this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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Unless they are coming up on their own, it takes about 2.5 hours to get down to the wreck, and what I've read online is that these subs carry like edit:12 hours of oxygen. Docs on the submarine show 96 hours of oxygen, this was wrong of me to guess
They need to get a towing vessel to the area, they need to get the rescue sub down to the bottom, winch up, and get back up. 6 hours of work once you're there. That means they have less than 4.5 hours to get on station. It's 1000 miles from Boston. Ain't no ship in the world sailing at under 200 knots.
Bad news only from this. They gotta get up on their own.
You don’t think the host ship they depart from has an emergency vessel ?
I'd hope that they would, but if they are relying on the coast guard to help out, they aren't gonna get there in time
I've read a probable scenario about accidents with small DSVs in the book Below(Edit) the Edge of Darkness (about marine biology of bioluminescence and the tech developed by the author to film/record it):
There was a small leak in a valve, used for emergency operation IIRC and the author noticed that going down - she was still light enough to ascend but she said had she been a few hundred meters deeper, she never would have made it back up due to the extra weight.
What you're describing is similar to the leading theory for what happened to the USS Thresher. Flooding occurred and then when the sub went to emergency blow its ballast to surface, ice formed in the piping blocking the pressurized release of ballast water, causing the sub to sink uncontrollably. There's a good gif doing a better job explaining it on the wiki. Interestingly, the evidence used to determine this theory was gathered by Robert Ballard the famous oceanographer who then went on to be the first to find the remains of the Titanic. It all come full circle!
The whole Ballard titanic story thing is closely related to the Thesher. He was being funded by the navy to find the thresher under the cover of searching for the titanic. Ballard convinced them to allow him to use some of the time, provided he found the thresher, to Actually look for the titanic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Thresher_(SSN-593)
Eh, here's a question from the bbc article in question:
they must have edited it since then. I have updated my post to reflect the actual info
Great! I'd still not at all want to be stuck there. Also, just loosing contact with the sub feels like a majorly bad sign.
Id say that it indicates a catastrophic failure most likely, a far more preferable fate if you ask me rather than sitting on the bottom waiting for air to run out.
Oh totally, I'd rather die quickly in a submarine than slowly. Another reason to not be in a submarine.
The BBC article says the sub usually dives with a 4 day supply of oxygen.
BBC article must have been edited since my original post. I have edited my post to reflect the new info.
The issue is less the oxygen and more the carbon dioxide removal. assuming the sun has good scrubbers to clean out the co2 then okay, however it can depend how they are powered. There are comparisons to the Apollo 13 situation here.