For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
I think it’s because the story about a missing submersible is unusual, and moreover, it’s about a rescue attempt. This makes it more interesting than many other, albeit more dreadful, news stories.
750 people drowning is also unusual, and there’s also been rescue attempts.
All these victims have loved ones, and i don’t wish death on anyone, but for the billionaires I find it quite hard to care much.
I still hope they’re saved, though; and if they are I very much hope the experience will have changed them.
That’s just not the same. Drowning is quick and if you don’t save them immediately they’re most likely dead. Slowly suffocating in a sub while the clock ticks and something can be done about it is a different story.
Learn to care.
sure. It has nothing to do with the fact that in one of cases they are 5 billionaires while in the other one they are 750 poor migrants. No, totally not.
Not entirely no, I didn’t see any news outlet leading the story with “5 Billionaires missing after Submersible lost contact”. For quite some time we didn’t even know who was on board. It’s more the fact that boats in the Mediterranean sink all the time, it’s still tragic but we know that that’s an issue we have now (most people unfortunately seem to have decided that they do not care that much). A submersible going missing and the coast guards of 2 countries looking for them, while thei only have air for a couple days, no one knowing where they are and it involving the titanic guarantees clicks, it’s almost like a movie plot. The fact that they are wealthy is certainly not the reason for it though, it’s the circumstances surrounding it, it’s unusual. People also know how ships work and why they capsize, while most people don’t have the slightest idea how deep sea submersibles work.
So yes, the ship capsizing and killing that many people is horrible and should get more attention, especially from the Goverments involved. It’s ridiculous that we let those poor people drown by the thousands and treat the ones who made it like scum. But I’m not convinced the Titanic story got traction BECAUSE the victims have money.
The Greece tragedy is lacking the irony and hubris of this.
I mean, it’s a tourist submersible that was aiming to bring billionaires to view the Titanic wreckage and it likely got wrecked itself. And they named the submersible Titan.
The sub’s company OceanGate was dinged by a former employee for all sorts of safety issues and they fired and sued him. There are also lots of choice quotes from the CEO (who happens to be on the vessel) about moving fast and breaking things, and regulations stifling innovation. So there’s some possible karma involved.
I don’t disagree, but missing sub is an unusual phenomenon and mystery that gets people interested.
I don’t think the billionaires part is all that important, I didn’t know about it until today. The Kursk, the kids trapped in a cave, the miners that have spent months in a mine, those were all news too.
But yea immigrants from war-torn regions - nobody cares unless they have “blond hair and blue eyes”.
People tend to care more about the stuff that happens closer to them, or is somehow related to them. You probably don’t care all that much about the armed conflict in Mali between the government, ISIS and Wagner Group.
if you live in europe, the Mediterranean sea is you know, right next to you. And way much closer than the distance of the titanic to the shore in America, which is about 1000 nautical miles.
That’s what I’m more upset about.
Who gives a shit about a couple of billionaires. Why does this have to be a world-wide news story? Why don’t we care about the 100s of refugees that die all the time in maritime accidents and why are those things dominating the news?
Time and time again we give the rich people all of our attention. Fuck that. We shouldn’t be letting the media direct our attention like this.
It was an issue for a lot of international organizations, but Greece and EU made themselves look like fools https://vlemmy.net/post/119595
The 5 submariners chances of being rescued are very slim at this point but much much higher than the 500 migrants still missing off the coast of Greece who took to the waters not for a joy ride but to escape war and seek a better life.
I suspect they imploded.
These super deep subs are traditionally not reused very long, because the stress of the water pressing and then releasing weakens them. The more compression-decompression cycles they take the faster they degrade.
From all the reports, they got a lot of reports of issues that they ignored. I read that one of the reporters who saw it found it to be very jury rigged together. Apparently it was not certified in any way.
Even if they did survive and the ballast worked correctly, they would surface quickly (decompression sickness?) and cannot open the hatch from the inside. The thing doesn’t float above the water, so its going to be a pain to find. Also they didn’t paint it bright orange with blinking lights, its white, gray, and blue.
Overall, a lot of poor decisions and ignoring advice lead to disaster.
Of all the various ways to provide emergency rescue assistance, it appears that they’ve included almost nothing which would help them in the event of an underwater failure that prevented surfacing (i.e. emergency ballast release failing).
Apparently it was not certified in any way
My understanding of this is limited to the two paragraphs on CNN, but there is a process for “classing” vessels. The owners decided not to do so as the process only certified that the vessel itself is safe for use, and does not verify the procedures for operation or the training of the crew. Their logic for not classing was that most ocean failures are the result of poor procedures or poor crew decisions, ignoring entirely that the reason most failures fall into those to cases is because the vessels themselves are vetted (via the classing process) to eliminate the hardware as a failure mode. It’s almost poetic that the man in charge of that decision is on the craft.
Even if they did survive and the ballast worked correctly, they would surface quickly (decompression sickness?)
Decompression sickness is a concern only if they suffered compression. But the main problem, as I see it, is that the sub was made from materials that are famously brittle and tend to degrade over many cycles of pressure and release (resin, carbon fiber, etc). So the likely failure mode is catastrophic failure of the sub under pressure.
There’s a reason most deep sea stuff is made out of steel: it’s somewhat ductile and recovers from compression with minimal change in properties.
Not an expert, but I don’t think the air pressure inside the sub changes, so decompression sickness should be impossible. Don’t quote me on that, though
This would be correct. However, I suspect the air pressure in the sub did change. Very rapidly.
No, nor do I think they should be. There will be millions of wasted taxpayer dollars wasted on trying to recover rich people’s dead bodies. They signed a waiver and knew what they were getting into. There’s nothing to be learned from whatever happened, since the company was clearly negligent. Let them rest on the ocean floor beside the other rich assholes.
That’s a bit harsh. If there’s anything that works in modern society pretty reliably regardless of status, it’s search and rescue. Sunk subs can also be an environmental hazard.
There is no rescue in this instance, only an expensive recovery. And there are enough environmental hazards in the world at this point, that I don’t think a 5m sub on the sea floor is going to matter much. Most climbers are abandoned to their fate as they made the reckless decision to ascend, just as these people made the reckless decision to descend.
It’s still part of S&R. Lost swimmers, ships, small planes, or just people lost in the woods, there are always attempts for recovery long after any chance of survival is gone.
Yea climbers may be abandoned very high up on Everest, when there’s no safe way to bring them down. But subs, we do look for subs. Let’s not needlessly be dicks about it.
Sunk subs can also be an environmental hazard.
Just out of curiosity… how do you figure that a tiny sunken submersible would become a hazard, much less an environmental one?
Probably not a big deal at that depth, I mentioned it as only a general addendum. But it probably has a battery, and those tend to be removed from sunken ships and subs together with other risky chemicals if possible.
I remember the case of a ship sinking with a shipment of new cars, and they recovered every one of those cars because they didn’t want even one polluting the environment.
Regardless they’ll want to search for it for the human(e) reasons primarily anyway.
I agree woth this post. Wealth has nothing to do with this. And if they survive they can easily pay the bill.
At least this method of winning the darwin award is going full circle.
‘Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.’
He hired a guy specifically to work on the safety of the sub and fired him when he raised too many concerns like the viewport not being rated for that depth.
'Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to the experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (‘PVHO’) standards.
'OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.
It’s kinda poetic for them to go down next to the titanic, itself a story of complacency and excess/opulance.
Not only that, one look at the thing they chose to go down into the water in was enough for me to wonder what kind of hallucinogens they must’ve been on to accept that risk.
According to David Lochridge (their Director of Marine Operations who was fired and sued), the passenger viewport of the original sub (buit in 2018) was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 meters, the depth at which the Titanic rested.
Whether that defect was corrected in this version of the sub (built 2020-21) is anyone’s guess. Meanwhile, a German entrepreneur who took a trip in this sub in 2021 reported several problems with the electrics and one dive was aborted at 1600ft. So whether these new problems were addressed (by someone who wanted to cheap out on a window) is also unknown.
they had to sign a waiver that mentions the possibility of death 3 times on the first page to dive in a vehicle that has never been safety certified and that was criticized years ago by almost 40 experts in a letter to the CEO. who is more insane? this safety mission will cost a fortune regardless of the outcome.
Should we send rescue missions up Everest to ensure the families of rich thrill seekers get to bury their loved ones, or should we maybe put those resources into saving real, living people?
It’s unfortunate that their risky joy ride went south, but it would be an actual tragedy if we used hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars of public money to maybe find a few bodies. That money should be used more efficiently helping more people who actually need it.
Should we send rescue missions up Everest to ensure the families of rich thrill seekers get to bury their loved ones, or should we maybe put those resources into saving real, living people?
It’s unfortunate that their risky joy ride went south, but it would be a actual tragedy if we used hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars of public money to maybe find a few bodies. That money should be used more efficiently helping more people who actually need it.
The difference is that we already have the infrastructure to do sea rescue missions and the professionals involved need to train regularly, so they may as well use this as an opportunity to do that. It’s not like the people and resources involved would necessarily just be sitting around if it weren’t for this incident.
Found yes, alive no.
I’ve heard a lot about oxygen reserves and zero about whether they have enough water for 3+ days.
i honestly don’t know if i can imagine a worse way to die than spending days trapped in a tiny tube in the middle of the fucking ocean with people i barely know, slowly suffocating suspended in a gigantic void. i hope they find those guys alive.
Cant imagine worse? Here, let me help. This is an excerpt from the Hoosac Tunnel incident wiki:
The deadliest accident was the explosion in the Central Shaft on October 17, 1867. Workers were digging the tunnel’s 1,028-foot (313 m) vertical exhaust shaft when a candle in the hoist building ignited naphtha fumes that had leaked from a “Gasometer” lamp.[12] The ensuing explosion set the hoist on fire, and it collapsed into the shaft. Four men near the top of the shaft escaped, but 13 men working 538 feet (164 m) below were trapped by falling naphtha and pieces of iron. The pumps were also destroyed, and the shaft began to fill with water. A worker named Mallory was lowered into the shaft by a rope the next day; he was overcome by fumes and reported no survivors, and no further rescue attempts were made.
Several months later, workers reached the shaft’s bottom and found that several victims had survived long enough to fashion a raft before suffocating
Ever hear the story of Hisashi Ouchi? He died from radiation poisoning over the course of 83 days, before life support was finally unplugged and he was allowed to die. Until that point though, life support kept his body alive as it deteriorated and decayed.
He was known as the most irradiated living man in history. A fascinating story, but not one for the faint of heart.
There’s apparently banging in the area in 30 minute intervals. That’s hopeful.
Getting them to the surface within the confines of their remaining oxygen limit is another story…
If you read the articles closely, the banging stopped a long time ago. They had 40hrs of oxygen, max, left on Tuesday, so time is running short.
Supposedly a Navy drone sub has arrived in Newfoundland that is capable of lifting the Titan. But they’re really running down to the wire and they still have to locate the sub and get the drone out to the location.
Or atleast drill some air holes if they are on the surface until they can find a wrench, but I imagine whatever size wrench is needed is being carried by a lot of people out there.
Depends how you look at it. I think it’s not hopeful because this implies they are in fact submerged and not on the surface (remember they can’t open the hatch from the inside so that has been a perfectly valid scenario as well). That in turn implies they’re most likely S.O.L I’m afraid. They have like 24 hours left and haven’t even found the sub yet. Getting the logistics done and hauling this one up itself takes a long time.
It can be done. They have equipment and protocols for rescuing people from submerged subs.
Not saying it can’t be done, just that the prospects don’t appear hopeful to me, especially given they only have around 24 hours of oxygen remaining. They still haven’t even located them… I seriously hope they are rescued, but I think probability is against them unfortunately…
