Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

I know this is a human interest story, but I honestly don’t see the point in releasing the info about the son not really being pushed about making the dive, and only doing it to please his dad.

It really strikes me as the ultimate click bait headline

I think that it's perfectly viable that they tried to abort. Maybe they saw something on the instruments that indicated trouble or heard something.

No passenger submersible should be allowed to dive without an unmanned submersible present.

There was a previous incident of a submersible being caught on the Titanic's propeller & being guided out by a second craft.

Had an unmanned submersible been there, we would of known about the failure within hours.

they'd still be dead. It was the "experimental" pressure vessel that failed (supposedly tested by Nasa and Boeing but that could be bullshit), not the much mocked Xbox controller or other cobbled together equipment.

If you haven't already watched it, the James Cameron interview further up the thread gives a very good summary of what the ocean exploration industry thought of this company and their sub. If they'd followed the well-established practises of the industry, this almost certainly wouldn't have happened, but then they'd have had to raise a lot more money to get started and it would have taken longer to build and test. "Fail Fast, Fail Often" is fine for building software, but not such a great approach when you're 4000m under the sea.

I feel terrible for the young lad who was on board, whether he wanted to be there or not. The others probably should have known better (in particular the experienced ocean researcher) and I have more sympathy for the dozens who drowned near the Canaries yesterday or the many more in Greece a couple of weeks ago; desperate people seeking a better life, not billionaires on an expensive excursion.

I was just watching QI and there was a bit about diving and Jeremy Clarkson mentioned a time he stood on a giant clam while scuba diving and it closed over his foot and wouldn't let him go. Stephen Fry said "You know they say you shouldn't dive alone, you should have a partner with you". Jeremy says, "I did, my wife but she had buggered off somewhere".

If the implosion was caused by damage or wear to the titaan, having an ROV would not have prevented it. But after 2 hours of no radio comms, they could have sent the ROV down to where they were heading and probably it would have been quickly made clear what had happened, instead of the 4 day nightmare for their families.

There are many issues here.

-The unregulated nature of the enterprise. This was an experimental craft. I think once you start charging (no matter what the charge is) a person for something it absolutely NEEDs to have some regulation attached to it.

-The sales spiel that NASA and Boeing were involved - in order to give an air of professionalism to the venture. Both organisations have distanced themselves from these claims earlier this week.

-The premise that this site should be visited for a fee by people. While it is essentially a graveyard (and we all visit similar sites to it on the surface regularily) one would have to ask what is the scientific learning to be had from it nowadays - what more do/can people need to learn about it?

While the amount of craft available that can do this type of thing is limited and I'd suggest the same for the amount of people that want to do it, it brings up some serious questions for those involved in these types of operations.

this is from the horses mouth

which bit isn't true? They paid for the entire US side of the search.

The french failed to find it despite 5 weeks of looking

i wasn't saying he found it by accident, if that's what you are implying

great story really

The point being made is that if the same sort of resources were directed at the Greek tragedy more lives would have been saved. It certainly doesn't sit right with me.

I read the book that the horse wrote, years ago.

And maybe i read it wrong, but i took it as you were implying he found it by accident. you say you weren't implying that, so lets virtually shake hands on a misunderstanding and move on

ROV's are very expensive and outside of militaries, not something you just happen to have lying around idle. You put them to work to earn back your investment.

The OMG, five people have died, hand-wringing blame game, is farsical. If this attitude were allowed to prevail in the 1920's, you wouldn't be able to get on a plane to go on holliday, as there wouldn't be any. The finger pointers and blame adjudicators would have rightfully concluded that flying is obviously dangerous and shouldn't be allowed. No one would have set foot on the moon.

And so on. That's just a few billionaires, if we stoop to mere millionaires like Colin McCrae, the list would be really long.

The people on the sub signed waivers to acknowledge they bore full responsibility for engaging in something that was potentially fatal. That should be the end of it. The main person behind the sub died on it.

Find out what went wrong, learn from it and move on.

Personally I think he’s a preening idiot. What use is repeating gossip he’s heard on the grapevine? He has a lot of experience, no doubt, and will have picked up knowledge along the way. But he’s not an engineer and he has no place preaching about sub construction techniques.

Why is carbon fibre discredited? Cameron is entitled to his opinions but it's not an intrinsically bad idea just because he has reservations, otherewise engineers wouldn't be exploring their use in submarines and concluding they show promise:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214914722001313

I think there are good reasons to consider the use of CF in submarine hulls, such as lack of corrosion. The main potential problem would be penny pinching and not using enough of it or not using appropriate design and construction methods.

Yes,

It worked fine until it didn't.

But, for me, the key point is that experienced and knowlegeable people , who had urged caution and highlighted the risks, were ignored. EVEN ridiculed, to an extent.