It's well past the time when the five submariners aboard the submersible "Titan" should have run out of oxygen. We have questions but not really many answers.
UPDATE: Some questions answered - it seems the Titan imploded, it seems that the knock signals were spurious - but still leaves open if they were deliberately faked.
My first question is: Why were there so many stories? I don't mean journalitic coverage, I mean the things the experts surfaced. Today I broke my embargo on slavishly following the press and looked to see what's happening now that the official time limit's passed.
I found two stories - you'll be able to find literally hundreds if not thousands - here and here.
The Stuff That We Can Know.
Titan had 90hrs of oxygen on board.
Let's take this as a fact, that OceanGate thought the oxygen aboard would last five people a total of 90 hours. That figure has to perforce be a best guess. Panic - and you could halve the amount of time the oxygen would last you. Meditate and force yourself into slowed-down respiratory state and you could get to 100-120 hours.
How Did They Scrub the CO2?
It doesn't matter if you have oxygen for 200 hours - you have to get rid of the CO2 (as Apollo 13 demonstrated in frightening detail) or you still suffocate. It seems that the lithium hydroxide filters might be a baseline to compare this to, the A13 had canisters of lithium hydroxide that could keep the expired CO2 of three astronauts scrubbed out of the air so I'm going to presume that Titan had at least that sort of a scrubber.
The A13 had multiple spares so I'll presume that they had at least three, one to start on, one to replace halfway through the original mission, and a spare. Basically I think an A13 sized cartridge would scrub COS of 3 people for several days. The OceanGate missions were expected to only ever last eight hours and since the submersible had oxygen for three and three quarters days I'll presume they had the foresight to ensure redundancy.
The Implosion Sound?
In the investigation, it turns out that there was a sound similar to an implosion, right around the time that contact with the submersible was lost. Since that was at the 90 minute mark, the submersible would have been close to three quarters of the way down to the wreck of the Titanic.
However, would it surprise us if we theorise that since one of the principals of OceanGate was on board and probably piloting, that the descent was maybe sped up a bit? That may have put strain on the hull that it normally didn't experience and it imploded. Or perhaps they weren't really watching their descent and pancaked into the seafloor.
The Debris?
Whether the Titan imploded at 3/4 of final depth, at close to final depth, or on impact, can perhaps be established because the rescue ROV has apparently spotted a "debris field" that would be consistent with any of those senarios, and by analysing the pattern and spread of the remnants it would be fairly easy to work out at what altitude above the seafloor the incident had occurred.
The analysts also thought the debris found could well be materials similar to the composition of the Titan.
The Knocking?
Given that they found that debris and say that it looks to be similar to material that you'd expect to find if Titan had imploded, that makes it likely that the crew has perished and the Titan is destroyed. So where did the knock signals come from? The choices here are 1) implosion of the submersible at the 90 minute mark of the mission and loss of all aboard, or 2) the submersible is intact on the surface or the seafloor and someone is alive inside and signalling.
The Stuff We Don't Know.
There are two scenarios and each has a few subvariants.
The knocking signified that the submersible is on the surface or the seafloor and running out of time. I don't believe it could be floating at some intermediate depth just because that would mean it still has manoeuvring capability and should have surfaced once whatever incident they encountered was seen.
Given the loss of contact and a sound that could have been an implosion, my favoured guess is that the submersible did implode at or near target depth and is no more.
That means that the signal knocking was either the imagination of someone listening to the hydrophones, or some spurious noise that appeared to be intelligent signalling, or else an outright fraud committed by someone making such sounds to throw confusion into the search & rescue mission.
Now A Crazy Thought.
- Paul-Henry Nargeolet was one of the people that first explored the Titanic and a French Navy diver.
- Stockton Rush was one of the principals and his wife was related to two people who died on that fateful Titanic voyage.
- Hamish Harding was a business jet trader and significant for his explorations and the records he's set.
- Shahzada Dawood is/was a friend of King Charles.
His son Suleman would be the traditional successor to that line. - Given that the whole history of royalty is more labyrinthine and Byzantine than Machiavelli's deepest plots.
- And given that people close to the throne turn up dead from time to time.
- And also given that - had the most likely scenario occurred - then someone had to have been making the spurious signals in the vicinity, possibly to sow confusion.
So what are the chances that the Titan was deliberately scuttled for some ancient vendetta?
I'm aware of how crazy that sounds. But it's remotely possible so I mention it.
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