Oceangate Sub Missing

This is really interesting.

Gets very close up to the sub and shows some of the earlier issues.

Interesting that they were using a proper support ship during the 1st and 2nd years, not that heap of 60 year old junk in 2023.

A good proportion of certifications are really just marketing bollox…

Across all industries possibly, but in safety critical environments they’re worth having. You been on an airliner recently?

Would people prefer  shiiite half arsed certification with gaps a bus can be driven through and where there’s been a UK Gov pushed race to the bottom … bonfire of the red tape etc etc..remember ?  You know – the sort that leads eventually to Grenfell.

Safety in shipping is already appallingly lax – the race to the bottom (no pun intended) has already been won by countries like Belize and Panama. Flags.of convenience.  Seems like the same regulation dodging in this case as it was in ‘international waters’

Seems like the same regulation dodging in this case as it was in ‘international waters’

That and because it was small scale no one seems to have paid it attention.
The USA for example enforces standards on a lot of the cruise liners by virtue of the fact they want to dock in the USA.
If they and Canada decided to pass some laws regarding submersible safety for trips leaving from their ports it would seriously hamper anyone wanting to dive on the Titanic who didnt want to follow them.

If they and Canada decided to pass some laws regarding submersible safety for trips leaving from their ports it would seriously hamper anyone wanting to dive on the Titanic who didnt want to follow them.

The Canadians are bound to do this.

They already insisted that the ship had to be Canadian flagged to operate out of St Johns. That’s why Oceangate ended up chartering the cheapest Canadian flagged ship they could find.

They could try and use another Country but the transit times would make it financially unviable.

Cuba ?

Supposition that others will blindly follow the brave and unfortunate souls whose journey to the bottom of the sea ended in tragedy.
Dont think that there will be a long queue for the next trip. However, some canny regulation regarding deep submersible craft lauch boats may well curb the enthusiasm of the next set of intrepid adventurers.

The next trip will be many years from now anyway, unless going on a proven craft (or there’s something else in the pipeline that we’ve not seen). So the approach, from both provider and regulator, might be quite different

Across all industries possibly, but in safety critical environments they’re worth having. You been on an airliner recently?

I agree, the problems are perhaps :
the bandwagon and
when they are compulsory vs voluntary and
who they affect and their ability to determine of something is reasonably safe (that all one criteria)

I make a distinction between a Scheduled flight or Thomas Cook Charter and Titan or an expedition adventure.

Ultimately it would have saved 17 lives by banning assent of Everest just this year… but don’t people have the right to undertake risky adventures?

Ultimately it would have saved 17 lives by banning assent of Everest just this year… but don’t people have the right to undertake risky adventures?

That’s a thriving industry, makes a lot of money for the local economy, that’s why it continues.

The Canadians would of spent a lot of money on the SAR and they are now spending it on the recovery. They will probably spend money on the enquiry. Why would they want the ball ache?

All they have to do is stop any vessel operating subs without Classification approval from using their ports.

Besides, I don’t see a lot of people queueing up to go down the “innovation” route.

There are only a handful of manned subs in existence that can descend 4000m and all of these have been classed.

Gobuchal

All they have to do is stop any vessel operating subs without Classification approval from using their ports.

Which moves the problem elsewhere… unless you think the Titanic was the real driver in which case more expensive?

Besides, I don’t see a lot of people queueing up to go down the “innovation” route.

Well, exactly… from what I’ve seen far more people said no thanks to Titan than went on it.

Which moves the problem elsewhere… unless you think the Titanic was the real driver in which case more expensive?

Not sure what you mean?

There are not many deep water dive sites that stimulate enough interest to make someone pay a lot of money to visit, for whatever reason. The Titanic is iconic. It is incredibly expensive to visit, even by the cheapest means possible, which is now no longer available. If you had to use a port which is not in the US or Canada, then the cost would increase significantly.

I can’t think of many locations that generate this level of interest?

Besides, in the recent past, a lot of documentaries were made by Cameron and Ballard, which utilised the Russian Mir subs. At the time, they were relatively cheap to hire, the Russians had them and needed the hard currency. They are now both retired. So the remaining options are incredibly expensive.

Not sure what you mean?

Either they dive somewhere else or its more expensive.

There are not many deep water dive sites that stimulate enough interest to make someone pay a lot of money to visit, for whatever reason. The Titanic is iconic.

Sure but its just another shipwreck you’ll barely see much of above watching footage from a SUV really…
It seems to have the element of being famous and dangerous so ideal Instabanger stuff for selfies.

I can’t help thinking the Caymans would be happy registering vessels and hosting dives to the Cayman trench.

Requote:

There are only a handful of manned subs in existence that can descend 4000m and all of these have been classed.

As someone else said… this has a pretty low non financial barrier compared to climbing in the death zone (sic).

Kinda reminds me of people who take photo’s at the top of specific bike/ski trails…

https://www.banfflakelouise.com/blog/5-most-extreme-ski-runs-banff-national-park

I don’t understand how you can both not get it…

Sure but its just another shipwreck you’ll barely see much of above watching footage from a SUV really…

… and then get it…

It seems to have the element of being famous and dangerous so ideal Instabanger stuff for selfies.

… in consecutive paragraphs. 🙂

Thing for me is, how would you tell if you were really looking at the Titanic at a depth of 4000 metres, or just locked in a barrel watching footage of Titanic on a monitor and shelling your money out to a fraudster? The experience would be exactly the same so why not just watch a video of Titanic and save your money for something else?

A good proportion of certifications are really just marketing bollox…

Whilst that is true it should ring alarm bells if someone can’t even get those.

Ultimately it would have saved 17 lives by banning assent of Everest just this year… but don’t people have the right to undertake risky adventures?

I’d say yes they do – provided they actually understand the risks, have cooling off periods after understanding all the facts etc.  Personally I’m not sure “tourist” trips to Everest should be encouraged – if you want to go to Everest (or Ttitanic) then do the groundwork to plan the logistics, risks mitigations, select and buy kit, find the best sherpas etc yourself as a genuine participant in the adventure rather than a passenger.  Here’s another example with potentially high risk:  I can go buy a yacht – say £25K would get you something squalid but seaworthy.  I can choose to sail that boat across the Atlantic – not qualifications or certifications required.  I can even chose to enter it in a trans ocean race (when the race organiser will expect me to meet their safety standards, but for that budget its probably just about possible if I shop carefully).  I can take someone with me on that trip who is a friend and fellow sailor and its a joint adventure.  I can get together with someone else (or a group of people) to buy the boat and its a joint adventure.  Or I could rent a berth on my boat to someone with zero experience, to come as a passenger on the adventure of a lifetime for £5k and then we get into dodgy territory.  In fact I could realise that there’s enough people looking for adventures of a lifetime and constantly sell tickets on my cross ocean adventures, and dismiss any safety criticism as people who weren’t understanding the adventure we were seeking and the boundaries we are trying to break.  Marketed to look professional I could easily be milking mummies and daddies looking to add something to their offspring’s CV and midlife crisis folk right up until the moment either something goes wrong or a regulator comes to ask what certification the boat and its crew have etc.

You can’t take fare paying passengers on a yacht without insurance and certification for the craft and certification for the skipper.

@winston – thats the point I was trying to make – there’s clearly still plenty of opportunity for people to genuinely go on sailing adventures but the uninitiated are protected from commercial shysters making up their own version of safe.

@thols – there was a recent Tom Scott video on youtube which with the right model in the pond would give you a very similar experience!  Having zero desire to go to the titanic I pretty much agree with you.  BUT I can see why people will pay more for the real thing – its about the scarcity of the supply that makes the price people will pay so high.

there’s clearly still plenty of opportunity for people to genuinely go on sailing adventures but the uninitiated are protected from commercial shysters making up their own version of safe.

With one of the races where you pay to be crew the authorities stepped in a couple of years back and required them to have two professionals on board rather than just the captain. Since several incidents had occurred due to the captain simply being overworked and overtired.

Overworked, overtired and overboard…?

A good proportion of certifications are really just marketing bollox…

Whilst that is true it should ring alarm bells if someone can’t even get those.

I would disagree in the case of the DNV GL stuff and their like, for high pressure systems, which this basically was.

This is an amazing machine.

I don’t understand how you can both not get it…
… and then get it…

People are allowed to take selfies… its not YOUR concern or mine if they die doing it, its that simple.
Anyone who wants to stop someone doing something because it’s too dangerous in their opinion needs to be prepared to die to stop them.

wionston

You can’t take fare paying passengers on a yacht without insurance and certification for the craft and certification for the skipper.

Of course you can .. have you ever been to developing nations?

Yet the unregulated commercial tourist subs still get / expect all that rescue resource when things go wrong, despite not having done the work to show the vessel is safe.

Which ones are those? I know of tourist subs that cruise coral reefs, but I know of no other extreme deep-water exploration vehicles, other than those used by Cameron and those who’ve gone down to Challenger Deep. And nobody will get closer to the bottom of Challenger Deep than Titan did to Titanic with that level of shonkyness, that’s a fact.

Here’s the details of Deepsea Challenger, for example, which weighs 11.8 tonnes is 24ft long, and its test depth was 36,000 ft. The pilot sphere, emphasis on ‘sphere’, can only carry one person, that person being Cameron. Nobody else was put at risk.

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

Just showing on the BBC News the Titan wreckage being brought ashore.

@stevextc   Obviously but we are not talking about water taxis in Bangladesh are we. Ocean gate is a US based company and was operating out of Canada. Clearly the point we are all making is that Stockton Rush would have needed more certification had he been sailing those paying guests in a 40ft yacht across the Atlantic rather than diving to the bottom of it which is crazy.

The pics of the wreckage seem quite telling.  The titanium end cap that had the viewing portal in was being winched using a sling through where the portal should have been.  It’s possible it was removed afterward or ejected as artefact  of the implosion, but both seem somewhat unlikely.

Not sure I’d be so fast there. With the window in place the smooth, round, heavy object would be a pain in the arse to lift. Removing the window would make it really easy/safe

Not sure I’d be so fast there. With the window in place the smooth, round, heavy object would be a pain in the arse to lift. Removing the window would make it really easy/safe

Thought there was an investigation going to happen. Unlikely they would destroy evidence intentionally just to facilitate lifting.

Nothing to say the window was destroyed. Not that it would be easy to destroy. Might be able to undo the clamp and remove it fairly easily when it’s not under pressure.

I’m just saying it’s a lot to jump to that conclusions when the wreckage is barely even dry

Who mentioned anything about the window being destroyed.

<span style=”text-align: right;”>Evidence being destroyed doesn’t mean the window need be destroyed. Just the act of removal could remove key clues. </span>

It’s possible it was removed afterward or ejected as artefact of the implosion, but both seem somewhat unlikely.

Why? There was an implosion – have none of you ever put a cap onto a Pringle container and stomped on it? Have you never seen what happened?
It seems perfectly obvious that at the moment of collapse the observation dome would pop out of its housing, as it’s the least solidly fixed item, although the entire event was over within a fraction of a second. The titanium domes would separate from the main carbon cylinder at almost the same time because that section would start to crumple causing the domes, which are a lot more rigid once the cylinder crumples, to break away. It’s also possible that the Perspex dome was the initial point of failure, in which case it likely shattered into a number of pieces.

Either way, even though I’m no engineer, I can see just how many ways the design fails add up. I’m old enough to remember Trieste, the first bathyscape to go down into the Marianas Trench, and the passengers were in a sphere slung underneath the main buoyancy body, and it was pointed out then that a sphere was the only safe shape for crew.

have none of you ever put a cap onto a Pringle container and stomped on it? Have you never seen what happened?

Surely when you stomp on a Pringles container, the pressure inside vastly exceeds the pressure outside. That is not what happened here.

Once you pop…

Once you pop…

🤷

Who mentioned anything about the window being destroyed.

I’m sorry you caught me off guard by using the word destroyed in relation to the window assembly.

If they have removed it I’m sure it’ll have been done in a way that won’t affect the outcome of the investigation. I would guess that if the window has gone in it won’t make much difference anyway as everyone knows it wasn’t rated to the depth. The lack of photos of a big carbon tube still makes me think it’s been the problem

I don’t blame the geezer from profiteering from these people with more money than sense.

Obviously he’s a dick, but there will always be people happy to take money from rich folks.

No one made these millionaires sign up. If they were smart enough they would have done their own risk assessment.

What pisses me off of the money spent on a pointless rescue mission whilst there are thousands of folk song each week/month in the Med trying to better themselves.

Back in April we were parked up at a beach in Spain. Quite remote in the edge of a national park. Several times we saw groups making at ashore. Had a group walk past is with this kid, maybe 8-10 yo asking in  “Monsieur, de l’eau, s’il vous plaît. eau.” his family behind him calling him back. He was wet up to the waist, freezing cold and had probably spent the last ten hours on a small boat to make it to Europe from Africa.

He was one of the lucky ones. **** these folk with thousands to spunk on some vanity cruise.

He was one of the lucky ones. **** these folk with thousands to spunk on some vanity cruise.

Off-topic but when it comes to a small kid in a boat what is the difference between people paying to take a sub to gaze at the Titanic and you spunking thousands to buy a van to travel around Spain?

Lots of reasons to object to the cost of search and recovery but the “they have more money than me so they must be evil” attitude that is the essence of the STW forum is getting tiring, not least because everyone is very quiet about e-bikes costing £12k+, or the ongoing craze of coughing up £60k on a VW tin tent.

What pisses me off of the money spent on a pointless rescue mission whilst there are thousands of folk song each week/month in the Med trying to better themselves.

seems no less pointless than picking some random dude off a rock in the atlantic cos he thought it would be fun to hang out there for a bit. At least the sub people weren’t wasting resources in this country