Disaster Tourism: The Titanic

[Isgrimnur]

CNN

The Titanic Memorial Cruise on the Balmoral will retrace the doomed ship's original itinerary, departing from Southampton, England; passing by Cherbourg, on the French coast; and calling into the Irish port of Cobh before sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to the sinking site. Once there, a memorial service will be held at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 2012 -- exactly a century after Titanic sank.

The ship will take 1,309 passengers on the trip, the same number of people who were on the Titanic. More than 30 relatives of Titanic survivors and victims will be on board, said Miles Morgan, managing director of the cruise. He wasn't surprised the voyage has almost sold out, despite the grim occasion.
...
Meanwhile, Voyages! Titanic 2012 is a cruise that's set to depart on the Azamara Journey from Boston, Massachusetts, on April 9, 2012. The ship will take up to 680 passengers to Halifax, Nova Scotia -- which received many of the Titanic victims -- and then sail to the sinking site. It too will hold a memorial service on the anniversary to honor "that fateful day in history."

An expedition ship with a remotely operated diving vehicle will follow along so that, weather permitting, passengers will be able to see live images from the wreck, said organizer Bill Willard.

[Octavious]

They obviously didn't watch the trailer for Titanic 2. This trip is totally doomed!

[Isgrimnur]

Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

OceanGate Expeditions, a private company that deploys submersibles for deep sea expeditions, recently posted on its social media feeds that one of its expeditions was "under way".

The company charges guests $250,000 (£195,270) for a place on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck. It has not commented on the reports or confirmed whether one of its submersibles is currently missing.
...
The submersible can seat five people, the company says, which usually includes a pilot, three paying guests, and what it calls one "content expert".

[Freyland]

I suspect this story is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Carpet_pissr]

NoICE.

[em2nought]

They have been advertising for "Meg 2: The Trench" lately.

[Max Peck]

Who names anything <whatever>gate and expects it to end well?

[Isgrimnur]

BBC

British-Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman are two of the five on board

Another of those believed to be in the craft is British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former French Navy diver who has explored the Titanic before, is also on the vessel

Stockton Rush, chief executive of OceanGate - the firm behind the dive - is also being widely reported to be on the vessel

[Blackhawk]

So, apparently the sub is controlled from inside with a Logitetch gamepad.

View inside

[Smoove_B]

Unusually though, it includes a private toilet for customers at the front of the sub. A small curtain is pulled across when it is in use and the pilot turns up some onboard music.

However, the company's website does recommend "you restrict your diet before and during the dive to reduce the likelihood that you will need to use the facilities"

Seems reasonable for a $250K ticket.

[Max Peck]

If you need to move fast and break things, sometimes things break.

In a press release in 2019, the company explained why the Titan had not been classed by an independent body. "Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation," it said.

Going by this, it doesn't sound like there's much chance that this ends well for anyone involved.

CBS News journalist David Pogue, who traveled to Titanic aboard the Titan last year, said the vehicle uses two communication systems: text messages that go back and forth to a surface ship and safety pings that are emitted every 15 minutes to indicate that the sub is still working.

Both of those systems stopped about an hour and 45 minutes after the Titan submerged.

“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly. Both of those are devastatingly hopeless,” Pogue told CBC on Tuesday.

[Rumpy]

It seems like an interesting idea in general, but given the missing sub I'd start to question the company's safety. I've heard that people are bolted in, and that it's the only way they can assure the strenght of going that deep. But couldn't they have designed some sort of failsafe, or something like a panic button to let the mothership know something's gone wrong? Mind you, I'm not well versed in water-borne vehicles, but couldn't they have some sort of transponder?

[jztemple2]

From the BBC news blog:

How the sub might be rescued

Rescuers must comb depths that could reach nearly 4km (2.5 miles) for the 6.7m (22ft) long Titan submersible - because radio and GPS signals can't travel through water.

Sonar buoys, or sonobuoys, detect and identify objects moving in the water - and are often used in the hunt for enemy submarines.

