[AzCal Retred]

Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65953872

A submersible used to take people to view the wreck of the Titanic has gone missing in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Boston Coastguard told BBC News that a search and rescue operation was under way off the coast of Newfoundland.
It is unclear how many people were on board when it went missing.
Small submersibles occasionally take (5) paying tourists and experts to view the wreck of the Titanic, some 3,800m (12,500ft) beneath the ocean surface. ( Sub is good to 13,123'/4000m, so a 623'/4% margin... )
OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that organises deep sea expeditions, confirmed in a statement that it owned the missing submersible and people were on board.
"We are exploring and mobilising all options to bring the crew back safely," it said on Monday. "Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families."
"We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers," it added.
The company charges guests $250,000 (£195,270) for a place on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck.
It bills the trip on its carbon-fibre submersible as a "chance to step outside of everyday life and discover something truly extraordinary".
According to its website, one expedition is ongoing and two more have been planned for June 2024.

[him a layin]

forgot to say "hold my beer". oopsie.

i'd like to say "hope nobody gets hurt", but it's probably far too late for that.

[gizzo]

Yup, I don't think this is going to end well, either.

Also, if you can afford to drop a 1/4 mil on a sightseeing trip to the bottom of the ocean, you're already outside the bounds of "ordinary life". A trip to space not good enough for you?

[GlennF]

dang, was going to buy one of those for the underwater dock at my Secret Volcano Spy Base.  Lucky I did not, going through far too many minions these days as it is. 

[AzCal Retred]

 

[AzCal Retred]

The "Invisible Hand of the Marketplace" seems to be hard at work here. Odd that people forking over $250K wouldn't do the due diligence necessary to find out what kind of situation they were getting into. It's not like the info wasn't out there. Status comes at a cost, look at the Everest ascenders. It's only a matter of time before the Space Expeditions have a similar incident. Extremely hostile environments are just that and all tech has limits. Treating it like a trip to Disneyland doesn't help anything.

Missing Titanic submersible live updates: 'Banging' picked up by sonar, source says
The deep-sea vessel submerged on Sunday morning with a 96-hour supply of oxygen.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/live-updates/missing-titanic-tourist-submersible/?id=100224153
The deep-sea vessel, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, lost contact about an hour and 45 minutes after submerging on Sunday morning with a 96-hour oxygen supply. The United States Coast Guard, in coordination with the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian Armed Forces, immediately launched a search and rescue operation for the 21-foot sealed craft, named Titan.
The U.S. Coast Guard announced via Twitter early Wednesday that a Canadian aircraft with sonar capabilities had "detected underwater noises in the search area."
Remotely operated vehicle operations (ROV) were then relocated "in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises," according to the Coast Guard.
"Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue," the Coast Guard tweeted.

OceanGate Was Warned of Potential for ‘Catastrophic’ Problems With Titanic Mission
Experts inside and outside the company warned of potential dangers and  urged the company to undergo a certification process.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/oceangate-titanic-missing-submersible.html
Mr. Lochridge reported in court records that he had urged the company to do so, but that he had been told that OceanGate was “unwilling to pay” for such an assessment. After getting Mr. Lochridge’s report, the company’s leaders held a tense meeting to discuss the situation, according to court documents filed by both sides. The documents came in a lawsuit that OceanGate filed against Mr. Lochridge in 2018, accusing him of sharing confidential information outside the company.
In the documents, Mr. Lochridge reported learning that the viewport that lets passengers see outside the craft was only certified to work in depths of up to 1,300 meters.That is far less than would be necessary for trips to the Titanic, which is nearly 4,000 meters below the ocean’s surface.
“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design,” lawyers for Mr. Lochridge wrote in a court filing.
The meeting led OceanGate to fire Mr. Lochridge, according to court documents filed by both sides. OceanGate has said in court records that he was not an engineer, that he refused to accept information from the company’s engineering team and that acoustic monitoring of the hull’s strength was better than the kind of testing that Mr. Lochridge felt was necessary.
That is far less than would be necessary for trips to the Titanic, which is nearly 4,000 meters below the ocean’s surface.
“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design,” lawyers for Mr. Lochridge wrote in a court filing.
The meeting led OceanGate to fire Mr. Lochridge, according to court documents filed by both sides. OceanGate has said in court records that he was not an engineer, that he refused to accept information from the company’s engineering team and that acoustic monitoring of the hull’s strength was better than the kind of testing that Mr. Lochridge felt was necessary.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_Range

[Arschloch]

Chances might be slimm, the radio said just now there's enough air on that vessel until tomorrow lunchtime.

The minimum you could expect is that company to spend their last cent on the search.

[AzCal Retred]

If a 21' submersible is floating on the surface within even 50 miles away that's still a tough search. It's more than likely that sub's just a trail of scattered debris 13,500 feet down on the soft sea bed, and that'd be a real miracle find. OGE is probably just an LLC with a severe liability disclaimer form. Might be a good plan for the OGE managers to take their box of cash and head for somewhere with no extradition.

Again - adventure tourists, do the homework. There's a reason everyone isn't doing "it". The Sherpas in the village where Edmund Hillary was looking for a guide asked him "Why go up there? There's only cold & death up there." The first guys in get the credit, everyone later is just a tourist. Check out Beebe & Barton. Designed & tested their own deep sea rig in the 1920's. Two guys in a sphere on a cable, hoping the cable didn't break or the sphere implode. That's adventure...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathysphere
The Bathysphere (from Ancient Greek βαθύς (bathús) 'deep', and σφαῖρα (sphaîra) 'sphere') was a unique spherical deep-sea submersible which was unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable, and was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934. The Bathysphere was designed in 1928 and 1929 by the American engineer Otis Barton, to be used by the naturalist William Beebe for studying undersea wildlife. Beebe and Barton conducted dives in the Bathysphere together, marking the first time that a marine biologist observed deep-sea animals in their native environment. Their dives set several consecutive world records for the deepest dive ever performed by a human. The record set by the deepest of these, to a depth of 3,028 ft (923 m) on August 15, 1934, lasted until it was broken by Barton in 1949.

[axman88]

What a way to go, sitting in a dark, stinking tube, listening to every breath of one's miserable companions, jealous of the air that because they breathe it, you cannot.  A rupture of the pressure vessel would have been a merciful thing compared to this madness.  If indeed the rescuers are hearing "banging noises", and the source is the trapped submariners, it's a heart breaking situation.  Unless they are located at a shallow depth, or on the surface, even once found it seems there won't be time for a rescue.

I read that the CEO of the sub company is down there, inside.  At least the blame game will go quick and easy.

[him a layin]

just by nature of the subject matter, all of us here on the uREcf are to some extent risk-takers and thrill-seekers. we assess the risks, do what we can to mitigate, roughly calculate our probabilities, take our chances. this particular bunch may have thought their money would protect them.

[Arschloch]

...Might be a good plan for the OGE managers to take their box of cash and head for somewhere with no extradition.

definitely not, the rats should be prevented from leaving the sinking ship....

[AzCal Retred]

TANJ!



https://larryniven.fandom.com/wiki/Tanj

[Arschloch]

Still, it's bit unbelievable that in times of Apple Airtags it's taking that long to find that submarine.

[GlennF]

Not really I have the same issue with my car keys at least twice a week.

[gizzo]

just by nature of the subject matter, all of us here on the uREcf are to some extent risk-takers and thrill-seekers. we assess the risks, do what we can to mitigate, roughly calculate our probabilities, take our chances. this particular bunch may have thought their money would protect them.

+1