Can you imagine the horror and desperation those men in that tin can must be feeling at the moment, it gives me the shudders to try and imagine it. I think there will be one hell of a big investigation into the company who set it all up when,hopefully they are rescued and brought safely home again. Would you go down in one to that depth if you had a spare $250k?
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Considering it uses a play station paddle to control it (a bit modded) NO. I will fly anywhere or parachute anywhere but under the sea no way. I breakout in a cold sweat at the thought of the ferry.
They must have known the risks, they have to sign a waiver that mentions, ‘death’, three times, this is according to people that have done the Titanic trip, with the company. Add to that industry experts had written to the company voicing their concerns over safety and construction of the submersible, you’d have thought there would be a regulatory body that would have to pass it as sea worthy!
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This is a nightmare for the poor occupants.
I just heard from an ex- Australian navy sub mariner in the radio that banging on the vehicle from inside every hour and half hour is a standard navy practice, which the French naval captain on board would know. Hopefully, they can now be found by the international searchers. The oceans are si big and so deep it is a true challenge.
Maybe now the Titanic can be left in peace as the huge graveyard it is, at least for another generation.
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For ever.
I find it macabre and disrespectful that people consider going there, even more so that someone would make money by doing these trips.
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I read a really good piece on it this morning, which I will post if I can find it again. It said that there are standards to be met if it operates in territorial waters but they seem to have got around this by only operating it in international waters, where regulations don’t apply, while being quite scathing about the regulations stifling innovation.
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Can you imagine the horror and desperation of the 100+ individuals, mostly children who died in the hold of an overloaded fishing boat when it capsized in the med?
No, I can’t either but I’ll bet the $1.25million spent on this ill-fated trip to the Titanic would have helped them enormously.
Yet the world wants to rush to recover this sub much faster than it wants to rush to help millions affected by war, oppression and climate change, and the world’s media want us to know about this rescue effort and not the plight of the refugees.
This lot knew the odds, the whole thing sounds extremely Heath-Robinson to me (including the report that the viewport is only certified to 1300m and the company would not pay up for one certified to 4000).
I have some sympathy, but I wouldn’t have got in the thing in the first place, even if I had the money.
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Can you imagine the lawsuits if this ends as a disaster,by the families regardless of any signed bits of paper. That would be media news for weeks,months or years. I read somewhere that even if they do get them up, they have to stay inside for longer and there is not enough air for that. People paying vast sums of money to visit a graveyard is ridiculous when the money could have been put to better use if these rich people have more than they know what to do with and seen the results too.
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I agree with you 100% Billy.
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Profit at all costs, wonder how the Mother of the young man that was with his Father feels?
Yes, ironically when I first heard the news of this submersible and the fix they were in, I had just watched a film based on the Kursk disaster and that was what they were supposed to do, hammer 4 times on the hull every hour on the hour. Trouble was that they became confused by the failing oxygen and missed or mis timed it. That didn’t end well sadly.
Even more irony, the Russians were hampered by a lack of rescue vessels, one of which had been sold off to an entrepreneur to dive on the Titanic.
Alas, this a appears to have been a disaster waiting to happen since the Good Idea Fairy visited the CEO of Ocean Reach and persuaded him that using a homemade submarine to offer trips to view the wreck of the S.S. Titanic using unqualified crew would be neat.
I dont suppose it will be too long before something like this will happen to mr musks spacex holiday trips into space. As for these graveyard tourists it looks like they will get there taste of what happened to the poor people on board the titanic, who were sadly killed.
Having a huge pile of money does not mean they were blessed with any brains outside of making a huge pile,
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It is an absolutely horrible way to die and I think we shouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Besides Hamish Harding, one of the five passengers is Stockton Rush, CEO and founder of OceanGate, which operates the Titan. Another is Paul-Henri Nargeolet, director of underwater research for RMS Titanic, Inc. which organises expeditions to the wreck to recover artefacts. Not exactly tourists.
The final two are Shahzada Darwood, a UK-based Pakistani businessman and his 19 year old son Sulaiman. I cannot imagine the distress of their wife and mother facing fear of losing both her husband and son.
I don’t personally feel that the remains of the Titanic should be a tourist destination but perhaps for these people it is not. We do not know and should not judge in the face of this tragedy any more than condemn refugees who take to the water to reach safety on our shores.
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This reminds me a little of what folks said of Mr Sunak’s financial acumen making him a suitable candidate for PM leading UK through a financial crisis. That’s going well.
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In some ways it is surprising how well they have done but the whole thing strikes me as a death-trap, it doesn’t even have any way for those inside to exit the capsule without outside help once back on the surface.
This is bound to trigger an investigation, in which safety short comings are likely to come to light I would think - so, yes, I would expect lawsuits in due course.
Other questions come to mind - why no locator beacon, for instance.
I suspect that whatever befell the people on board it will have been sufficiently catastrophic as to render it impossible to rise to the surface - failure of oxygen supply, or critical failure of the hull (it was 1hour 45mins into a 2 hour descent AIUI so it was pretty deep - past 3000 metres).
I’m not banking on survivors.
I was reading an update and even if they pinpoint the submersible, unlikely, it will take about 20 hours to get the equipment there and the oxygen will probably run out before then.
If you look on Wikipedia about the rescue of Roger Mallinson and Roger Chapman it was touch and go and the rescuers knew where they were and they were only 400 m down.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Roger_Mallinson_and_Roger_Chapman
Hubris 
Edited to add it could be a stunt but I really hope not.
Not unlike the ship they went to view. 
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