Titanic submersible confirmed destroyed with loss of all five souls onboard.

Feek said:
I posted these before, time to do so again.

When a submarine implodes, a variety of fairly ugly things will happen to the crew. If we assume that a pressure hull implodes at 2000 feet (~60 atmospheres), the pressure will increase from 14.7 to about 875 PSI almost instantly. In the parts of the submarine that have volumes of trapped air, it would be like being inside a diesel engine cylinder when begins its compression stroke.

Anything flammable would burst into flames until a huge wall of water slams into the area and snuffs it out again. The impact of the water would cause significant injury to anyone unlucky enough to still be alive and there would be no time to suffer the effects of oxygen poisoning or anything else.

As others have stated, most human tissues are fluid-filled and are for the most part, incompressible. Human lungs and sinuses would be crushed instantly and the immense shock would render them unconscious immediately. Of greater concern would be the surge of incoming seawater, bulkheads, decks, heavy equipment, motors and other random bits of equipment being slammed into the crew at high velocity.

Essentially, the crew would be killed several times over in less than a blink of an eye.

According to several articles about the loss of the Scorpion, when the pressure hull failed, water entering the hull was moving at supersonic speeds and had filled the entire space in within 100 milliseconds.

The collapse produced with a force equivalent to 6000 kg of TNT.

When a submarine exceed its crush depth, and finally implodes, the water rushes in at 200 tons per square inch (or more) at thousands of miles an hour. Everything in the submarine disintegrates into a thousand pieces in an instant. One moment the crew is alive, the next, they are not. No time to think - just <POOF> gone. No time to feel anything - just >POOF< gone. No time to worry - just <POOF> gone

No one in the crew will even have time to think ‘uh oh… this is it’ or even ‘uh oh’. They won’t even have time for their eyes to relay messages to their brain of the ship disintegrating in front of them before they are gone. Here one instant, not there the next.

As a former reactor operator aboard SSN-595 originally designated Thresher class but changed to Permit class after the Thresher sinking, if I remember my physics this is what happens when the hull implodes.

Remember how a tire pump heats up as you inflate your bike tire? That's what occurs when the water rushes in at tremendous velocity. The air heats up to hundreds of degrees in a millisecond burning you alive just to extinguish you within that same second.

That acoustic signal originated near 46-10S, 59-42W at 1358Z (GMT) on 15 November 2017. It was produced by the collapse (implosion) of the ARA SAN JUAN pressure-hull at a depth of 1275-feet. Sea pressure at the collapse depth was 570 PSI. The frequency of the collapse event signal (bubble-pulse) was about 4.4 Hz.

The energy released by the collapse was equal to the explosion of 12,500 pounds of TNT at the depth of 1275-feet. That energy was produced by the nearly instantaneous conversion of potential energy (sea-pressure) to kinetic energy, the motion of the intruding water-ram which entered the SAN JUAN pressure-hull at a speed of about 1800 mph.

The entire pressure-hull was completely destroyed (fragmented/compacted) in about 40 milliseconds (0.040s or 1/25th of a second), the duration of the compression phase of the collapse event which is half the minimum time required for cognitive recognition of an event.

Although the crew may have known collapse was imminent, they never knew it was occurring. They did not drown or experience pain. Death was instantaneous.
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It's just one of those things that's difficult to mentally comprehend the amount of energy involved in such a thing

Even seeing aftermath, it's difficult to comprehend for instance the San Juan


Not even a quarter the depth the Titan was at

And a simulation of the actual implosion slowed down


It doesn't even look "that" bad because it's impossible to process it all happening in milliseconds from crush, to burn, to water ingress when it's happening quicker than your brain can physically process the information

I wonder though if on the Titan as it was descending to its doom if there were any uncomfortable sounds on the vessels due to the stresses or it was relatively uneventful until implosion and if there were noises the CEO was laughing them off as normal in an awkward silence with the others
 
Feek said:
This is what one atmosphere of pressure can do. Imagine what it's like at when the water pressure is equivalent to 375 times atmospheric pressure, 3,800m down

Jump forward to 1:20 if all you want to see is the implosion.

