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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3163 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 18, 2023

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Forgive me if somebody else has already posted about this. What’s going on with that submarine that tried to tour the titanic wreckage?

Is it a stupid idea in the first place? Is there any chance they’ll be rescued?

I’ve been fascinated by the fact that even the richest among us are only surviving because Mother Earth decided not to crush them today. Seems like these people just had their luck run out, and maybe made a really stupid decision?

I have this question too because the press has this morbid countdown timer "until the air runs out", but the fact that the sub vanished from communications 2 hours into the dive surely suggests that the hull imploded and they've been dead since Sunday, right?

If it was merely the communications equipment that failed, the sub would have surfaced just fine. If it was sinking or had suffered some non-fatal flaw but still had communications equipment, they'd have sent a mayday or relayed some issues. Apparently they had many backup systems that should have surfaced the sub even in the event of an oxygen issue or all the crew being incapacitated.

The reasonable conclusion is that the sub imploded and they're all dead. Hope I'm wrong and they're rescued, but if they're not I hope I'm right, since spending four days in a tin can awaiting likely certain death sounds pretty awful.

Aren't submarine implosions loud enough to be picked up by hydrophones all the way across the ocean? Before the invention of waterproof distress beacons the navy experimented with giving pilots tin cans designed to sink and implode at SOFAR depth, which could be heard and triangulated by shore stations.

Maybe sound from a trench doesn't transmit as far, or maybe the US government isn't hurrying to inform a tourism company.

I don't think the Titanic is in a trench. Though I'd also kinda dimly thought it was, probably just Mandela-Effect-style confusion with the Mariana Trench. From either half-remembered childhood Deep Ocean Facts, or their more recent James Cameron connection.

Thanks for the correction. Ocean depths are unfathomable to me, so I struggle to keep them straight.

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