Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

They had spare controllers on board. They also have spare oxygen bottles under the floor boards. While it's not a confidence inspiring outfit running the show, the submersible isn't the home built tin can some are making it out to be. There's a video of the pressure chamber being manufactured and it looked like the kind of legitimate facility that builds rockets. Accusations abound that the viewing porthole wasn't certified for the depths that they were operating to and if that's true there is absolutely no excuse for it.

I also found this interesting from the OceanGate website:

"The most significant innovation is the proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system. Titan is the only manned submersible to employ an integrated real-time health monitoring system. Utilizing co-located acoustic sensors and strain gauges throughout the pressure boundary, the RTM system makes it possible to analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure. This onboard health analysis monitoring system provides early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface."

If this is true, then there would have been warnings on board that there was an issue with the hull and they presumably could have communicated this or aborted the dive. If the porthole failed then it's unlikely they would have known anything about it.

https://oceangate.com/our-subs/titan-submersible.html

In lieu of scans at time of manufacture or on an ongoing basis? Would it be feasible to scan a sub in it's entirety on a regular basis? Real time monitoring is at least a step above hoping for the best.

As mariners they will know to signal with noise on the hour for 3 minutes, and at 30 past the hour for 3 minutes (every 30 minutes) as they are the radio distress periods when all ships have to maintain a listening watch and not normally transmit.

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

I don't believe they'll deploy the sub until they have a far better idea of where they are searching. The search area is massive - its the equivalent of being told you have to search Leinster and Connaught for a black Ford Transit, from a plane at 4000m, at night, and your lights won't reach more than tens of metres so you have to do this by sonar and acoustic sensors. They are only about halfway through their search area at the moment.

Robert Ballard, who discovered the Titanic, wrote a book about the discovery and it contains a good description of difficulties faced in trying to search the sea bed in the area. His crew had to deal with a far larger search area (on the basis that no-one really knew where the Titanic had sunk) but had a larger target and weren't under the pressures of trying to effect a rescue in very little time.

You're a good looking girl!

Right. I read off the RTE website. 'Former US Navy submarine commander David Marque, said the noises may not be coming from the submersible.

"I don't think the noise is them, it could just be natural sounds," he said.'

I find the whole concept of iron eating bacteria 'cleaning up' the titanic amazing. Just how nature will deal with with such, apparently, powerful elements.

The existence of large sonar / hydrophone arrays for detecting the movement of Russian submarines has been widely known for decades. One of the main systems (SOSUS) was declassified in the 1990s. It widely assumed that there are also arrays located off the South West coast of Ireland, in international waters.

In fact, in a story related to the current one, the deepest ever submersible recovery took place in 1973 about 150 miles off Cork when a two-person sub was damaged by its recovery rope and sank to the sea bed. At the time, it was said that the sub was working on a transatlantic phone cable but it was widely believed that the cable in question was connecting the listening arrays back to England. There certainly was a significant military involvement in the operation - as a young lad I recall a Hercules transporter landing at Cork airport with a rescue submersible on board. There was also a Royal Navy survey ship on scene, and involvement from the US Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard.