From a certain point of view, the safest submarine would be a naturally buoyant submersible that is pulled down by electromagnetically attached weights.
When the operator wants to ascend, she cuts power to the electromagnet and the vessel floats up.
If the ship loses power, the electromagnet drops the weight, and floats up.
But titanium pressure hulls don’t float. Carbon fibre ones do. Thus the attraction.
You have to ascend slowly, though.
There is a ‘failure in leadership’ argument to be made; but only in a direction that I suspect wouldn’t please the people calling for it.
If the tyrannical hand of federal regulation had laid a bit heavier in the ‘no tourist trips on your manifestly unsuitable deathtrap’ area the whole matter would have been avoided before it began; and we could have avoided days of costly and relatively risky looking-busy after the fact if someone had been willing to make the “they’re virtually certain to be dead; we’re wasting our time” call shortly after the navy determined that they’d heard a pop, despite the predictable howls from “The Explorers Club” about the urgency of going to save their pals.
FTFY.
ETA:
This may be a bit more nuanced. It’s been said that the technology that the Navy used that heard the implosion is top secret — no doubt they use it for for submarine tracking. I’d guess for them to even say that they heard the implosion and how required a declassification process to reveal they even had some sort of listening system capable of hearing it.
I think more than anything there was an abundance of caution to not say anything definitive until the wreckage was found or too much time had passed. Just in case, even though I’m sure pretty much everybody involved knew how it would most likely end up.
I mean I’m no mega rich Super Adventure Time explorer with any sort of special insights or or anything but it seemed obvious to me that the most likely outcome was that the vessel and it’s occupants were pancaked at the bottom of the ocean as soon as the story started making the rounds last Sunday.
That is indeed how grown-up DSVs work… including James Cameron’s
The sub descends because of more than 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of steel weights held on to either side by electromagnets. To rise to the surface, the pilot flips a switch, the plates of steel fall to the ocean floor, and the lighter-than-water foam hurtles the sub skyward. This step is critical—if the weights don’t drop, the pilot can be stuck at the bottom of the ocean. To ensure they function properly, engineers incorporated several backup systems:
- If there’s a power failure or the magnets’ batteries run out, the weights will drop automatically.
- The support team at the surface can command the weights to drop via an acoustic command.
- A special wire (galvanic timed release) helps connect the weights to the sub; it will corrode after about 11 to 13 hours in seawater.
- The pilot can power up something called a “frangibolt,” which uses heat to break the bolts that keep the weight-drop mechanism in place, thus jettisoning the whole assembly
Which is why
About 70 percent of the sub’s volume is taken up by syntactic foam. Formed of millions of hollow glass microspheres suspended in an epoxy resin, syntactic foam is the only flotation material that can stand up to the incredible pressures in the deep ocean.
I was just gonna call 'em tourists, but I much prefer yr Honey’s take.
if you have not seen camerons deep sea efforts you might be missing anything…
It’s no secret that the Navy — all real navies, in fact — have underwater listening technology to track submaerines. That’s been around since the 40s. What is secret is how sensitive that technology is, and the precise placement of the underwater listening devices.
Somewhere on the bbs I read an estimate that the force of the implosion was equivalent to 50kg TNT. If that is the case, and the listening devices were, say,100 miles away, that would be insanely sensitive, and imply that the US Navy hears everything in the ocean. A Russian sailor couldn’t fart without the navy knowing what kind of beans they ate.
I’m sure he’d like to have Benghazi style hearings on it. The party against pollution controls, climate change mitigation and meat inspectors have a lot of opinions on disasters, for a party that creates a lot of disasters.
But why not just use some cheap styrofo…
Oh.
Bathyscaphes are another interesting solution. They’re built almost like a hot air balloon or blimp, using some kind of hydrocarbon like gasoline as the less-dense-than-water, incompressible flotation material.
A friend of mine who worked for the fire brigade told me that there are cases where the only sensible thing to do is to stand back and let a site burn itself out, as there’s nothing to be done about it, but they fight the fire anyway because it would look bad if they didn’t.
Perhaps something similar applies to rescue efforts.
No doubt. After all, he has an election coming up soon. Gotta get some publicity…
The twit almost had my respect because he apparently despises Empty Gee & calls her out on her bullshit.
Almost.
Well, sure… that’s how they get elected, after all.
Promising to fix the problems they created, while blaming the problem on those evil Others.
Hm. Not even close.
I’m gonna start calling you ‘quick draw’ here in a minute, fellow mutant…
I think it’s the notion of getting smooshed that draws many people to media coverage of deep-sea mishaps, as it highlights physical vulnerabilities that we can usually ignore. Insects are the critters that get smooshed, not large mammals.
