Debris Field Confirmed as Titan | Hacker News Reader

Debris Field Confirmed as Titan

independent.co.uk

111 pointsmethodical172 comments

A few other notes from the USCG statement:

- No noises were heard during rescue operation (the implosion likely happened around the time the communication was lost, as opposed to in the days following)

- The "banging" noises discussed earlier were unrelated to the submersible.

I wonder who or what produced those "banging" noises.

In a weird way, this is almost relieving. The speculation that they were suffocated and entombed in their own filth somewhere on the ocean as they died slowly seemed so, so much worse.

Just thinking about that outcome yesterday caused my blood pressure to skyrocket. Dark, cold, cramped, fetid, hungry, thirsty, knowing oxygen is running out.

In that scenario, as long as they could keep CO2 levels down, running out of oxygen isn't so bad (ignoring the other troubles). The human body can't detect a lack of oxygen, you just get tired and light headed and pass out.

Yes, but as you hinted at the human body can detect a rise in CO2 levels and it doesn't take much for things to start getting really uncomfortable and fast. To your point, if you could somehow manage the CO2 levels then you would just peacefully fall asleep and die.

i understand what you are basing your statement on (a cleaner version would be asphyxiation by breathing an inert gas) but you are very wrong. as a matter of fact people with an impaired amygdala who can't experience fear will panic when forced to breathe co2. also your breathing will get very shallow and cause co2 to accumulate triggering those very receptors you argue will stay silent.

https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2013.12350

But kids and people die regularly due to having a barbeque thing lit in a close space and the coals consume the oxygen and make CO2.

Wouldn't that wake them up?

I also assumed that too much CO2 fast is the key not the super slow version of what those people in the sub have experienced

You're confusing CO2 (carbon dioxide) with CO (carbon monoxide). CO doesn't cause the same physiological fear response that CO2 does.

what you mean is CO - not CO2

You are arguing for the exact same thing as the person you’re replying to—while attempting to disagree with them. They said that provided you can keep CO2 levels down, lack of oxygen will cause drowsiness and cause you to pass out. This is true.

You then argued that breathing increased levels of CO2 will trigger survival instincts. This is also true, and exactly what grandparent said.

What the does that have to do with what OP said?

OP, correctly, pointed out that we don't detect the lack of O2, we detect a buildup of CO2 (because it causes respiratory acidosis). If the CO2 is removed, there's nothing to cause the panic response, the situation itself notwithstanding.

It's still nea that it works with an impaired amygdala, though.

first of all - the co2 isn't removed ...

It is, they had CO2 scrubbers

but not endlessly. those scrubbers are saturated after a while. that's the whole point. otherwise suffocation wouldn't be a threat to begin with.

why do i have to argue here with so many people about something so simple to understand?

The CO2 scrubbers were in masks which could be replaced and there was enough for 96 hours

how is that even relevant to the question here? i'm out, have a good day

It's called a hypothetical.

> The human body can't detect a lack of oxygen

Unless you know you are trapped and running out of oxygen.

No, you really won't notice even if you know it's coming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUfF2MTnqAw

These kind of long, agonizing, pointless deaths are all too common when dealing with the ocean.

There was a horrifying case after Pearl Harbor where bodies were found in the airpocket of the USS West Virginia. They had flashlights with batteries and fresh water and had marked off 16 days on a calendar.

Legend has it that sailors could hear banging for weeks knowing they could not cut through the thick battleship armor in time and just drowned out the noise.

an article about it: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/16-days-to-die-at-...

A sometime co-worker's father was on a salvage crew at Pearl Harbor, and apparently heard the banging.

Somewhere a redditor did the math and I believe it would have taken 24ms for the glass to break and the water to rush in. Instant death if it was indeed the glass.

Just how instant is that death? Do you die from quickly drowning in the water or is the water pressure enough to also crush your skull quick enough to make sure you die without having the chance to feel anything?

Guillotined people can still be alive and feel about 30 second safter their head has been removed from their body.

Lungs collapse instantly

I have been in a car accident that, in the instant of impact, felt indistinguishable from an explosion, too fast to process anything. I imagine the massive pressure change would cause near-instant incapacitation if not death.

i would expect the impact of the water rushing in that quickly to knock everyone out.

The pressure at that depth is something like 5000 psi. You're literally dead before your brain has time to comprehend what's happening.

not if the leak leaked for an extended period without ripping open ... then pressure would build up very slowly.

You should read up down the properties of carbon fiber

Instant.

Imagine a Ford F150 sitting on every square inch of your body.

