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jamesqThere's a submarine that takes people to the wreck of Titanic. Three hours down, tool around for bit taking pictures, three hours up. A friend said "The CEO is an aerospace dudebro who seems hell-bent on 'disrupting' the submersible industry and being the underwater version of Elon Musk." Anyway, it's been missing for two days now.
I get that tech bros want to innovate by moving fast and breaking things, but in this case, the thing your breaking is your submersible. Which is bad if there are people on it. I mean, at least one of those people is the CEO, making this whole thing a lesson in hubris. But there were innocent people and a billionaire on board too.
At this point there are three possibilities:
1) They're bobbing around on the ocean surface somewhere, where hopefully someone spots them before they run out of air (the ship bolts shut from the outside and they only have 96 hours of air).
2) They're sitting on the ocean floor, out of power. They'll likely run out of air before rescue comes, if they don't freeze to death first.
Aside: Not a lot of other ships can even reach that depth, much less have the equipment to raise a 9-ton submarine. For reference, look at what it took to raise the Big Piece. The nearest one is in France, and I doubt it can get to the site in the time frame needed.
2.5) They lost power and hit the ocean floor with enough force to trigger #3 below.
3) The ship imploded on it's way down to the wreck, about 2/3 of the way there. Not only would no one have survived, it's unlikely they knew what happened. Implosion at that depth has the potential to be quicker than your nerves can transmit signals to the brain.
My theory: Repeated dives on an experimental vessel causes stress fractures to develop, likely between the porthole and the hull, and the whole thing just got flattened like a tin can. This happening directly over Titanic, so we'll likely find it at some point. In the next two years, someone will haul it up, assuming it didn't punch a hole in Titanic on the way down.
Among Titanic fandom, there's two schools of thought: 1) Visiting the wreck sounds cool as fuck, and I wish I had the money to do it. 2) The wreck is a gravesite that is showing extreme wear from all the people visiting it. We should restrict dives to the wreck except for legitimate research. I suspect people in the first camp are reevaluating their positions.
Would I do it? Not on OceanGate's equipment. At least one person (with enough direct knowledge about diving and OceanGate) would kick my ass if I did. Maybe if I was insanely wealthy, and I could use stuff like the Keldysh (the real world ship they used in Cameron's movie, as well as his deep sea documentaries) - or a more modern equivalent from a country not currently invading Ukraine. But even then, I'd donate an equivalent amount to charity so I wouldn't feel guilty.
Which does lead us to another more general problem. OceanGate was charging $250,000 for a dive. A quarter million dollars!. This (and things like space tourism or climbing Everest) suggest that tax rates on the ultra-wealthy are too damn low. Nothing takes the air out of space ship trips and giants yachts that carry their own, smaller, yachts, like a 90% tax bracket. More of that please. This has the added advantage of keeping the Elon Musks of this world in their place. Seriously, what's next? Bond villain lairs? They at least have the advantage of taking out their creators with them. Maybe that's what happened here. Shame about the regular folk involved though.
I get that tech bros want to innovate by moving fast and breaking things, but in this case, the thing your breaking is your submersible. Which is bad if there are people on it. I mean, at least one of those people is the CEO, making this whole thing a lesson in hubris. But there were innocent people and a billionaire on board too.
At this point there are three possibilities:
1) They're bobbing around on the ocean surface somewhere, where hopefully someone spots them before they run out of air (the ship bolts shut from the outside and they only have 96 hours of air).
2) They're sitting on the ocean floor, out of power. They'll likely run out of air before rescue comes, if they don't freeze to death first.
Aside: Not a lot of other ships can even reach that depth, much less have the equipment to raise a 9-ton submarine. For reference, look at what it took to raise the Big Piece. The nearest one is in France, and I doubt it can get to the site in the time frame needed.
2.5) They lost power and hit the ocean floor with enough force to trigger #3 below.
3) The ship imploded on it's way down to the wreck, about 2/3 of the way there. Not only would no one have survived, it's unlikely they knew what happened. Implosion at that depth has the potential to be quicker than your nerves can transmit signals to the brain.
My theory: Repeated dives on an experimental vessel causes stress fractures to develop, likely between the porthole and the hull, and the whole thing just got flattened like a tin can. This happening directly over Titanic, so we'll likely find it at some point. In the next two years, someone will haul it up, assuming it didn't punch a hole in Titanic on the way down.
Among Titanic fandom, there's two schools of thought: 1) Visiting the wreck sounds cool as fuck, and I wish I had the money to do it. 2) The wreck is a gravesite that is showing extreme wear from all the people visiting it. We should restrict dives to the wreck except for legitimate research. I suspect people in the first camp are reevaluating their positions.
Would I do it? Not on OceanGate's equipment. At least one person (with enough direct knowledge about diving and OceanGate) would kick my ass if I did. Maybe if I was insanely wealthy, and I could use stuff like the Keldysh (the real world ship they used in Cameron's movie, as well as his deep sea documentaries) - or a more modern equivalent from a country not currently invading Ukraine. But even then, I'd donate an equivalent amount to charity so I wouldn't feel guilty.
Which does lead us to another more general problem. OceanGate was charging $250,000 for a dive. A quarter million dollars!. This (and things like space tourism or climbing Everest) suggest that tax rates on the ultra-wealthy are too damn low. Nothing takes the air out of space ship trips and giants yachts that carry their own, smaller, yachts, like a 90% tax bracket. More of that please. This has the added advantage of keeping the Elon Musks of this world in their place. Seriously, what's next? Bond villain lairs? They at least have the advantage of taking out their creators with them. Maybe that's what happened here. Shame about the regular folk involved though.
