[AustinDev]

Wow, this is the worst possible situation, if true. They're likely to run out of breathable air long before they can be rescued. I'm hoping they make it out but, I personally would have opted for an implosion if I was in the same situation. The suffering they're enduring, if actually alive, is pretty rare.

I can't imagine what is potentially going through their heads. If they are alive the 8 hour delay from Oceangate on reporting the incident to the USCG is likely going to result in massive liability, possibly criminal. Deep Sea rescues are extremely improbable and minutes matter let alone hours.

I have a hard time believing that this report is accurate but, it's possible. My best friend works at the lab that tests and certifies deep sea vessels for the navy, manned and unmanned, and he's 99% sure they're already gone due to an implosion. He actually was involved in the testing of one of their prototypes so has a pretty intimate knowledge of their construction. Cyclical fatigue on the carbon fiber hull is the likely culprit if such was their fate.

[graypegg]

Being in an enclosed space, knowing no one else can hear you, surrounded by people probably having a panic attack, at the bottom of the ocean in total darkness while you are slowly noticing the air getting harder and harder to breathe… yeah I would’ve taken the hull imploding over 80-something hours of that.

One guy is down there with his 19yo son… empathy is a powerful thing, imagining that situation just makes my heart sink.

[lostlogin]

> Being in an enclosed space, knowing no one else can hear you, surrounded by people probably having a panic attack, at the bottom of the ocean in total darkness while you are slowly noticing the air getting harder and harder to breathe…

I had an old guy tell me about why he was claustrophobic once. Closed doors and the dark were a challenge.

He got depth charged in a submarine during WWII. The lights got blown out, water was coming in etc.

Everyone survived but it had a marked effect on him.

[peteradio]

That's an incredible story. Someone had to keep their wits about them to successfully resurface. I imagine there was a lot of experience and training that saved that crew.

[flangola7]

It is also close to freezing temperatures

[prox]

And even if they were to surface, the bolts of the hatch can only be opened from the outside

[HWR_14]

They have another ~30 hours of air.

The biggest hope is that they are not terribly deep trapped near the surface and can be located in that time.

[p-e-w]

How could they be trapped "near" the surface? That would require the sub to maintain buoyancy precisely, which seems unlikely without active systems.

[HWR_14]

As I understand it, the vessel is not able to surface on its own. At its most buoyant, a small amount of the sub will emerge from the water, and that weight will push it back down, so the vast majority of the sub is underwater. This bobbing, which depending on waves can have a small amount or none of the sub above water at any time, would make them hard to detect but easy to retrieve if they were located.

[ehnto]

Imagine being so close yet still not able to escape the vessel. I don't know what is standard for subs, but it strikes me as particularly terrifying that they have no way to open it from the inside.

[HWR_14]

I think, but based on nothing but news stories about this incident, that's common for very deep sea submersibles. It makes sense, the could opt out of a whole bunch of surface ship concerns and they expect to be launched and retrieved. It also helps simplify the design if you don't have to worry about opening hatches from the inside. That adds complexity and can introduce new failure modes.

[gr8flyer1011]

I'm betting that little potty bucket may be filling up...

[eternityforest]

I don't see why that would make them hard to detect. As long as you're above the waves a few percent of the time you should have no trouble getting a signal out, and if you have an antenna you could probably get GPS too, plus, there's some pretty powerful dyes you could release periodically, LEDs that could be seen easily if it's just a few meters of water....

Seems like it would have to be criminally bad design without any kind of signalling at all, to be near the surface and not found within hours.

[madaxe_again]

Air is great and all, but hypothermia will get them first.

[iamtedd]

And do they have water to drink?

[HWR_14]

They had 4 days of air When they launched. At $250k, they probably had some drinks on board for a 24 hour trip, and 3 days of no water is considered survivable. So air is most likely the limiting factor, but it's possible they messed up the drink provisions extremely badly.

[slowmovintarget]

Carbon dioxide levels will do them in before lack of oxygen.

[HWR_14]

Assuming they don't have filters onboard, yeah. I thought it was possible to filter out many man-days of CO2 with relatively small filters.

[rasz]

Much more if cannibalism set in.

[red-iron-pine]

they'll be out of air or hypothermic long before they get crazy enough to start eating each other or drinking blood

[numpad0]

Isn't it just a relatively doable matter, of hooking up a wire by a robot and pulling out to the surface, assuming a suitable robot can be flown and deployed soon enough?

[ablation]

It's ~12,500ft (~3,800m) down on the seabed at this point, most likely. Nothing is "relatively doable" at these depths and associated conditions.

[upon_drumhead]

According to Wikipedia

> The vessel was expected to resurface at 18:10 ADT.[16] Authorities were notified about the incident at 18:35 ADT.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Titan_submersible_incid...

One could argue that the delay once communications were lost is reasonable until the sub was overdue back.

[gr8flyer1011]

I don't think anyone can actually take the company to court, the passengers signed their lives away (pardon the pun), to be able to take that ride to the Titanic. I would be curious to know if it had a backup propulsion system in case the primary failed?