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??
Underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) were deployed Thursday morning to search the Atlantic Ocean floor for OceanGate's Titan submarine, which vanished Sunday morning with five passengers onboard.
Thanks. I wonder where the launch boat was in all of this? Seems like they should have had a ROV as well just as a standard tool when doing this type of thing. [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
So was it just recently that they got a ROVs down there? Seems like if the submarine or its debris field was near the Titanic it would have been spotted pretty quick once the ROVs started working.
Yup... the ROVs got there at around 2-3AM CST and started searching. The HMCS Ann Harvey met up with the Atalante where they used a whirly bird and a Zodiac Hurricane to move equipment and personnel from one ship to the other.
The Atalante then headed south to the search area where it deployed the ROV. [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
Thanks. I wonder where the launch boat was in all of this? Seems like they should have had a ROV as well just as a standard tool when doing this type of thing.
As I understand it... the support was up there thumbing it's sack for 8 hours after losing contact before reaching out to the Coast Guard. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mephistopheles Janx:
As I understand it... the support was up there thumbing it's sack for 8 hours after losing contact before reaching out to the Coast Guard.
Correct, but apparently it’s not uncommon for them to lose communications, so I get waiting an hour or 2, but 8 hours I don’t understand. [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
I don’t think his desire to hire young people was just about saving money. Sure that was part of it, but I think bigger than that was he could avoid having people on his projects who would have more knowledge and experience to question what he was doing with regards to designing and building the thing. It wasn’t lost on him that the submarine community was not happy with his projects but he didn’t care and just wanted to get things done seemingly as quickly as possible, but also with a dash of ego that he could do things better than whatever industry standards exist.
One thing to consider is that the seabed is littered with microphones that the military listens to... one would think that they would have heard an explosion of some sort had there been some sort of violent de-compression. [Reply]
Terrible evaluation. It wasn't "being woke" that caused this. It was hubris from the CEO who thought he knew better than the experts along with him being insanely cheap (A video game controller and parts from Camping World). James Cameron has been to the Titanic so many times he probably has a room on it, so going down there is not impossible if done safely. Plus another fun fact. The pilot of the aforementioned Titanic was over 50 years old and was a white male and it still sank. Pretty sure the engineers of it were also relatively experienced as well. [Reply]
Also want to point out that the claims of OceanGate’s relationship with Boeing, University of Washington, and NASA are not what they were initially claimed to be.
At Washington, they used 650K of a $5 million grant for testing at UW’s facilities (without UE faculty present) before going their separate ways.
Boeing claims they never consulted with OceanGate.
And NASA says they did nothing more than serve as informal consultants for recommendations for materials and structure… [Reply]
Originally Posted by Rams Fan:
Correct, but apparently it’s not uncommon for them to lose communications, so I get waiting an hour or 2, but 8 hours I don’t understand.
They probably spent 6 hours trying to figure out how to cover their asses. If the owner has any $ in his estate it won't be much longer. [Reply]
Originally Posted by tredadda:
Terrible evaluation. It wasn't "being woke" that caused this. It was hubris from the CEO who thought he knew better than the experts along with him being insanely cheap (A video game controller and parts from Camping World). James Cameron has been to the Titanic so many times he probably has a room on it, so going down there is not impossible if done safely. Plus another fun fact. The pilot of the aforementioned Titanic was over 50 years old and was a white male and it still sank. Pretty sure the engineers of it were also relatively experienced as well.
Counterpoint: the bullshit, reality-free, culture war axes aren’t going to grind themselves. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Mephistopheles Janx:
One thing to consider is that the seabed is littered with microphones that the military listens to... one would think that they would have heard an explosion of some sort had there been some sort of violent de-compression.
If you are referring to SOSUS, I believe that no longer exists. [Reply]
Originally Posted by mr. tegu:
Thanks. I wonder where the launch boat was in all of this? Seems like they should have had a ROV as well just as a standard tool when doing this type of thing.
To be as frank and ultimately macabre as possible - why?
If you're using an ROV to search the ocean floor, you're looking for bodies and little else. And that's all that system is designed for - it's a series of cameras; nothing that can actually conduct a rescue of any sort.
The bodies ain't going anywhere - there's really no rush and seemingly no utility in keeping one on-site. [Reply]