They either listen for sounds produced by propellers and machinery (passive detection) - which could also include the crew making noise against the hull of the sub - or by bouncing a sonar "ping" off the surface of the vessel (active detection) and listening for the returning echo:

None of that explains how it might be "rescued". If it is intact and stuck on the wreck, it might be possible to use another submersible to attach a cable to it, but that 96 hours is a pretty short window to find a usable sub and get it out there. However, it still has to be intact...

[Rumpy]

Yeah, I've heard some of that too. There should be a way to release a buoy that would resurface near their location for emergency situations such as this. It kind of sounds poorly thought out given the tourism aspect to it.

[Isgrimnur]

NY Post

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, a former French navy diver known as “Mr. Titanic,” was asked in 2019 by the Irish Examiner whether he ever got scared diving 12,500 feet to reach the famous passenger liner’s wreckage.

“If you are 11m or 11km down, if something bad happens, the result is the same,” the Connecticut resident told the outlet. “When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realize that something is happening, so it’s just not a problem.”

[Max Peck]

It seems like an interesting idea in general, but given the missing sub I'd start to question the company's safety. I've heard that people are bolted in, and that it's the only way they can assure the strenght of going that deep. But couldn't they have designed some sort of failsafe, or something like a panic button to let the mothership know something's gone wrong? Mind you, I'm not well versed in water-borne vehicles, but couldn't they have some sort of transponder?

They had an transponder of some sort that pinged every 15 minutes. It stopped working when contact was lost, which probably means they either lost power or lost hull integrity and imploded.

In contrast, James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger had a failsafe that would release its ballast weight after a pre-determined time and resurface the vessel if something went wrong.

The vehicle operates in a vertical attitude, and carries 500 kg (1,100 lb) of ballast weight that allows it to both sink to the bottom, and when released, rise to the surface. If the ballast weight release system fails, stranding the craft on the seafloor, a backup galvanic release is designed to corrode in salt water in a set period of time, allowing the sub to automatically surface.

[Isgrimnur]

[Hamish Harding] also said the Titanic dive had been meant to take place in June 2022 but was delayed because "the submersible was unfortunately damaged on its previous dive". He said no-one was injured in the incident.

[LawBeefaroni]

It seems like an interesting idea in general, but given the missing sub I'd start to question the company's safety. I've heard that people are bolted in, and that it's the only way they can assure the strenght of going that deep. But couldn't they have designed some sort of failsafe, or something like a panic button to let the mothership know something's gone wrong? Mind you, I'm not well versed in water-borne vehicles, but couldn't they have some sort of transponder?

They had an transponder of some sort that pinged every 15 minutes. It stopped working when contact was lost, which probably means they either lost power or lost hull integrity and imploded.

In contrast, James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger had a failsafe that would release its ballast weight after a pre-determined time and resurface the vessel if something went wrong.

The vehicle operates in a vertical attitude, and carries 500 kg (1,100 lb) of ballast weight that allows it to both sink to the bottom, and when released, rise to the surface. If the ballast weight release system fails, stranding the craft on the seafloor, a backup galvanic release is designed to corrode in salt water in a set period of time, allowing the sub to automatically surface.

The Bathyscaphe Tieste had something similar when it went to the bottom of the Marianas Trench over 60 years ago. But I think the Titan is a different design, relying on electric motors for ascent and descent, rather than balloon and ballast.

[Rumpy]

They had an transponder of some sort that pinged every 15 minutes. It stopped working when contact was lost, which probably means they either lost power or lost hull integrity and imploded.

Oh yeah, come to think of it, the story I saw mentioned a possible loss of power. Not something you want to see go wrong, that's for sure. It has nightmare written all over it. I wonder if the company behind it can end up being charged even though there was a lot of legalese and waivers signed to absolve them. Just seems so badly designed and thought out, that it could probably be argued the company didn't make it safe enough.

