Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search

[berndo]

Missing Titan sub likely intact but out of power, says expert who designed deepest-diving submersible

Engineer Ron Allum says missing tourist sub unlikely to have suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ but partial flooding could be preventing it from resurfacing

www.theguardian.com

Not sure if this guys understands how this works.
At depth, they can't be sitting in a 'half flooded hull'. If there is as much as a tiny pinhole, the inside of the hull would fill up even if the thing doesn't implode.

“It also means that if the occupants are sitting in a half-flooded pressure hull, that could also be catastrophic. They could become hypothermic. I don’t know how well the CO2 scrubber systems would work if they’re wet.”

 

[Pearlman]

So who pays for all the private commercial vessels roped in for the search and rescue effort? Surely it must be expensive with the fuel cost, energy, time and man-hours of private enterprises…

 

[Wookie]

So who pays for all the private commercial vessels roped in for the search and rescue effort? Surely it must be expensive with the fuel cost, energy, time and man-hours of private enterprises…

Depends on who called them. If Oceangate did, they will be on the hook. If the coast guard did, you and I.

 

[Capt Jim Wyatt]

I have not read this thread, however. I have a US Coast Guard submersible pilots' license (Only for a sub that goes to 300 feet deep). I say this because the submersibles I piloted, which carry 48 passengers and 3 crew had an emergency drop weight. This weight weighs 2-tons and when released made the sub buoyant and it would float to the surface.

This weight was mechanically released by the pilot or co-pilot from the cockpit and did not rely on electronics. It was a manually activated lever that if cycled a few times pushed a pin holding the weight and the weight dropped.

This weight was drop tested annually at the dock and was an requirement by the American Bureau of shipping and the USCG before she was certified to carry passengers. I am quite certain this Oceangate submersible is required to have the same thing.

The submersibles I piloted also had the capability for voice coms with the surface and we routinely talked back and forth to the surface support craft.

 

[John the Pom]

Not sure if this guys understands how this works. At depth, they can't be sitting in a 'half flooded hull'. If there is as much as a tiny pinhole, the inside of the hull would fill up even if the thing doesn't implode. “It also means that if the occupants are sitting in a half-flooded pressure hull, that could also be catastrophic. They could become hypothermic. I don’t know how well the CO2 scrubber systems would work if they’re wet.”

This is a journalist quoting an engineer, so we know how accurate that usually is. Plus this an engineer from the team that built the Deepsea Challenger, so I think he probably knows more about it than you or I do.

 

[Rearviewmirror]

Those suits along with the simple $400 EPIRB I keep onboard could make the difference in any surface rescue scenario...

The lack of some form of EPIRB (can't find confirmation or not of whether the vessel has on anywhere) would be criminal negligence in my mind. If the sub ends up being found intact on the surface days (or weeks) later it would be unbelievably tragic.

I think the most likely scenarios are probably total hull integrity failure during initial descent (60%), the vessel either becoming entrapped or the drop-weight system failing (30%), or having surfaced after some sort of systems failure and lost at sea (10%).

 

[berndo]

This is a journalist quoting an engineer, so we know how accurate that usually is. Plus this an engineer from the team that built the Deepsea Challenger, so I think he probably knows more about it than you or I do.

A quote is usually what the person actually said. There are incompetent people in every field.
It' not possible to poke a hole into any room with 1 bar inside and have that space only fill up partially or half, when the outside is water at 300-400 bar.
The water that rushes in will compress the remaining gas to whatever pressure the surrounding water is.
At depth, the hull can only be either completely dry or completely flooded.

 

[Dody]

I always feel uncomfortable with those so called experts. Vulture is a name that suits them better. The Titan is lost and then, you have all those guys showing up on TV talking about safety issues, the personality of the company CEO… They don’t have a clue about what happened but already shoot on the ambulance. I have never seen those vultures coming back on TV once the facts are known saying: I was wrong which they are very often. Had Deepsea Challender have a problem, they would have said that James Cameron should have stuck to film making. The same people who buried Elon Musk even before he launched his first rocket. Talking without knowledge just to show off. Vultures. Let’s not do the same.

 

[Manatee Diver]

This is a journalist quoting an engineer, so we know how accurate that usually is. Plus this an engineer from the team that built the Deepsea Challenger, so I think he probably knows more about it than you or I do.

Except it doesn't seem workable.

I could see it if the submarine had a pipe burst and they managed to close the pipe to stop the water ingress. Something similar to what happened to the Thresher or Barbel. But the Titan doesn't have any through hull fittings, it is a solid pressure vessel except for the door. In fact that is one of the concerns as there is no mechanical release for the ballast just an electronic one that relies on wireless communication between the controls inside the hull to a control box mounting on the outside.

So it doesn't seem likely that any source of flooding would be manageable by the crew inside.

 

[Dan]

Update from 3 hours ago: