Court documents reveal a former OceanGate employee had several safety complaints over the tourist submersible—and then he was fired.
Court documents reveal a former OceanGate employee had several safety complaints over the tourist submersible—and then he was fired.
Damn. Is there realistically any chance of those people being located and rescued in time?
Supposedly there is oxygen for 4 days, so it it is in tact and they can get it to the surface by early Thursday, maybe.
But more likely there was a structural failure and they are all dead, crushed by the extreme depth.
The sudden lose of communication to me screams catastrophic structural failure…
In which case, there wouldn’t even be time to scream…
It wasn’t really sudden. Best they had was text messages that were occurring at a 15 minute interval. They stopped 1:45 into the dive.
They waited until 30 minutes after they were supposed to be back to report it missing (which I think is standard)
They had two communication systems. They had the text messaging and an automated “ping” that went every 15 minutes. Both stopped suddenly at 1:45.
Quote from apnews
“There are only two things that could mean. Either they lost all power or the ship developed a hull breach and it imploded instantly.”
I read an analysis of scenarios for the sub, and the best case is that they had a power failure but managed to surface. This is plausible because if something went wrong they would just need to drop their weights and float up naturally.
In that case, they’re floating somewhere on the surface without communications and just need to be spotted.
But even that isn’t a good situation because the ocean is ginormous and the sub is locked from the outside, so they’re still limited to another day and a half of air supply.
If they’re alive but under the surface, the search is nearly hopeless.
I’m not sure dropping the weights would help from that depth. There’s a point at which the pressure of the water above you cancels out any buoyancy lifting you up. It’s not even that super deep for divers; I don’t know what it is for a duct-tape-and-zip-tied backyard-crafted submarine, though.
If that were the case they would have some sort of emergency transponder on board. They are 100% crushed.
I think it’s too late before they reached the Titanic.
Well at least they saved some money.
I think it depends on what depth they are at. You have to depressurize and you need time to do that.
If it’s still water-tight, occupants wouldn’t need to decompress since the interior is still near atmospheric pressure. If it leaked at 13,000 ft… the bends are the least of their worries.
ooo you’re right! Thanks for the catch!