It's actually easier to imagine water than trucks

Maybe not for Americans. Actually, converting units to "inches" and "F-150s" is probably the most USA-friendly framing possible.

Is that with Imperial cup holders or metric cup holders ?

Water pressure crushes you faster than signals can run from your nerves to your brain.

Both the water pressure, and the submarine material around you. It'd be more akin to your entire body would nearly instantly be squished in all 3 dimensions, with non-compressible items (bulk-head/steel) also inhabiting the same space.

I reckon its instant death. If the sub imploded or the carbon fibre hull failed, then it means large amounts of debris come rushing to you very quickly.

I don't think there will be any bodies to recover.

> Do you die from quickly drowning in the water

logically not in this case. at that point where the water level is sufficient to make someone drown the remaining air would be compressed to several hundred atmospheres pressure.

Who told you that about the guillotine? They'd have zero blood pressure, how do you imagine they'd be conscious?

Iirc they did tests where people agreed to blink a certain number of times etc.

Strange, they never asked those condemned to actually utter some sound or mimic something, isn't it? Well, that's because residual muscle twitch is not controlled and is not conscious. Rapid drop of blood pressure renders the person (well, their head, in that case) unconscious within a couple seconds and it is downhill from there.

> Well, that's because residual muscle twitch is not controlled and is not conscious

And because making sounds without lungs attached to your throat is kinda hard

It would be more like dying from a shockwave from a massive explosives blast. You're going to turn entirely to jelly. Within a few ms there will be nothing left working properly.

I did read somewhere (I don't remember exactly where) that when there is an implosion at great depth the air in the submarine is compressed so quickly that anything flammable (specifically human bodies, plastics, etc) would burn up instantly. So it's a bit like the explosion of the fuel-air mixture in a diesel engine.

Makes sense.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_piston

>Just how instant is that death?

Similar to the Arbogast in The Expanse, but even greater disassembly.

The porthole windows on deep submersibles are conical plugs. They don't break. Either a seal leaked or the carbon fiber failed.

Maybe on competently assembled subs. All bets are off on this one.

Probably was the porthole. It looks like the view port was rated for 1,300 meters. (They were descending to 4,000 meters) An engineer even warned them of the issue, and was fired. I suppose they didn't want to spend the money to develop an adequate one.

Then again, the rover would have found the sub from the location even if it were intact, and there could have been a small chance of survival since they had the equipment. Hope is more important than agony.

What would be worse a catastrophic collapse deep down in the sea or a sudden depressurization high above in the sky around the Armstrong limit?

The latter clearly as you’d definitely have a longer time of being conscious.

One would survive at the Armstrong limit for much longer indeed:

> Exposure to pressure below this limit results in a rapid loss of consciousness, followed by a series of changes to cardiovascular and neurological functions, and eventually death, unless pressure is restored within 60–90 seconds. [0]

[0] http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html

The pressure difference between complete vacuum and sea level is one atm. At the depth of the titanic, the difference is about 375 times that.

Implosion at 400 atm probably takes a fraction of a second, with catastrophic decompression of 1 atm you’ll be conscious probably for about a minute.

Above the Armstrong limit you're looking at 9-15 seconds of useful consciousness. (The time you are conscious enough to take actions to save yourself.)

When a deep sub implodes you're going to be hit by water moving at the speed of sound in said water (1,500m/s, considerably faster than in air.) That's far above the speed of nerve impulses, there's no way a pain signal could reach the brain before there isn't a brain left to get the signal.

I’ll still take about 1/1000th of a second or so over upto 10 seconds of contemplating my faith.

Especially in the case where I’ve drugged one of my children to come with me.

I mean, unless it imploded after a horrible fire or something.

Massive condolences to the families of those involved :(

I wonder, what happens to OceanGate as a company now? They've lost the CEO who I suppose bore the ultimate responsibility but are other executives on the hook here? Would a full investigation look at design decisions, etc.

You save up on money ignoring safety, next you fire the guy who could had saved your life, and finally you suffer disasters ending your life.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/06/21/oc...

Money addicts, take notes. This is what happens when you put money cartels before real life physics.

This is what I try to impress on anyone who thinks “saving money” on tires is a frugal way of living.

> “saving money” on tires

I suspect (anecdotally, n=1) that part of the problem comes from what TV/movie tropes have taught people a tire-failure looks like: Typically it's a slow-leak or very controllable effect. Actors have plenty of time to emote over it, the vehicle can be pulled-over to the side of the road without lots of filming-difficulties, and no need to bring in stunt-doubles. (Then that sets the stage for the haunted house or the rural diner-encounter or whatever.)

In contrast, dangerous or chaotic tire-failure doesn't get shown as much unless it's an action movie and somebody's using bullets or bombs or robot swords or whatever, things someone with bad tires doesn't expect to happen to them.

One thing it's being frugal for your personal needs and another one it's firing people because of marketing/fear to shareholders. Specially when the odds of dying are over 90%.

Was the company insured for the massive cost of the rescue attempt? Do they have enough assets to pay for it?

The company is bankrupt many times over, surely.

I would be surprised if there was no criminal negligence or something like that in store for them. At least going on by what was published, the company functioned in a way that made it essentially guaranteed that something like this will happen ... while having no real "in case of catastrophe" plans in place.

I assume any military assets were quite happy to help. It's a good real life exercise.

Of course, they get to have "fun" and don't really pay for it

Time to update those classic Data Science datasets…

The outcome everyone knew would happen. I don't understand the desire to go to that depth to see a sunken ship when I presume there is camera footage of it available. You can't get out and do anything, your view is probably pretty crappy given the thickness of any see through material. I see the allure with Everest and the view for your 60 seconds at the top must be impressive and it is a physical feat. But a sunken ship? I don't get it.

It would be pretty cool to send down a camera to get footage all around it at various angles and then build an app for a VR headset.

> when I presume there is camera footage of it available.

Not sure if this is sarcasm...

I think they mean footage of the Titanic.

There is a whole movie with footage filmed by James Cameron over a dozen dives. It won an Academy Award…

What's it called?

Avatar - The Way of Water

The camera footage is probably better than whatever you could see through a few inches of porthole

Yes that was the intent with my comment. A specialized camera for that depth is going to capture better images than what you'll see thru whatever "window" is on the sub.

I was talking about the movie Titanic…

> It would be pretty cool to send down a camera to get footage all around it at various angles and then build an app for a VR headset.

Recently they published a full 3d scan of the Titanic wreck constructed from 700,000 images taken.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65602182

That looks incredible. Would be really cool to explore in VR.

There is a difference to seeing it yourself. Hugely different.

Getting a submarine certified to commercially dive it is another magnitude of cost compared to this venture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Limiting_Factor

This could be a killer Vision Pro commercial, like the “Apple Watch saved my life” ads.

If you compare to the submersible trip, Vision Pro is quite the bargain.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-o-bx_E5OkM

The desire is motivated 100% by bragging rights for the uber rich. So they can recant their journey as an intrepid explorer (/s) at a cocktail party with their other smug uber rich friends. Same for going to space.

This is such a bad take. As if rich people suddenly lose the ability to feel novelty. As if a normal person going to see the grand canyon is "So they can recant their journey as an intrepid explorer (/s) at <a neighborhood barbecue.>"

Maybe, just maybe, the ultra rich have similar motivations as most other people and want to see cool shit. They just have way more spending money to make whatever they want a reality.

Does anyone know if they had any “deep-sea” or “submersible” cameras recording the expedition and can recover those cameras/footage to help in knowing what happened?

How long can you survive in a 4000 psi water pressure, going suddenly from atmospheric pressure?

A tiny fraction of a second while your skull implodes but you’d be unconscious even before that due to the pressure

It's as close to "instantly killed" as anything can be, literally dead before your nerves can communicate a distress signal to the brain.

Less than a millisecond. Water at that pressure could slice steel in half. The heat from the explosion would be equal to that off the sun. It would probably one of the quickest ways to die, frankly.

The air in your lungs presumably becomes extremely hot. I'm not sure how hot. Perhaps you explode instantly before the implosion scatters you a considerable distance.

I don't think there will be much heating in the lungs--yes, the air is being compressed and heated to extreme temperatures in the process but pressure can only drive a fluid (liquid or gas) to the speed of sound in said fluid. The wall of water is coming much faster than that, it's going to squash you before much of that hot air gets into the lungs.

I don't think you do. Outside pressure is almost 400x the inside pressure.

The implosion must have been very very violent and sudden. Being surrounded by carbon fibre and titantium means all that material and your body is trying occupy the same space.

I think it happened fast enough that nobody realized or felt what was happening.

as long as "suddenly" ;D

You don't.

Look up the Mythbusters test for the old timey dive suit, and/or the Byford Dolphin if you want nightmares.

No idea why every single journalist kept forcing the "air remaining" theme.

It was far more likely that the sub suffered a catastrophic implosion at the time contact was lost. Glad to see it confirmed, and finally people stop posting the nonsense about air.

Shame about the passengers though.