[Isgrimnur]

As with all things, the real winners will be the lawyers.

[Isgrimnur]

Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To

The tourist submersible that went missing while exploring the Titanic wreck was previously the target of safety complaints from an employee of OceanGate, the parent company that owns the sub and runs tourist expeditions of the wreck. That employee complained specifically that the sub was not capable of descending to such extreme depths before he was fired.

That’s according to legal documents obtained by The New Republic. According to the court documents, in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. According to a press release, Lochridge was director of marine operations at the time, “responsible for the safety of all crew and clients.”

The concerns Lochridge voiced came to light as part of a breach of contract case related to Lochridge refusing to greenlight manned tests of the early models of the submersible over safety concerns. Lochridge was fired, and then OceanGate sued him for disclosing confidential information about the Titan submersible. In response, Lochridge filed a compulsory counterclaim where he alleged wrongful termination over being a whistleblower about the quality and safety of the submersible.
...
Paying passengers wouldn’t know or be informed about Lochridge’s concerns, according to his complaints. They also wouldn’t be informed “that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible.” Lochridge expressed concerns about the Titan again. But OceanGate didn’t address those concerns, and Lockridge was fired.

The case between Lochridge and OceanGate didn’t advance much further, and a few months later the two parties settled.

[Max Peck]

It's never too soon...

Four Dead in Fight Over Video Game Controller

Four ultra-wealthy divers have died 800 miles off the coast of Canada after a brutal fight for a video game controller attached to the submarine they were in.

“You promised it was my turn after 1,000 meters! If the depth reader wasn’t broken, it would probably say 2,000 meters by now,” one of the deceased reportedly said, attempting to wrest the Logitech controller from OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who insisted on going first because it was his game. “You always do this, man. Don’t tell me I get a turn unless you’re actually going to give me a turn. At this rate, it feels like I’ll die before I get to play this thing.”

The heated situation didn’t come to blows until Rush attempted to defend himself with a technicality.

“I said after 1,000 meters, not exactly 1,000 meters. Just let me wait until a good stopping place and then I’ll pause,” he said, trying to get a few more moves in while his fellow gamers ganged up on him. “Dude, stop it! You’re gonna fuck up our run if you don’t cut it out. I’ll shut this whole thing off—don’t think I won’t!”

Despite attempts from the United States Coast Guard, the four men were unable to be rescued.

“We save a lot of crazy people out there, but this is the worst we’ve ever seen. By the time we got to them, their fingers were so tightly gripped around the one controller, we needed power tools to remove it,” said Coast Guard Captain Jessie Conway. “It’s just a damn shame. If they had a second controller down there so someone could be Player Two — even just an unplugged one to let the youngest diver think he’s helping steer the submarine — they would still be alive today. Instead, they’re all sleeping with the Seamen.”

At press time, the Coast Guard shared one piece of good news: the fifth member of the crew, one of the employees who works for the vacationing company, had been discovered sitting quietly next to his crewmates, alive, reading a book.

[Isgrimnur]

[jztemple2]

NY Post

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, a former French navy diver known as “Mr. Titanic,” was asked in 2019 by the Irish Examiner whether he ever got scared diving 12,500 feet to reach the famous passenger liner’s wreckage.

“If you are 11m or 11km down, if something bad happens, the result is the same,” the Connecticut resident told the outlet. “When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realize that something is happening, so it’s just not a problem.”

I can't find a link to it, but I seem to remember that the son of Bill Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet, was trapped in a small submersible with one other person when it became entangled in some debris. They remained in communication with their mother ship (with Lear Sr on board) for well over a day before they ran out of oxygen and died. So sometimes something bad can happen and you will be quite aware of it.

I might have my names wrong, which is why I can't find the story. Anyone else remember this?

[Max Peck]

NY Post

Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, a former French navy diver known as “Mr. Titanic,” was asked in 2019 by the Irish Examiner whether he ever got scared diving 12,500 feet to reach the famous passenger liner’s wreckage.

