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Their deaths, while tragic, will not be without value.

It's another reminder to humanity of the very real risks associated with going to places inhospitable to life.

Who knows the number of people that will now reconsider plans that, if carried out, would have resulted in their demise.

Life is perilous and fragile and we are all better off for the reminder.

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@subcomunic8r  In 1991 the FCC removed the Morse Code requirement testing for the Tech license.  The newer radios can call CW for you, when the message is inputted, and can interpret the replies back out.

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they used an ARFCOM favorite  . . . . a BAOFENG

https://i.imgur.com/GzdwkAd.jpg

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I'm sure this has been posted but the court case document is here:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23854184-oceangate-v-david-lochridge

That is the whole fucking story. Right there.

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They can't..... At least not anyway near the time frame.. Humans are terrifying... Any chance most likely expired the second they choose NOT to have a actual rescue plan in place to begin with.... the rescue ship would have needed to be on-site with all the needed capabilities for them to have a chance in hell.... What you see now is a show for the Lemmings... Nothing more... RIP hope it was quick.....

Quoted:
Their deaths, while tragic, will not be without value.

It's another reminder to humanity of the very real risks associated with going to places inhospitable to life.

Who knows the number of people that will now reconsider plans that, if carried out, would have resulted in their demise.

Life is perilous and fragile and we are all better off for the reminder.

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Why the hell would the thing not have been tethered to the mothership?

Something goes bad, just winch it back on up.

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Ask the network dudes, not the sonar dudes.

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Well its been fun following this thread.

Honestly its been educational.

However it seems that its come to an end, unless the finger of God happens to intervene between now and tomorrow morning.

I'll pray that He does and hope that it's His will.

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I just got back from up north.  Just heard about this today.  It sucks.  

Did you know that after all of these years the pool in the Titanic is STILL filled with water?

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Probably means he has a Technician and higher level General license. You take the exams in order, but I have never heard anyone referring to one of the higher levels as having multiple licenses. You are just licensed at a higher level.

Quoted:
Their deaths, while tragic, will not be without value.

It's another reminder to humanity of the very real risks associated with going to places inhospitable to life.

Who knows the number of people that will now reconsider plans that, if carried out, would have resulted in their demise.

Life is perilous and fragile and we are all better off for the reminder.

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Explorers Club president says life-saving deep sea surveillance drones for Titanic sub search are being caught up in red tape by the Coast Guard and GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw demands answers


Richard Garriott, president of the New York-based Explorers Club, on Wednesday said vital rescue equipment was being held up by US bureaucracy


The president of the New York-based Explorers Club has accused the U.S. government of delaying the delivery of vital equipment for the search for the missing Titanic tourist sub.

Richard Garriott told National Geographic that he had complained to top officials about the bureaucracy hampering the race against the clock.

Two of the five on board - British billionaire Hamish Harding and French Titanic expert PH Nargeolet - are members of the Explorers Club.



Other members have worked to enable deep sea company Magellan, based in Guernsey in the British Isles, to ship its surveillance equipment to the site: Magellan has Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) which last year surveyed the Titanic site.

Yet Magellan has not obtained the permits necessary to get to the site, Garriott said.



https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/22/01/72394779-12220639-image-a-30_1687392732362.jpg

Richard Garriott, president of the Explorers Club, on Wednesday accused the US government of holding up efforts to get equipment to the rescue site



https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/22/01/72394785-12220639-image-a-31_1687392794859.jpg

A Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) operated by Magellan is pictured in action



He wrote on Wednesday afternoon to Vice Admiral William Galanis, commander of Naval Sea Systems Command; U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John W. Mauger, who is leading the recovery mission; Congressman Lloyd Doggett; and Representative Eric Swalwell, urging them to allow Magellan to the site.

'Magellan has received mixed signals, first hearing from US Gov to get ready, waiting for plans - then getting told to stand down,' wrote Garriott.

The U.S. Coast Guard has not responded to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Garriott told National Geographic that, even with only 24 hours of air left, it was vital to continue fighting to find the missing sub.

'Whatever the right thing is to do, we should still do it, even if it's now at the cusp of fatality,' he said.




The Magellan Argus-class ROVs are capable of deploying to 6,000 meters (19,700 feet) and are outfitted with external arms that can retrieve and raise Titan.

They could be delivered to the site within 16 hours.

Instead of Magellan's ROVs, the U.S. Navy has sent its Flyaway Deep Ocean Salvage System, which was used to retrieve an F-35 from 12,400 feet of water in March.

But Garriott said that there are fears the Navy's equipment will crush the capsule.

'The concern is that the big scooper will crush the hull, because it would be almost impossible to get down under it in the mud without applying pressure to the hull itself,' said Garriott.