Wishful thinking, they were hoping for another Thai cave drama that would drive big engagement.

> No idea why every single journalist kept forcing the "air remaining" theme.

To keep viewers engaged in the search I'd imagine

The entire rescue operation had to be premised on the concept of the thing possibly remaining intact.

Obviously unfortunate for the passengers, but definitely the preferable outcome instead of being stuck on the bottom or the surface until air ran out. The implosion would have essentially vaporized them within milliseconds, there was no chance they even had started to process their own demise, which, in a way, is somewhat positive, in context of the narratives that were pushed for a while.

> No idea why every single journalist kept forcing the "air remaining" theme.

Because there was no proof of a different outcome, and the suspense also works as a powerful bait (== more clicks/copies/attention).

the "air remaining" angle allows for multiple updates (48 hours left! 12 hours left!) and the build up to some sort of conclusion.

> No idea why every single journalist kept forcing the "air remaining" theme.

To keep people coming back for updates as the clock ticks down. Now that most people pay for news with impressions, they have to cultivate impressions.

I hate how everything journalists do has to be framed so negatively. "Forcing"? "Keeping the audience engaged" (from the replies)? They were just reporting how much air is left, in the case that they were alive - not insisting that they definitely are alive. It's an obvious thing to want to know, and an obvious thing to report. I'm sure some outlets ham it up, yeah of course. But anybody would report that information.

I agree. They're just people, doing their job. Their job is to write articles that people click on. We choose what we click on. If you want to see better journalism click on better things collectively. They're a cog in the machine, not the driver of the machine

> They're just people, doing their job.

So were the guards at Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz.

If your job is being a ghoul, that doesn't constitute an excuse for being a ghoul.

You're being downvoted, but you're being correct. The guy you respond to is ignoring actual reality, which is that people do not actually make conscious decisions. They don't "choose to click", because then clickbait wouldn't actually work and clickbait is meant to manipulate people into clicking. There's no decision process involved.

Apparently the parent lives in a fantasy world where he believes that people aren't constantly being manipulated into doing things. So deathscrolling isn't a thing either. Clickbait doesn't exist. Advertisements are all useless. Subliminal messaging doesn't work. Etc. etc.

Apparently, also, he thinks that because people are just "doing their jobs" that means it's okay for them to do the things they do, because they were told to do them, which is a horrible thing to think.

That guy's fucking clueless.

Everything is being "forced" nowadays. It's the content-less word du jour for "things I don't like".

Probably because there have been rescues of explorers nearly running out of air while trapped in a submersible.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12220565/The-nerve-...

I think at that point regardless of the actual issue, it ceases to be a rescue operation.

It did feel weird to see countdown timers, at least it felt gross to me.

Hope, a very human thing to have.

In that same style you could also wonder why anyone would bother sending help at all, given that they very likely had perished. We hope until we are proven wrong, and the times we are right makes all the effort worth.

Hope

While this was alway probably the most _likely_ outcome, "shoddy submarine breaks down/gets trapped without actually imploding" was certainly always _possible_. This thing had a lot of potential failure modes.

You have to look at the subset of the probability space where anyone is alive and base the rescue attempt off that. There's no reason to do a body recovery in this case, it's not like when a dead SCUBA instructor is blocking up a underwater cave and you want to use the cave again, or if it's easy to get the dead body out. It's not, it's really hard and dangerous. In the Thai cave, it was thought that the probability that at least one or two of the children were still alive was high enough to risk a couple of old divers having a look. In my opinion the Thai SEALs (as well as dumb ideas like sending people in to string up lights and pump water) should not have taken the risks they did, the more people you put in the cave the more likely something will go wrong for one of them. So, after ruling out body recovery, the only plans you have to make include the submersible being intact, hence needing to know how much air was left.

What can we learn from this? Don't go in pressure vessels; don't go in confined spaces.

I mean I think the bigger take away is to not cut corners when operating with such a small margin of error as DSVs. Safe deep-sea exploration is possible, and has been for a long time, in manners such as the DSV Alvin, DSV Limiting Factor, etc., etc. The manner in which the Titan was made and tested indicated a severe lack of safety oversight from OceanGate. As unfortunate as this is, there's the saying that rules are written in blood, and this is yet another case. I doubt there will be many such cavalier attempts at deep sea exploration and tourism in the future as a result, for the better.

That's a gross oversimplification. There have been multiple vessels that have successfully explored the sea floor.

What set them apart was a distinct lack of SV VC-level "move fast and break things" bullshit and utter reckless disregard for safety.

Was there a legitimate reason to take that risk?