“If you are 11m or 11km down, if something bad happens, the result is the same,” the Connecticut resident told the outlet. “When you’re in very deep water, you’re dead before you realize that something is happening, so it’s just not a problem.”

I can't find a link to it, but I seem to remember that the son of Bill Lear, inventor of the Lear Jet, was trapped in a small submersible with one other person when it became entangled in some debris. They remained in communication with their mother ship (with Lear Sr on board) for well over a day before they ran out of oxygen and died. So sometimes something bad can happen and you will be quite aware of it.

I might have my names wrong, which is why I can't find the story. Anyone else remember this?

There's no connection to Lear (unless you're conflating Link and Lear), but what you're describing sounds like the Johnson Sea Link accident.

The Johnson Sea Link accident was a June 1973 incident that claimed the lives of two divers. During a seemingly routine dive off Key West, the submersible Johnson Sea Link was trapped for over 24 hours in the wreckage of the destroyer USS Fred T. Berry, which had been sunk to create an artificial reef. Although the submersible was eventually recovered by the rescue vessel A.B. Wood II, two of the four occupants died of carbon dioxide poisoning: 31-year-old Edwin Clayton Link (son of Edwin Albert Link, the submersible's designer) and 51-year-old diver Albert Dennison Stover. The submersible's pilot, Archibald "Jock" Menzies, and ichthyologist Robert Meek survived. Over the next two years, Edwin Link designed an unmanned Cabled Observation and Rescue Device (CORD) that could free a trapped submersible.

[jztemple2]

There's no connection to Lear (unless you're conflating Link and Lear), but what you're describing sounds like the Johnson Sea Link accident.

Thank you, yes I was confusing Link and Lear. Link (the father) was the man who designed the Link Trainer on which I and a whole generation of pilots learned and practiced their instrumentation procedures:

[Max Peck]

Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To

At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to 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.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand...

[Rumpy]

I think it's safe to say this company is in deep! Interesting that only now the allegations on its safety are coming to light, or shall I say surfacing. And if I were paying for a trip, I'd want to know if it was safe. Feels like a copout, especially if the company disregarded any warnings or concerns. I wonder if any waivers would be binding if the company knew of and had a history problems but didn't let its customers know of them.

[jztemple2]

Navy Rushing Deep Sea Salvage System To Aid In Titan Submersible Search

The U.S. Navy is sending its Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System to help in the effort to find a submersible that recently went missing in the Atlantic Ocean and hopefully help rescue the five individuals inside. This is one of a number of specialized Navy deep-sea search, rescue, and salvage capabilities, that also include its own submersible platforms and remotely-operated vehicles, or ROVs. There are questions about why it has taken so long to employ any of these capabilities, but the depths and other factors in this case still present major challenges for any rescue attempt.

“The Navy is sending subject matter experts and a Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System (FADOSS), motion compensated lift system designed to provide reliable deep ocean lifting capacity for the recovery of large, bulky, and heavy undersea objects such as aircraft or small vessels, from Navy Supervisor of Salvage," a Navy Spokesperson told The War Zone. This "expertise and equipment will support USCG [U.S. Coast Guard] and the unified command. Personnel and equipment are scheduled to arrive at St. John’s [in Canada] tonight."

The Navy's official fact sheet does not provide a maximum depth rating for FADOSS. However, the system has been employed in the past to pull up the wreck of an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter that was sitting on the seabed some 19,075 feet below the surface. Regardless, recoveries of large objects from extreme depths are extremely complicated due to various factors, including the pressures and current involved and the simple time it takes to lower recovery assets down and pull everything back up. OceanGate's Titan submersible needs between six and eight hours to get down to the wreck of the Titanic.

During a separate press conference today, the U.S. Coast Guard announced the creation of the unified command to coordinate further search and rescue operations. The Coast Guard did say that its Juniper class buoy tender USCGC Sycamore is already en route to the area where OceanGate's Titan went missing. Sycamore has a crane, which could be used to deploy deep-diving assets like ROVs and recover heavy objects.

