Titan sub: What happens next after sounds detected in search
Titan sub: What happens next after sounds detected in search
With oxygen supplies dwindling - under 24 hours' worth remains - the next few hours are critical.
With oxygen supplies dwindling - under 24 hours' worth remains - the next few hours are critical.
tl;dr: Sonar buoys picked up sounds at 30 minute intervals. There is a relatively high probability that these are from the missing vessel, as producing sound by banging on the hull at the hour and half-hour is protocol for rescue signalling from underwater. Sound travels well where radar and other kinds of signalling does not. It's also possible that the vessel is at or near the surface; sounds travel better in the same ocean layer, and the buoys are at the surface.
It's also possible that the vessel is at or near the surface
NPR has someone on that had done the trip and said there are multiple systems in place to surface the sub in an emergency, including some that happen automatically. So there's a very good chance that they're at the surface, but still very hard to find because it's a 20-ft sub in a huge search area. And they're still running out of air because the hatch must be opened from the outside.
They could also be stuck on something no? Those fail-safes assume you can float up
undefined> And they’re still running out of air because the hatch must be opened from the outside.
That seems like a...pretty big oversight. Is that standard?
Interesting and terrifying. Assuming the sub is disabled somehow, is it possible for it to be stuck at a certain depth for a long period of time without sinking or floating to the surface? I always assumed it was an active process to hover between the two.
If those sounds are from the sub, the hull is still intact. Assuming that, I think it would be possible for the sub to not be resting on the bottom. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's at a stable depth. It could be sinking slowly until it reaches a depth where it's neutrally buoyant, or the bottom. It could have already reached that neutrally buoyant depth, which could be the surface, or close to it. In any case, it would certainly be drifting.
I'd imagine you can triangulate the sound with an array of sonar buoys if it is on the same ocean layer?
Edit: commented before reading the article. That's exactly what they're planning. 🤦♂️
I hope they're able to bring them back up. Must be terrifying trapped on the sea floor. But also... seriously questioning the decision making process these supposedly super successful people go through.
I can imagine that if you have the money, that you would want to do something exotic like this. Same way like other people want to visit unique places on holidays. I do question their thought process when they saw the actual submarine before take-off. It doesn't really scream "high-tech" or robust from the footage that I have seen. However, even then, they cannot assess that being just a tourist in this situation.
I think there is quite some blame for the CEO of OceanGate (love the name by the way, screams scandal). It appears the framework was not in place to conduct these trips safely. Lack of safety features and backup vehicles to retrieve the vessel in case of an emergency are some serious oversights.
Some More News, the podcast and YouTube show, has a great episode on this called "Are Rich people OK?". Basically, they dive into all the research suggesting that getting rich basically breaks people's brains. As relevant here, rich people tend to believe that they are rich because they are super smart, and that leads to them thinking any decisions they make must be correct because how could they be wrong?
The Some More News episode discusses this study which stuck with me
One experiment by psychologists at the University of California, Irvine, invited pairs of strangers to play a rigged Monopoly game where a coin flip designated one player rich and one poor. The rich players received twice as much money as their opponent to begin with; as they played the game, they got to roll two dice instead of one and move around the board twice as fast as their opponent; when they passed “Go,” they collected $200 to their opponent’s $100.
In various ways — through body language and boasting about their wealth, by smacking their pieces loudly against the playing board and making light of their opponents’ misfortune — the rich players began to act as though they deserved the good fortune that was largely a result of their lucky roll of the dice.
At the end of the game, when researchers asked the rich players why they had won the game, not one person attributed it to luck.
“They don’t talk about the flip of the coin. They talk about the things that they did. They talk about their acumen, they talk about their competencies, they talk about this decision or that decision,” that contributed to their win, Piff said in an interview with host David Brancaccio.
Basically hyper charged Main Character Syndrome, further fueled by being able to pay your way out of (almost) anything, and surrounding yourself with people that only say "Yes".
We have some not-close friends who are very wealthy. Not billionaires but very deep into the millionaire range. Mansions, fleet of expensive cars, private jet. That sort of thing. The husband took up all sorts of extreme hobbies. He does rather risky vacations and adventures (wife refuses to go with him because she’s more grounded and not willing to risk the lives of their kids). It’s almost like the husband has come to believe that being rich makes him immortal, as if any situation he might find himself in can be remedied with enough cash. He seems to not understand that there are simply some perils that all the money in the world cannot save you from.
Same. though it sounds like it would be on the surface-ish. FTA the thermoclines will reflect sounds, so the fact that the sonar bouys picked up noises says they are probably in the upper 180 meters of the water column.
I cannot get over the CEO going on a sub that has so many whistleblowers on it's structural flaws that it might as well be a floating piece of wood.
I was assuming he had help in designing it and was one of the main pilots. He’s probably been in the water coffin more than anyone!
You have to be rich to climb Everest as well (permits, gear, guides, training, etc) and tons of people have died doing that.
Wow so a good chance they find them alive?
Probably not. If the submersible is even still intact, the search area is the size of Connecticut and they will run out of air soon. Even if they wanted to open a hatch and take their chances outside the vessel, they cannot. If the coast guard even finds them, if they are submerged there's not a great way to reach them either.
That’s literally the stuff of my nightmares