Tourist submarine taking people to the site of the Titanic wreck has gone missing

seattle prattle wrote:

Hold On a Moment wrote:

Interesting tidbit - it seems that the US Navy knew what happened days ago. The SOSUS anti-submarine acoustic network detected a sound consistent with a pressure hull implosion on the day Titan began its dive. This fact and geo-location data was shared with the search and rescue operation and that likely explains why the debris field was found so quickly. I also imagine that is why the US government vetoed the UK sending equipment. It would have taken many days to arrive and it was already too late.

SOSUS capabilities are very highly classified. It took several days to determine how to get the data to the right people in a secure fashion without giving away any deep secrets.

To corroborate this tidbit, from the NY Times update just a minute ago:

"A senior U.S. Navy official said that the Navy had, through acoustic analysis, “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost.” The official said that the identification was “not definitive,” the information was immediately shared with the search effort, and that the decision was made to continue searching to “make every effort to save the lives on board.”"

TheAdultInTheRoom wrote:

Raddison wrote:

This comes up with every search and rescue mission. The answer is probably nobody knows. In fact some search and rescue missions actually save the tax payer money.

Back when I lived in Britain many mountain rescue missions involved the RAF. Someone started complaining about the cost and the RAF responded that it saves them money on training. If the RAF were to set up an extraction training exercise they would have to deploy soldiers in some remote location, get a few of them to pretend to be injured and then go in and "find" them and then "rescue" them. With civilians conveniently falling of a ridge in Snowdonia and breaking their leg, all the set up costs were free.

I know this situation is a lot different to hikers getting into accidents. But it does allow the Military to check out a lot of expensive hardware - a lot of which may be prototypes - and see what stuff lives up to its billing and what is just marking BS. I imagine the value of the Canadian submersible that found the wreckage has just gone through the roof.

Not only does this event test the capability of the equipment, it also tests the ability of the companies to get their act together on get their stuff on site quickly. Much better than a planned demo set for 1st August of the coast of Florida in a clearly marked area.

Governments waste TRILLIONS of dollars. These rescue operations are one of the very few things governments can spend money on that serve a useful purpose and do more good than harm.

Since You Wanted To Know wrote:

Hold On a Moment wrote:

Interesting tidbit - it seems that the US Navy knew what happened days ago. The SOSUS anti-submarine acoustic network detected a sound consistent with a pressure hull implosion on the day Titan began its dive. This fact and geo-location data was shared with the search and rescue operation and that likely explains why the debris field was found so quickly.

The debris was actually pretty easy to find once they got a submersible down there to look, even if they hadn't gotten any information from the Navy.

Everyone already knew that the sub was a few thousand feet above the Titanic when it lost communication. They knew that if it had imploded, then gravity would have carried the debris straight down. Therefore, the debris was obviously going to be on the ocean floor very close to the Titanic, which is exactly where the debris was found.