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The byford dolphin bell incident was a pressure differential from 1 to 9 atmospheres and that caused the crew to be sucked through a small hole sideways, the guy's organs got sucked through leaving only some parts of spine across the chamber.

1-9 atmospheres caused that and their blood boiled at the same time due to the heat generated by the pressure.
 
StriderX said:
So wait... is it true the company waited several hours to contact USCG/whomever was close by?
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The mission was expected to take six to eight hours or so. Contact was lost after one hour and forty five minutes but that didn't worry them because it's happened before. When contact wasn't reestablished at the expected time, they reported it.

Realistically, it makes no difference to the outcome, they implosion had probably happened already.
 
Why spend 250k to see the wreck of the titanic through a tiny window when you can just watch the 25th anniversary edition in 4k in the comfort of your home. Or even the VR game:


ems.cHJkLWVtcy1hc3NldHMvbW92aWVzL2IyMzI2MGIyLTIwZDEtNDUyNS1hZjJiLTViNTg3MDA1NTQxMy5qcGc=


Rip to those who perished.
 
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StriderX said:
So wait... is it true the company waited several hours to contact USCG/whomever was close by?
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8 hours was reported somewhere earlier. It wasn't the first time it had lost contact so they may have been complacent about contact being regained as had apparently happened on previous explorations.
 
adam cool dude said:
When you start looking into it you can see how crazy the whole thing was. Only problem is the owner is dead. How can you sue?

He must have conned them all or they were incredibly naive and didn't check what they were getting themselves into.

As I thought the end bells are intact and the carbon fibre hull imploded because it wasn't up to the job.
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The company will likely be sued or other directors, co-founders, maybe even the government for not having any certification in place for this type of equipment / operation. Presumably they had some reasonable insurance in place that may still be liable despite the waivers signed.
 
mrk said:
The byford dolphin bell incident was a pressure differential from 1 to 9 atmospheres and that caused the crew to be sucked through a small hole sideways, the guy's organs got sucked through leaving only some parts of spine across the chamber.

1-9 atmospheres caused that and their blood boiled at the same time due to the heat generated by the pressure.
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That was a rapid decompression incident though wasn't it? The blood boiling would have been like opening a bottle of pop, due to gasses coming out of solution, rather than a heat thing. Whereas this incident would have been a rapid compression.
 
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Hades said:
It had suffered damage a couple of times in the past, including cyclic fatigue to the hull in 2020. Could well be related.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Sub suffered electrical damage & had to be rebuilt BEFORE Titanic dive

The company initially planned to use it for a trip to the Titanic in 2018 but this was abandoned after it sustained damage to its electronics from lightning. It suffered further problems in 2019 and 2020.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk
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That is pretty damming if true. I wonder if they replaced the hull or just repaired it.

It would have been a huge financial burden to strip down and build a new hull for every trip.
 
adam cool dude said:
That is pretty damming if true. I wonder if they replaced the hull or just repaired it.

It would have been a huge financial burden to strip down and build a new hull for every trip.
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Thisnis why one investor pulled out a few years ago; he said the test data showed each submarine could only safely be used one time.

That means the company knew the submarine is not actually safe to operate at that depth and would take damage, but after each trip they would repair the damage - well all it takes is for someone to miss a single stress fracture and it's game over for the next crew
 
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adam cool dude said:
That is pretty damming if true. I wonder if they replaced the hull or just repaired it.

It would have been a huge financial burden to strip down and build a new hull for every trip.
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Same outcome though surely, whilst one is inbound and the other out, it's still compressing air, the bell incident was compression on one area of the crew areas, and decompression of the other as the pressure equalised since it wasn't just one capsule but multiple rooms connecting to the bell at the bottom. The submersible would force water into the capsule with no time for the air to escape creating the same sort of instant pressure super heating the air until it all equalised?
 
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Grim5 said:
Thisnis why one investor pulled out a few years ago; he said the test data showed each submarine could only safely be used one time.

That means the company knew the submarine is not actually safe to operate at that depth and would take damage, but after each trip they would repair the damage - well all it takes is for someone to miss a single stress fracture and it's game over for the next crew
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How would you even repair it? It's not like the thing is modular. How do you repair a tube of carbon fibre, once it's developed stress fractures?
 
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