• wazoobonkerbrain@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    James Cameron, director of the Titanic film, once dove in a submersible to the deepest point in the ocean. So he has connections within the community of submersible designers. Regarding the loss of the Titan, Cameron gave an interview in which he said that he had heard second hand reports from people in the Titan support crew who said that the vessel encountered problems, aborted its dive, dropped ballast, and was attempting to ascend at the moment of the implosion. So the people on board knew what was happening, they probably heard sounds of the hull beginning to strain, although the implosion itself would have been instantaneous.

    • axtualdave@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      By all accounts, carbon fiber doesn’t “strain”. It does its thing great right up until it fails catastrophically.

    • WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Still better than being stuck in there for four days as their air supply ran out, which is what people thought might have happened before the wreckage was found.

      • meldroc@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        It would have been sufficiently terrifying… You’d be hearing the hull pop, groan, and creak, then the laptops used to drive the boat start lighting up with “DANGER! HULL INTEGRITY FAILURE!”, followed by Stockton frantically grabbing that video game controller to drop the ballast, do an emergency blow, but it’s already too late… You don’t know how long before you get turned into shark chum, but the suspense

      • wazoobonkerbrain@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I did not suggest that the scenario that I described was the worst case scenario. Another possibility was that the craft could have gotten turned on its end, e.g. after getting snagged on the wreck, or on other debris. Imagine five people piled on top of each other in a vertical tube asphyxiating over four days.