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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   3515 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 18, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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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.

the sub vanished from communications 2 hours into the dive

The only way the sub could have any communications while in actual dive would be with a long cable (at which point the almost exact location would have been known all the time). Radio doesn't penetrate deep in water without extreme measures (antennas tens of kilometers long with megawatts of transmission power - obviously limited to ground to sub transmissions only).

They have a sonic modem -- a crappy one apparently, but they are not completely retarded.

Cameron was able to communicate with his mission control from the bottom of the Mariana Trench @ six miles or whatever -- this particular problem is well solved.

Why did they send the mayday after supposedly losing contact with the sub 2 hours into an 8 hour dive, then?

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.

Apparently the Navy did pick it up, and probably informed the seach team despite it being protected tech, but you have to search anyway in case it was something else.

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.

Nope. Flat oceanic plain.

It sounds like their communications failing was a semi-regular occurance (YIL that they've been doing this since last year, and took David Pogue down there at some point) -- to the point where they may not have aborted the mission 'just' for that.

The problem with surfacing later is that if their comms have failed, it's possible that they are bobbing somewhere in the North Atlantic and nobody can find them -- compounded by the fact that the sub is bolted closed from the outside, so they can't even open the hatch and set off a flare or whatnot.

It's faint hope; they are probably crushed -- but the fact that they've been going down there semi-routinely makes me think this is less likely than when I thought it was a maiden voyage or something.

The fact that they don't have backup comms or a way of signalling for rescue from the surface makes me think that they are even dumber than I'd thought yesterday though -- which raises the chance that some other dumb thing bit them in the ass.

Totally agree that it seems something catastrophic happened and there’s very little chance they’ll be rescued or even found. They’re probably already dead.

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