Well, that depends. If they run out of oxygen, yes, that would be painless. They would basically pass out and never wake up.

But if the CO2 scrubbers failed, the buildup would cause them to slowly suffocate. Similar feeling to a slow drowning, but it would take hours and hours to die.
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I dunno - I can't bring myself to shit on these guys too much.

A) The CEO payed the ultimate price for his hubris.

B) The world NEEDS guys like this. Oh not a bunch of them mind you, but a couple dozen of these adventurous souls with a shitload more money than fear is a good thing.

Exploration comes with risk - a ton of it. And the CEO, to his credit, wasn't having anyone else out there doing his dirty work for him. He was at the wheel.

The execution was poor - but I think I'm over dumping on the guy at this point. We're better off having guys like him out there willing to take these risks and if we're ever going to pull of colonization of distance planets/stars/ocean floors/whatever - well, there are gonna be a LOT of broken eggs in that omelet.
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This all goes to show that space is cool but we really need to start investing the private funds for learning more about the ocean.

That’s a whole new world down there and I imagine there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of creatures we simply have no seen yet. I get we have some military equipment there as well as some geological stuff, but it’s crazy down there.
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What’s the chance they killed the CEO after the first 24 hours? There’s no way I’m not taking him out first if I’m stuck in that thing.
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I wonder how much of the ocean floor is within about 1,000 feet of the surface.

Because anything below that may be interesting for exploration sake, but I wonder if there's any sort of practical use for any of it. Those pressures are just staggering.

Getting to the moon is a cakewalk compared to operating in deep ocean environments.
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Doesn't carbon fiber build up fatigue after repeated stress? I imagine descending to crush depth repeatedly could cause the hull to weaken eventually. The whole things sounds like a death trap for so many reasons.

Also, why the fuck did they wait eight hours to report the vessel missing? They should have notified the coast guard immediately.
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There's a difference between taking calculated risks and doing what this guy did, though.

This guy blatantly ignored multiple experts in this sector and even turned down free safety inspection.

People give Elon a ton of shit with Space X, Branson with Virgin Galactic, and Bezos with Blue Origin, but they at least have some of the smartest people in the world working for them as well as doing years and years of testing.

The tests on this weren't extensive including if the Titan could handle making multiple trips to the bottom. I get using a material that isn't standard and how that can be innovative (carbon fiber), but if you're going to do that, you better damn well do your research and make sure things like this don't happen.

I respect that this guy had a passion for exploration. I don't respect that he ignored blatant safety concerns for the sake of innovation.
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But how do you balance that against all the bad press for deep underwater exploration? Like that letter somewhere in here said, their safety record was immaculate and now this is all anyone will think of.
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Oh shit - "At depths of over 10,000 feet and covering 70% of the ocean floor, abyssal plains are the largest habitat on earth..."

https://www.noaa.gov/education/resou...floor-features

And evidently the ocean has an average depth of 2.3 miles. It's only continental shelves that are within that 1,000 ft range.

So the vast majority of the ocean floor is about as deep as the Titanic is...

So maybe ocean exploration ain't that handy afterall...
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I agree... but only to an extent.

If the CEO cut corners and only put himself in danger then I would have no issue. Instead, that dude cut a bunch of corners, ignored his engineers, and sold seats to five people for the experience of being turned into a liquid while lying about all the companies supporting the endeavor.

-----

Debris found is the landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible.


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Apparently this thing had about 7 different ways of getting itself up to the surface... dropping the landing frame is one of those methods.

The rear cover... not so much as far as I know.
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Explosive news if true.
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They waited eight hours because that was the outside turnaround time for the trip. Evidently they lost contact with this thing a lot so they didn’t report they were missing until they were overdue.
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I don't disagree - but innovation does require tip-toeing right up to the edge of that line and you don't typically know you're beyond it until shit goes sideways on you.

I kinda look at it this way - have you ever seen a replica of the Nina or Pinta? Those things wouldn't stand out at the Lake of the Ozarks. They were like 60 ft long. And we knew about fuck-all about how the Atlantic ocean at the time. If you ever see one in person, you'll be floored by how rinky dink they look.

And it took a lunatic to get on one of 'em. But it worked.
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Maybe on the Xbox controller the driver got the bumper and trigger buttons mixed up and the bumper is the one that blows off the rear cover when he needed to press trigger button to drop the landing frame. Happens to the best of us.
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