Other questions about OceanGate's operations have also emerged. David Pogue, a correspondent for CBS News, posted on Twitter about his first-hand experiences observing the operation of Titan from its mothership for a story last year. He said that the submersible does not have any kind of remote locator beacon and that tour he observed was "lost" underwater for around five hours. He added that OceanGate cut off the internet connection from the mothership to prevent him and others from posting online about it at the time.

Finally, CBS Sunday Morning did a piece about the sub and OceanGate

[Smoove_B]

Too soon

Coast Guard Sends Another Submersible Full Of Billionaires After The First One

[Blackhawk]

I think it's safe to say this company is in deep!

Yeah, the owner is definitely in deep.

[malchior]

Too soon

I'm only upset it isn't real.

[Max Peck]

I think it's safe to say this company is in deep!

Yeah, the owner is definitely in deep.

[Unagi]

Lawsuit Right Ahead!

[jztemple2]

I'm wondering if the folks on the first planned paying passenger flight for Virgin Galactic in August are having second thoughts.

[Max Peck]

I dunno, has the head of Virgin Galactic ever referred to safety as obscene, or refused to have it's vehicles certified, or structured it's business operations so that they are completely unregulated?

Smithsonian Magazine published a glowing profile of Stockton Rush back on 2019. Some parts of it haven't aged all that well.

A Deep Dive Into the Plans to Take Tourists to the ‘Titanic’

Second, tourist subs, which could once be skippered by anyone with a U.S. Coast Guard captain’s license, were regulated by the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993, which imposed rigorous new manufacturing and inspection requirements and prohibited dives below 150 feet. The law was well-meaning, Rush says, but he believes it needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation (a position a less adventurous submariner might find open to debate). “There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown—because they have all these regulations.”

[jztemple2]

I dunno, has the head of Virgin Galactic ever referred to safety as obscene, or refused to have it's vehicles certified, or structured it's business operations so that they are completely unregulated?

No, but I was referring to engaging in a fairly risky endeavor. Certifying a vehicle doesn't guarantee safety. And even with the Virgin Galactic test flights, they still have a pretty limited amount of experience in the sub-orbital realm. Think about the various space programs throughout the years where after some initial failures things seemed to be going well, then something bad happens. Challenger, Apollo 13, Columbia, etc. I'm not saying that Virgin hasn't put in the time, I'm just saying that it's still a risky endeavor.

I do agree that the info we are seeing now about the tourist sub company does raise a lot of red flags. What's odd is that these billionaires don't seem to have seen these red flags before they signed up. You'd think a billionaire could spend the money to do a lot more research about a company than ordinary folks.

By the way, thinking about it, if the sub was lost (imploded, flooded, etc) it is going to be damn hard to locate down there. Think about how long it took for folks to find the Titanic. And if the sub fell amid the debris on the bottom it will take a pretty thorough survey to even see it.

[Octavious]

Well reports are that they heard banging. So it seems they may have lost power and can't surface. As it's unlikely they get to them in time. So I'm not sure that's going to end up being good news. Having them sit in pitch black for days ugh.

[Punisher]

Well reports are that they heard banging. So it seems they may have lost power and can't surface. As it's unlikely they get to them in time. So I'm not sure that's going to end up being good news. Having them sit in pitch black for days ugh.

I'm trying not to imagine them going down, power goes off along with the lights and then just sitting in the dark waiting for a rescue that may never come. I'm not generally claustrophobic so far unless it's a small space where I also can't move, then I get a bit anxious but I still know that environment would not be my cup of tea.
I think that I saw they have about 40 hours of air left. I wonder if they had any food or drinks, which I know is the least of their problems.
I think I'd just try to sleep as much as possible rather than sit in the dark like that.

[em2nought]

I think that I saw they have about 40 hours of air left.

Depends on whether somebody decides to increase his chances.