Submersible used to take tourists to view wreck of Titanic goes missing in Atlantic Ocean, sparking search and rescue mission.
Unless they are coming up on their own, it takes about 2.5 hours to get down to the wreck, and what I’ve read online is that these subs carry like edit:12 hours of oxygen. Docs on the submarine show 96 hours of oxygen, this was wrong of me to guess
They need to get a towing vessel to the area, they need to get the rescue sub down to the bottom, winch up, and get back up. 6 hours of work once you’re there. That means they have less than 4.5 hours to get on station. It’s 1000 miles from Boston. Ain’t no ship in the world sailing at under 200 knots.
Bad news only from this. They gotta get up on their own.
I’ve read a probable scenario about accidents with small DSVs in the book Below(Edit) the Edge of Darkness (about marine biology of bioluminescence and the tech developed by the author to film/record it):
There was a small leak in a valve, used for emergency operation IIRC and the author noticed that going down - she was still light enough to ascend but she said had she been a few hundred meters deeper, she never would have made it back up due to the extra weight.
What you’re describing is similar to the leading theory for what happened to the USS Thresher. Flooding occurred and then when the sub went to emergency blow its ballast to surface, ice formed in the piping blocking the pressurized release of ballast water, causing the sub to sink uncontrollably. There’s a good gif doing a better job explaining it on the wiki. Interestingly, the evidence used to determine this theory was gathered by Robert Ballard the famous oceanographer who then went on to be the first to find the remains of the Titanic. It all come full circle!
The whole Ballard titanic story thing is closely related to the Thesher. He was being funded by the navy to find the thresher under the cover of searching for the titanic. Ballard convinced them to allow him to use some of the time, provided he found the thresher, to Actually look for the titanic.
nformation declassified in the 2008 National Geographic Documentary Titanic: Ballard’s Secret Mission shows that USNR Commander (Dr.) Robert Ballard, the oceanographer credited with locating the wreck of RMS Titanic, was sent by the Navy on a mission under cover of the search for Titanic to map and collect visual data on the wrecks of both Thresher and USS Scorpion.[30] Ballard had approached the Navy in 1982 for funding to find Titanic with his new deep-diving robot submersible. The Navy conditionally granted him the funds if the submarine wrecks were surveyed before Titanic. Ballard’s robotic survey showed that the depth at which Thresher had sunk caused implosion and total destruction; the only recoverable piece was a foot of mangled pipe.[31] His 1985 search for Scorpion revealed a large debris field “as though it had been put through a shredding machine”. His obligation to inspect the wrecks completed, and with the radioactive threat from both established as small, Ballard then searched for Titanic. Financial limitations allowed him 12 days to search, and the debris-field search technique he had used for the two submarines was applied to locate Titanic.[32]
Eh, here’s a question from the bbc article in question:
The vessel weighs 10,432 kg (23,000 lbs) and, according to the website, can reach depths of up to 4,000m and has 96 hours of life support available for a crew of five.
they must have edited it since then. I have updated my post to reflect the actual info
Great! I’d still not at all want to be stuck there. Also, just loosing contact with the sub feels like a majorly bad sign.
The BBC article says the sub usually dives with a 4 day supply of oxygen.