'Instead, a 6,000-meter working-class ROV has the ability to attach directly to the point on the top of the sub.

'It's a traditional method and people like Magellan have done it over and over again. It's the way it's designed to happen.'

Garriott's concerns about the bureaucratic hurdles echo those aired on Monday by OceanGate advisor David Concannon.

'We need to move. We do not have minutes or hours. We need to move now,' he said.

'This equipment has been on the tarmac for hours.

'When I communicate with the U.S. government, I get 'out of office' replies - not from everyone, but from key people that have a sign-off on this.'

He told NewsNation: 'That's unacceptable.'

Continued

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ROV’s have gone to Challenger Deep with an umbilical.

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Sonar dudes—- what does this mean?

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CF breaks into shards, like glass. The only identifiable remains would probably be the two bulkheads.

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So no, you never have sent or received Morse code?

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I've been ignoring this until today, looked up the sub,Holy crap that thing is Tiny,5 grown adults in a tuna can. Id kill the others to conserve oxygen, or better yet open the hatch and welcome death instead of prolonging the agony

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LOLZ

Nobody cares. We're all watching in morbid enjoyment shouting FAAFO.

Tens of thousands of people are getting killed in Ukraine, nobody cares.

I'm sure hundreds drown every year in make shift rafts trying to escape Cuba... Nobody cares.

Thousands of Africans and Arabs are drowning trying to get to Europe.

They're going to spend $10s of millions looking for these dumbshit billionaires, why not use those assets to save Cubans trying to escape communism?

Quoted:
Their deaths, while tragic, will not be without value.

It's another reminder to humanity of the very real risks associated with going to places inhospitable to life.

Who knows the number of people that will now reconsider plans that, if carried out, would have resulted in their demise.

Life is perilous and fragile and we are all better off for the reminder.

Quoted:


Think about when Elon starts the Mars expeditions. Something like this happening is within the realm of possibilities.

They had a Sonardyne AvTrack 6 transponder as of last year, which is capable of being activated from the surface to locate the sub if it lost all power and normal communications. It has a 6 day battery life.

Considering that it's not communicating, either they had multiple system failures or the hull imploded which would have destroyed that transponder and everything on board.

It's worth continuing the search but it's a very small chance they'll even find debris if it imploded(possibly some syntactic foam breaks loose and floats to the surface).

*Edit to Update: Sonardyne says this transponder was not currently installed on the sub. It would have been nearly impossible to get to the Titanic without navigation equipment and they had communications for the first hour and 45 minutes of the dive so they likely had an equivalent transponder from another vendor. However, there is no way of knowing what this company was willing to 'leave behind' in order to make the dive though.

Just wanna throw it out there that it seems noncomplete dives were common. One reporter a while ago said that he only went down 37 feet before they called it off and surfaced due to mechanical errors. Another occurrence, while he was on board the mother ship, happened where directions relayed were inaccurate and the group got lost for 2.5 hrs and never saw the titanic wreck at all. I don’t think they got a refund, but a voucher for a free trip the following year.

ETA: link to 37 ft down claim https://twitter.com/gabwithgwen/status/1671120791734308864?s=46

ETA 2: link to OceanGate vid where he talks about them getting lost and a “free do-over next year” https://twitter.com/pogue/status/1670834475901632527?s=46

adventurist and friend of passenger pulled out of Titan trip, declines to give reasons, discusses drive to cross new frontiers through adventure

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jhaP-EwM1CE&pp=ygUgd291bGQgYmUgY3JldyBtZW1iZXIgbWlzc2luZyBzdWI%3D

and former Titan passenger gives his account of the trip he took

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8e22wdnBDLg

from what I've seen that was one way to release the ballasts but not the primary way.



"But I also worried about getting back to the surface. Exactly what kind of ballast did this thing have? According to Kyle Bingham, a LOT.
First, there are three enormous, heavy, black, beat-up lead construction pipes on each side of the sub.
KYLE: These triple weights, we call ‘em, are hydraulically driven. So we operate ‘em inside, doesn’t take any electricity, can be done manually, and those drop away and gain us a lot of buoyancy.
Dropping that much weight onto the sea floor means the sub starts rising.
But what if the hydraulic system breaks? Well, then they have roll weights.
KYLE: Ah, so, we’ve got these weights here on the side, these are roll weights, we can actually roll the sub and those come off, and that gains us some buoyancy to come back to the surface.
These are pipes that sit on a shelf that juts out from either side of the sub, held in place only by gravity. If everyone inside the sub shifts their weight to one side, the sub tips enough to let these pipes roll off.
If that doesn’t work, there are ballast bags, full of metal shot, hanging below the sub.
KYLE: These bags down below, we drop those off using motors and electric fingers.
OK. But what if the electronics go out, and the hydraulics fail, and everyone inside has passed out unconscious?
KYLE: There’s fusible links within these that actually can dissolve and come back in time if it’s drop off.
Fusible links are self-dissolving bonds. After 16 hours in seawater, those bonds disintegrate, the weight bags drop off automatically, and you go back to the surface.
And even those four systems aren’t the end of it. The sub’s thrusters can also push it up; the pilot can jettison the sub’s legs as dead weight; and there’s even an airbag they can inflate to provide buoyancy.
All told, that’s seven different ways to get the sub back up to the surface."

