Originally Posted by :
A search and rescue operation is currently underway to locate a submarine that went missing during an expedition to the Titanic.
The U.S. Coast Guard was looking for the submarine Monday morning after it disappeared during the expedition from St. John's, N.L. The infamous 1912 wreck is located more than 600 kilometres southeast of the province in the North Atlantic Ocean.
The trip to the Titanic was being run by OceanGate Expeditions, a U.S.-based company. It uses a five-person submersible named Titan to reach the wreckage 3,800 metres below the surface. OceanGate's website advertises a seven-night voyage to the Titanic for US$250,000 per person, or approximately CA$330,000.
"We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely," an OceanGate spokesperson said in an email to CTV News. "Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families."
Those tours are a series of five eight-day missions to the Titanic with the money raised by tourists going towards Titanic research. Posts on social media show the ship launched from the St. John's area last week.
Did they really have 5 people in this?? Or do they have a larger version??
Originally Posted by Detoxing:
Then buy them an Xbox controller, not that janky Logitech controller that i wouldn't even buy for my PC.
Well, they had a slightly used controller on clearance at GameStop and most of the buttons still worked. Nobody’s got time to pay for a legit XBox controller. [Reply]
And I have no idea why their marketing materials concentrated so much on the toilet. It seems like it's been played up in every diagram I've seen in this thread.
Hey man, when you gotta go you gotta go.
I know if I was looking at doing one of those trips probably the 2nd thing that would cross my mind is "How am I gonna shit?" [Reply]
Originally Posted by :
Deepsea Challenger (DCV 1) is a 7.3-metre (24 ft) deep-diving submersible designed to reach the bottom of Challenger Deep, the deepest-known point on Earth. On 26 March 2012, Canadian film director James Cameron piloted the craft to accomplish this goal in the second crewed dive reaching the Challenger Deep.[1][2][3][4] Built in Sydney, Australia, by the research and design company Acheron Project Pty Ltd, Deepsea Challenger includes scientific sampling equipment and high-definition 3-D cameras; it reached the ocean's deepest point after two hours and 36 minutes of descent from the surface.[1][5]
Development
Deepsea Challenger was built in Australia, in partnership with the National Geographic Society and with support from Rolex, in the Deepsea Challenge program. The construction of the submersible was headed by Australian engineer Ron Allum.[6] Many of the submersible developer team members hail from Sydney's cave-diving fraternity including Allum himself with many years of cave-diving experience.[citation needed]
Working in a small engineering workshop in Leichhardt, Sydney, Allum created new materials including a specialized structural syntactic foam called Isofloat,[7] capable of withstanding the huge compressive forces at the 11-kilometre (6.8 mi) depth. The new foam is unique in that it is more homogeneous and possesses greater uniform strength than other commercially available syntactic foam yet, with a specific density of about 0.7, will float in water. The foam is composed of very small hollow glass spheres suspended in an epoxy resin and comprises about 70% of the submarine's volume.[8]
The foam's strength enabled the Deepsea Challenger designers to incorporate thruster motors as part of the infrastructure mounted within the foam but without the aid of a steel skeleton to mount various mechanisms. The foam supersedes gasoline-filled tanks for flotation as used in the historic bathyscaphe Trieste.
Allum also built many innovations, necessary to overcome the limitations of existing products (and presently undergoing development for other deep sea vehicles). These include pressure-balanced oil-filled thrusters;[9] LED lighting arrays; new types of cameras; and fast, reliable penetration communication cables allowing transmissions through the hull of the submersible.[10] Allum gained much of his experience developing the electronic communication used in Cameron's Titanic dives in filming Ghosts of the Abyss, Bismarck and others.[10][11]
Power systems for the submarine were supplied by lithium batteries that were housed within the foam and can be clearly seen in publicity photographs of the vessel.[12] The lithium battery charging systems were designed by Ron Allum.[13] The submersible contains over 180 onboard systems, including batteries, thrusters, life support, 3D cameras, and LED lighting.[14] These interconnected systems are monitored and controlled by a programmable automation controller (PAC) from Temecula, California-based controls manufacturer Opto 22.[15][16][17][18] During dives, the control system also recorded depth, heading, temperature, pressure, battery status, and other data, and sent it to the support ship at three-minute intervals[19] via an underwater acoustic communication system developed by West Australian company L-3 Nautronix.[20][21]
The crucial structural elements, such as the backbone and pilot sphere that carried Cameron, were engineered by the Tasmanian company Finite Elements.[22] The design of the interior of the sphere, including fireproofing, condensation management and mounting of control assemblies, was undertaken by Sydney-based industrial design consultancy Design + Industry.[23]
The submersible features a pilot sphere measuring 1.1 metres (43 in) in diameter, large enough for only one occupant.[24] The sphere, with steel walls 64 mm (2.5 in) thick, was tested for its ability to withstand the required 114 megapascals (16,500 pounds per square inch) of pressure in a pressure chamber at Pennsylvania State University.[25] The sphere sits at the base of the 11.8-tonne (13.0-short-ton) vehicle. The vehicle operates in a vertical attitude, and carries 500 kg (1,100 lb) of ballast weight that allows it to both sink to the bottom, and when released, rise to the surface. If the ballast weight release system fails, stranding the craft on the seafloor, a backup galvanic release is designed to corrode in salt water in a set period of time, allowing the sub to automatically surface.[26] Deepsea Challenger is less than one-tenth the weight of its predecessor of fifty years, the bathyscaphe Trieste; the modern vehicle also carries dramatically more scientific equipment than Trieste, and is capable of more rapid ascent and descent.[27]
Originally Posted by loochy:
did anyone just consider tying the damn thing to a rope?
I know it's a long way, but cmon, they've run cable across the entire freaking ocean
The risk of a tether being caught onto something that deep wouldn't be worth the reward, IMO.
One interview said something they could've done was deploy beacons that float at the top as a contingency plan to help spot if something went wrong, which I think is more practical. [Reply]
Originally Posted by loochy:
did anyone just consider tying the damn thing to a rope?
I know it's a long way, but cmon, they've run cable across the entire freaking ocean
Maybe they were out of rope at Camper World.
Off topic slightly, but back when I was a college student we had a problem in our engineering coursework where we had to estimate the impact of a chain on a bucket that was being lowered. (It was some sort of deep-earth mining scenario in the problem statement.) It was kind of surprising how quickly the chain became a huge weight issue that impacted the power needed to get the chain back up, and the stresses at the top of the chain. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Kiimosabi:
We've reduced everything to one button. An elevator button.
uhhhhh I'm pressing the button and nothing is happening. What now?
Well, nothing. That's the button. It's streamlined.
Maybe the problem was that the one button did everything. It simultaneously raised the sub, released the ballast, flushed the toilet, turned the lights on and off, and opened the bolts on the hatch. [Reply]