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Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way
(www.bbc.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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How does one even plan for contingencies? 96-hour life support, but can specialized rescue subs get there in time?
I've been toying around with some design concepts for a DIY submarine for like a decade now. The first thing I thought about, right after "how do I control it going up/down" was "what do I do when that system fails, and I need to ascend in an emergency?" My thought was to have some scuba tanks attached to deployable salvage lift bags, so even if my ballasts were completely screwed, I could still ascend.
If there's not something analogous to that on board the Titan, I'd be shocked at their stupidity; It seems incredibly foolhardy to intentionally go somewhere that no rescue vehicle can recover you, without secondary and tertiary systems in place to rescue yourself.
I've always been fascinated by submarines. I've wanted to make a remote control one with fpv but radio signals don't penetrate water very well underwater. If I have to have it tethered to a signal wire it's just "meh".
this concept is indeed unnecessary if you can't even open your submarine yourself in the first place, another article says the bolts outside need to be oppened by a crew on the support ship
It could be mounted externally, separate from other systems, and it would be fairly trivial to implement a strictly mechanical means of activating it from inside the vessel. All that would be needed is to open the valve on the external pressure vessel.
If you're referring to getting out once you're on the surface...hell of a lot easier for rescue crews to find you and do that if you've got a huge orange inflatable holding you at the surface, rather than however many thousands of feet underwater.
True. But I meant if all is only controlled from the inside, then what do you do if again that fails, seems like the same problem
I feel like a proper contingency in this scenario would be some sort of "instant death" system. Knowing you're going to die, but waiting 96 hours for it to happen sounds terrible.
I get where you're coming from but this sounds like an insanely bad idea. Perhaps I'd agree with you if there was something like cyanide pills people could opt to take, but even then I'm hesitant. There should be no way for one person (or some subset of people) to decide for everyone that now is the time to die; if someone wants to be in their head and push the limit and die at the last minute, that's their call and theirs alone. Also, if there is some miraculous rescue but someone has pulled the "instant death" switch, they've effectively murdered the rest of the people.