source https://unsungscience.com/news/back-to-titanic-part-1/

Vangro

They never even setup the software properly to use the hull health monitoring system. It's a bunch of transducers glued into the hull. I worked at oceangate for six months before I left figuring they were going to get someone killed.

chiraltoad
Wow, I need to hear more about this. What did you do for them? What's your opinion of the sub?

Lots of people here are dissing the carbon fiber hull, what's your opinion of it? Was it scanned with ultrasound/xray etc?

Edit: also, people saying if it did manage to surface but was not found, they can't open the door. Is there any kind of emergency beacon / transponder on board for that circumstance?

Vangro
I probably shouldn't get too into it, I do remember signing a NDA. I do recall there being an emergency transponder. The hull in theory works great, they had a huge safety factor in mind when they made it. Though I think they should of done more ultrasound and xrays of it after every dive.

Here is a very interesting video (in Spanish but understandable with auto-translated subtitles) from someone who made this trip with OceanGate in 2022.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAncVNaw5N0&t=385s (starting at the point where they notice communication is lost)

On the trip in this video, communication was lost for over an hour at 1000 meters depth and they continued descending for an hour without communication to about 2000 meters before declaring an emergency and beginning to drop ballast. However then communication mysteriously was re-established and they continued descending. It still took them over 1.5 hours to locate the Titanic after reaching the sea floor. In this video they also experience problems with their external lighting and have very poor visibility distance while trying to see the wreckage. In some of the footage (to my untrained eyes) it looks like they get dangerously close to the wreckage (within 2-3 meters possibly?). That seems like a recipe for disaster in more ways than one considering they would be blind if their external light failed and potentially within only feet of entanglement with the wreckage and had just experienced faulty communication for unknown reasons.

The video narrator also explains that they only had less than an hour or so at the site of the Titanic because they have to begin their return to the surface when certain batteries reach 40% remaining for safety reasons. To me this means that loss of power could turn into a time-based survivability issue as much as lack of oxygen. Again I have no experience with these things or know their battery reserve levels but hypothetically if they only have battery power for 12-24 hours, the temperature inside the sub would drop to dangerously cold levels possibly before their oxygen supplies run out. In all the videos I have seen the crew are obviously dressed in lightweight clothing presumably without heavy blankets available or possibly even without emergency thermal blankets so there would be little that could be done to delay hypothermia under those circumstances.

The other possibility is if their protocol upon losing communication is to continue descending for up to 1 hour, it is possible they lost communication on this trip at almost 2 hours in, and did continue descending all the way to the ocean floor or to the Titanic. However without communication it is also possible they descended directly onto the Titanic wreckage without realizing it and had a catastrophic situation due to contact with the wreckage or entanglement with it. This is probably fairly unlikely because it seems like they never descend directly on it and spend a lot of time looking for it after getting to that depth, however it's also possible they attempted to change their navigation for this year to descend directly on it to make it easier for them to find. It could also be one of those situations of multiple issues aligning to cause a catastrophe if communications failed and it also happened to be the one time out of all their missions that descending to the ocean floor would put them right onto the Titanic wreckage.

At the beginning of this video the creator also explained that OceanGate wouldn't give him some of the video footage that he believed they had agreed to give to him (my speculation - possibly because they didn't want to provide footage showing the mission was not run very cautiously from a safety standpoint after the loss of communication on the descent and extremely close encounters with the Titanic considering their flickering external lighting). At the end of the video he also mentions that he saw some lack of professionalism and attention to customer service in the company and that on another one of their missions the passengers were stuck in the submersible for 27 hours?! I attempted to find more info on this 27 hour situation but came up short on Google.

Just some thoughts I had after watching this video which gives a great perspective of what being on the sub would be like and a glimpse into what I perceive to be a somewhat of a "cowboy" attitude when dealing with the communication loss and navigating around the wreckage.

YIKES!!!!! ??????

In another 2022 dive to the Titanic, one of the thrusters on the Titan was accidentally installed backwards and the submersible started spinning in circles when trying to move forward near the sea floor. As documented by the BBC documentary Take Me to Titanic, the issue was bypassed by steering while holding the game controller sideways.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001d7b6