What I don’t get is why there is no beacon on this device. That should be law. This search is costing tens of millions and without a beacon they never had a chance. From what I understand of the construction and debris there is a very low order of probability they will be recovered alive. Even if they are found conserving air they can’t extract the module in time. It takes at least 24 hours to build the necessary rig. They knew this going in, so why search at all? I mean they’re lost at sea no matter how you slice it. Apparently while touring at the wreck of others lost at sea which isn’t a rational gamble to risk your life over. I mean they bolted the door from the outside because the pressure was so high surely that was a clue. And if they did survive the impact, five people panicking without air in that confined space can’t have been pretty. What a mess

Do airplanes count?

Eh, the pressure gradient is a lot less dramatic in a jet vs. under 3500m of water.

As Futurama famously said, airplanes are rated for a pressure differential somewhere between zero and 0.7 atmospheres. With the positive pressure being inside the plane.

This submersible needed to survive a differential of ~350 atmospheres. With the positive pressure being outside the craft.

Clip for anybody who doesn't know the Futurama reference https://youtu.be/O4RLOo6bchU

Also the airplane shell has to endure tension forces, as inside has greater pressure than outside, whereas the sub has to endure pressure. Some materials work well under tension but not pressure and vice-versa.

There are a number of reasons why it might have failed, fatigue, deviation from process/protocol but pressure vessels are well understood and not the problem here.

Are carbon-fiber pressure vessels well understood?

I get that there's a lot of armchair quarterbacking from internet material experts here, but this does seem to be an outlier with this particular submarine.

They're well-understood to not be what you want to build a high-pressure submarine out of.

They can take the pressure. But they're incredibly expensive to check for defects, and the result of a defect is "sub-second catastrophic failure" instead of any warning of imminent structural degradation.

I think their behaviour under pressure is well understood. Not a popular choice for subs, though.

The issue seems to be hull integrity, namely being able to inspect the hull before it's failing in order to detect issues without risking anyone's life. The only thing they could do with a carbon fiber hill is use an acoustic hull monitoring that only told you that the hull was in the process of failing - so potentially getting no real warning at all. It does you no good finding out your hull is going to implode in 10 seconds when it will take you an hour to get to safety. This is what the ex-OG employee got fired over because he made a stink about how the carbon fiber hull was unsafe for this reason.

The main cause for the failure seems to be "sheer f-ing hubris," but those could certainly be contributing factors.

What can we learn?

Just because the CEO is on the firing line with you, doesn't make him right, just overly confident.

DO hire "50 year old" people with experience, not just kids from university.

Don't build your pressure vessel out of materials which are hard to monitor for wear and fatigue.

Listen to your experienced employees when they tell you that you've built a death-trap.

If you have $250,000 to spend on a short vacation, maybe pick one with better odds of getting home.

and finally...

...The media will always stretch out the agony of these stories for as long as it generates clicks.

> The media will always stretch out the agony of these stories for as long as it generates clicks

Off topic random thought: the increase in mass shootings and their normalization in the US media means those stories don't get as many clicks as they used to.

I suppose any given stimulus becomes routine after enough exposure, so yes I guess to reach the same audience a more novel sort of shock is required.

Carbon fiber composites are a wet noodle in compression. They're supposed to be used under tension.

Hopefully this is the last time anyone tries to make a negative pressure vessel out of carbon fiber.

I think it’s more along the lines of “learn from the experiences of others”. It’s my understanding that there are quite a lot of very smart people who have spent decades figuring out how to build these things relatively safely. This company decided to ignore the existing knowledge base entirely because what the industry had learned was expensive and inconvenient for a fledgling tourist company.

What’s that analogy about taking down a fence without understanding why someone put it up in the first place?

Chesterton's Fence.

Being charitable to those lost, I'm reminded that explorers are courageous and always have some measure of hubris.

There are exactly two lessons to learn from this:

- safety regulations, especially for high-risk low-margin-of-error endeavours are there for a reason, and we've already learned all these lessons the hard way

- the probability of any given billionaire being dumb as rocks is close to 1

> What can we learn from this?

Probably the same lesson we learned last time an ocean vessel named after a Titan went missing in that vicinity

A commercial airplane is a pressure vessel. So is the hot water heater in your house, the espresso machine on your countertop, on and on.

I'm going to keep flying, but just not get on any experimental, uncertified craft of any kind, airplanes, submarines, etc.

Your comment is akin to saying well, that sub had bolts on it so I'm not going to trust bolts from now on. Really, it's just that the bolt was used incorrectly by a person with less than virtuous intentions.

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