| From David Pogue's report on his trip in 2022: https://unsungscience.com/news/back-to-titanic-part-1/ Excerpt from the transcript: But what if the hydraulic system breaks? Well, then they have roll weights. KYLE: Ah, so, we’ve got these weights here on the side, these are roll weights, we can actually roll the sub and those come off, and that gains us some buoyancy to come back to the surface. These are pipes that sit on a shelf that juts out from either side of the sub, held in place only by gravity. If everyone inside the sub shifts their weight to one side, the sub tips enough to let these pipes roll off. If that doesn’t work, there are ballast bags, full of metal shot, hanging below the sub. KYLE: These bags down below, we drop those off using motors and electric fingers. OK. But what if the electronics go out, and the hydraulics fail, and everyone inside has passed out unconscious? KYLE: There’s fusible links within these that actually can dissolve and come back in time if it’s drop off. Fusible links are self-dissolving bonds. After 16 hours in seawater, those bonds disintegrate, the weight bags drop off automatically, and you go back to the surface. |