundant systems that can take over, )

Overall from what I have seen in pictures and read it doesn't seem like a terrible design... (obviously it needs improvement)

Don't really like the carbon fiber idea.. I would prefer full titanium hull.
There's just something about steel that makes me feel better.

 

[Dan]

OceanGate, company behind missing Titanic tourist sub, once subject of lawsuit over safety complaints

OceanGate once faced a lawsuit from a former employee who alleged they were fired for raising safety concerns about the vessel that went missing while descending to the Titanic.

www.foxbusiness.com

"The documents say Lochridge learned the viewport manufacturer "would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to the experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy standards.

"OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters," the complaint states."

Nowhere in the article did it say that they corrected the issue or used a new viewport

This former submarine commander expressed concern, not only on the viewport being rated at much lower depth, but also the use of carbon fiber material for submarine as this material is used more for tension (pressure from inside,) not compression (pressure from outside).