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A comment on Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search. Parent comment

Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by spatialaustin on Monday June 19, 2023 @04:28PM (#36396090)
David Pogue, who traveled to the Titanic with OceanGate last summer, has said that he was on the control ship when a previous sub was "lost for about 5 hours".

Source: https://twitter.com/Pogue/status/1670835763536183297

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by wnevets on Monday June 19, 2023 @04:32PM (#36396116)
> and they shut off the ship’s internet to prevent us from tweeting.

Some how that makes it even worse.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by hombre_fatal on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:11PM (#36396517)
Seems obvious how that makes it worse.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by carbine on Monday June 19, 2023 @08:38PM (#36398270)
I try to have a generous read of everyone's intentions, but that anecdote is alarming.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by Jarmsy on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @07:05AM (#36402304)
And the author is revealing this only now!? That's not a great look, being witness to massive safety violations and keeping quiet about it until after it goes wrong.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by jonathankoren on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:09PM (#36396490)
Jesus. This sounds like this group is just taking billionaires' money while running a death trap. How the hell do you lose your sub for five hours? This should have stopped all trips until they fixed this problem through a combination of technical and procedural changes.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by spaceguillotine on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:23PM (#36396661)
when you put it like that i'm suddenly pro death trap
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by pastacacioepepe on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:40PM (#36396821)
cool username.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by wayvey on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:59PM (#36397007)
you too sir!
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by prawn on Monday June 19, 2023 @08:49PM (#36398358)
Their business model is to take wealthy explorers and also researchers, hoping that the explorers subsidise the researchers. So there is collateral damage.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by taway1874 on Monday June 19, 2023 @11:46PM (#36399467)
Robinhood Travel Company
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by iab on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @12:45AM (#36399819)
Instead of a honey-trap, it’s a money-trap
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by FBISurveillance on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @01:32AM (#36400107)
Hard disagree. Why would anyone want someone dead? Why hatred towards random strangers just because they seem to be wealthy?

Someone is doing something legal and that doesn't impact you in any way at all, why even care? IMHO, you should be better than that.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by JayPalm on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @02:24AM (#36400408)
At least the user name is mostly relevant.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by wanderingjew on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:28PM (#36396714)
> Jesus. This sounds like this group is just taking billionaires' money while running a death trap.

Well I mean _someone_ has to run the startup we all want to do.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by efitz on Monday June 19, 2023 @06:00PM (#36397020)
Who’s hiring? :-D
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by wanderingjew on Monday June 19, 2023 @06:35PM (#36397299)
http://guillotinery.com/
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by yazzku on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:48PM (#36397902)
I was skeptical of this at first, but then the song in the marketing video changed my mind.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by boringg on Monday June 19, 2023 @09:00PM (#36398437)
Thats a good quality jingle.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by Scoundreller on Monday June 19, 2023 @10:05PM (#36398872)
love that vintage notepad.exe aesthetic

> <title>Fuck 'em</title>

> <a href="mailto:[email protected]">hit us up.</a>

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by orbital-decay on Monday June 19, 2023 @05:55PM (#36396972)
> This sounds like this group is just taking billionaires' money while running a death trap.

What if people pay for that exactly because it's risky and potentially fatal?

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by bastawhiz on Monday June 19, 2023 @06:21PM (#36397185)
I mean, if you accept that what you're doing is inherently unethical and immoral (I made a death trap but I'll let you pay to ride in it anyway instead of fixing it because you like danger and I like money!), then there's really no limit to the kind of terrible things you can put out into the world. But most of us would stop and reconsider what we're doing.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by fullstop on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:10PM (#36397589)
Mitchell and Webb had some fantastic skits about this: https://youtu.be/DTcBWo4Aj0g

https://youtu.be/xXSRvQlALMA

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by mvkel on Thursday June 22, 2023 @07:11AM (#36430387)
Not very sustainable if you're killing billionaires.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by systemtest on Monday June 19, 2023 @06:19PM (#36397157)
Is there some sort of underwater "GPS" tracker they can use to track the sub?
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by minedwiz on Monday June 19, 2023 @06:43PM (#36397355)
Communicating with submarines is actually a nightmare. The saltwater ruins most radio communications, so you have no chance to receive GPS signals, which are pretty weak even on the surface.

One thing the military does/did to communicate with subs is use low-bandwidth text-only very low frequency radio, but you need colossal transmitters and there's no way the mother ship carries one. Hydrophones are also an option, and IIRC NATO even has a working sound-based modem to transmit digital signals to subs, but not sure if that has spread in the civilian market.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by bombcar on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:34PM (#36397787)
The easiest way for a sub to communicate with the surface is to launch an icbm.

Or fire a torpedo and detonate it.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by scarnz on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:18PM (#36397652)
I concur. Message is authentic.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by camel_gopher on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @01:20AM (#36400035)
Message is authentic. Set condition 1-SQ.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by Prickle on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:52PM (#36397936)
Military submarines also have a towed communications buoy that they can use to communicate with satellites. But that thing is connected to the submersible via a cable.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by closewith on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @07:45AM (#36402670)
Even then, ELF is only available down to depths of hundreds of metres, not kilometres.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by snaily on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @03:01AM (#36400632)
There's at least one commercial acoustic underwater modem provider - Subnero out of Singapore. They claim up to 5km range:

https://subnero.com/products/modem.html

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by closewith on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @07:45AM (#36402666)
> 4 km of communication range (horizontal) in littoral waters

Probably much lower range vertically.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by rkangel on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @09:46AM (#36403887)
The important issue with VLF radio in this case is that what we need is sub->ship communication. VLF relies on massive antenna, often ground based to (very slowly) send message to subs. My understanding is that for comms the other way, the sub needs to raise an antenna above the surface (then possibly doing laser comms to a satellite so that no radio emissions give away sub locations).
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by TecoAndJix on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @01:17PM (#36407284)
INT ZBZ
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by metiscus on Monday June 19, 2023 @07:36PM (#36397801)
If the sub had imploded, it is likely that the implosion may have been detected by various naval assets. I don't think that SOSUS is still active but there is very likely something similar with enough sensitivity to detect this somewhere in the ocean. The question would be if classification etc would allow speedy relay of that information to the search teams etc. Granted, not much to search for if there was an implosion.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by Scoundreller on Monday June 19, 2023 @10:08PM (#36398897)
I'd think some kind of (1-way only, obviously), comms system could involve things attached to the exterior that are deployed by bluetooth or something, and float to the surface regularly.

e.g. every 2 hours, send up a transmitter that sends an "A-OK" on X Khz for at least Y minutes. If you get a bunch at once, or don't get any for a while, or get the "Something wrong" on Y Khz transmitter, you know something's gone awry.

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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by technofiend on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @12:59AM (#36399913)
Because there is active search and rescue happening, a much lower tech solution is to use dye. But even that presumes a canister on the outside that can be activated from the inside and which will survive the depths of the dive. In retrospect perhaps something that does that automatically if not disarmed after a certain amount of time.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by throwaheyy on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @03:10AM (#36400673)
Dye would be as incompressible as seawater. I think a dye container on the outside of the sub could literally be a plastic bag and it would survive.
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Re:Titanic tourist sub goes missing sparking search by FreshStart on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @05:30PM (#36410940)
Hydrophone listening for large air bubbles penetrating water boundary layers as death triangation?
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