NEWFOUNDLAND, Canada - The U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that an underwater vessel has located a debris field near the Titanic in the search for a missing submersible with five people aboard, a potential breakthrough in the around-the-clock effort. The search for the missing submersible on an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic passed the critical 96-hour mark Thursday when breathable air could have run out, a grim moment in the intense effort to save the five people aboard. The Titan submersible was estimated to have about a four-day supply of breathable air when it launched Sunday morning in the North Atlantic - but experts have emphasized that was an imprecise approximation to begin with and could be extended if passengers have taken measures to conserve breathable air. MORE: Why rescue mission for Titanic submersible is so difficult. At least 46 people successfully traveled on OceanGate's submersible to the Titanic wreck site in 2021 and 2022, according to letters the company filed with a U.S. District Court in Norfolk, Virginia, that oversees matters involving the Titanic shipwreck.
That's awful, but perhaps better than stuck for hours or days inside of a dead, dark, cold submarine at the bottom of the ocean as the oxygen slowly runs out.
I can't be the only idiot who didn't realize the Titanic went down that close to Maine/Newfoundland. I'm 38 years old and never once even thought about where they actually sank.
Around the same age and this was my main takeaway from all this as well. One of my parents was watching the BBC with their coverage of it and I saw the map yesterday and was like wow, was it really that close? What was I doing in school?
I feel bad for the 19 year old who got dragged along by his dad, but honestly as an endeavor it was kind of begging for a disaster to happen.
Like if you go back and look at interviews from a while ago the guy is talking about how bullshit the safety regulations are and how hes not going to follow them because thats what innovation is all about.
To be honest, good riddance. The world is better off without a handful of billionaires who spend their money gawking at mass graves.
It pisses me off that 6 ultra-wealthy people disappear in a sub that they got in FOR FUCKING FUN turns into an international story and caused taxpayer dollars from multiple countries to go into searching for them. Even though, once again, this was entirely optional for them and they knew the risks going in, and in fact paid for those risks. It's been the focus of a large part of the internet for 2 days now, and the news won't shut up about it.
Meanwhile, a boat carrying hundreds of migrants crashed 3 days ago, HUNDREDS of people are dead, and the news treats it as a footnote. It isn't getting talked about by half the threads on reddit and lemmy. Nobody is posting long, concerned posts about how it's "so awful" people are talking poorly about the migrants. Those people were trying to get a better life and they just get ignored, but some dude decides he wants to pay 500k to take his son to the fucking titanic because that seems cool and suddenly it's an I ternational search and rescue effort at the bottom of the goddamn ocean
I kind of feel like it's the same thing in that presumably the migrants knew this was not a regulated safe manner of transport. And IDK why the countries they were citizens of didn't mount search and rescue. Presumably the submarine people had their countries and allies performing the search and rescue, which is something the government should do for it's citizens.
3 of the passengers were lifelong explorers - the ex french navy guy, the ceo, and the billionaire that had already gone to space. I believe those three probably fully consented to the risks, and I don't have any particular sympathy for them.
But the other guy didn't have an adventurous background, and I wonder if he really understood what he was getting into. Still, he was an adult responsible for himself.
The teengager however... no way he was fully aware of the risks. Teens still think they're invincible, especially rich ones. Him I feel sorry for.
RIP to those who parished. I think most can take solace knowing that if it turns out to be true that it was an implosion, it would have been instant, and the occupants likely felt nothing. .
Catastrophic Implosion of a submersible explained:
When a submarine hull collapses, it moves inward at about 1,500 miles per hour - that’s 2,200 feet per second.
The time required for complete collapse is 20 / 2,200 seconds = about 1 millisecond.
A human brain responds instinctually to stimulus at about 25 milliseconds. Human rational response (sense→reason→act) is at best 150 milliseconds.
The air inside a sub has a fairly high concentration of hydrocarbon vapors.
When the hull collapses it behaves like a very large piston on a very large Diesel engine.
The air auto-ignites and an explosion follows the initial rapid implosion. Large blobs of fat (that would be humans) incinerate and are turned to ash and dust quicker than you can blink your eye.
Info Source: Dave Corley, former Nuke sub officer
I will not celebrate peoples' deaths, but I will not necessarily mourn them either. Their relatives certainly did not ask for this (regardless what you think of them), and they have to deal with this for the rest of their lives. Maybe some will get over this, maybe some will not.
At least it's a relief that there was no suffering.
Question... why wasn't this an unmanned, remotely controlled submarine with a front-mounted camera? If it had been destroyed, that would have been a lot of money up in smoke, but no lives lost.