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More presumed human remains recovered from submersible that imploded, killing 5, Coast Guard says (apnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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The Coast Guard has recovered remaining debris, including presumed human remains, from a submersible that imploded on its way to explore the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five onboard, deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean’s surface, officials said Tuesday.

The Coast Guard said that the recovery and transfer of remaining parts was completed last Wednesday, and a photo showed the intact aft titanium endcap of the 22-foot (6.7-meter) vessel. Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by U.S. medical professionals, the Coast Guard said.

The salvage mission conducted under an agreement with the U.S. Navy was a follow-up to initial recovery operations on the ocean floor roughly 1,600 feet (488 meters) away from the Titanic, the Coast Guard said.

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[-] krayj@sh.itjust.works 133 points 1 year ago

I had no idea they are still pulling up remains.

The US has already spent millions on search and rescue (it surpassed 1.2 million even before the wreckage was found).

Anyone else love that the ultra rich can book quarter million dollar trips on ridiculous vehicles and then still cost the taxpayers millions.

If you are wealthy enough to book a trip into space or to the bottom of the ocean, then you need to be paying (in advance) for whatever resulting expenses might come out of that....or be required to carry the insurance that will cover it. It's stupid that taxpayers have to pay for this and that the Coast Guard is STILL AT IT...racking up more costs.

[-] jws_shadotak@sh.itjust.works 60 points 1 year ago

To be a little more clear about the cost:

Pilots must fly a minimum number of hours, regardless of what is going on in the world. Adding a mission (such as search and rescue) to those flights is trivial because the man hours, fuel, and maintenance are already allocated.

They may have added to the plans but a lot of the cost is already paid when these things start.

[-] krayj@sh.itjust.works 14 points 1 year ago

That's a single narrow example and does not accurately account for the taxpayer cost of doing this.

When it's reported that the government estimates the cost to be 1.2 million (and that estimate was as of some date back in June - source: https://en.as.com/latest_news/missing-titan-submarine-how-much-does-the-search-and-rescue-mission-cost-and-whos-paying-for-it-n-2/ ) I understand that to mean over and above what their daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly predictable/normal expenses are.

[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

It's part of their mission.

Nothing in that article implies it's over and above their normal budget. It doesn't say either way and the Washington Post article it referenced is paywalled.

Besides this being a large part of why we have the coast guard in the first place, this is a way for them to test their training in a real world mission and see how it works and how it doesn't.

[-] shalafi@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

People don't get this about military exercises and spending. They would already be doing those things and spending that money. Might as well use it when the opportunity arises.

[-] Cleverdawny@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

Also, there's a pretty good chance that data from the imploded submarine can go towards making future submarines safer. But it's harder to get that data without recovery

[-] cordlesslamp@lemmy.today 15 points 1 year ago

It's not a new unproven technology, there's no "data to help future submersible". They CAN make it safe, they're ADVISED to make it safe, they're PROTESTED to make it safe.

But they CHOOSE not to because it's cheaper.

Everyone in-the-know knew it was bad and unsafe and will probably ended in tragedy. They speak up, they protest, and they got punished by the one in charge.

[-] Cleverdawny@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Really

You really want me to think that engineers won't find it useful at all

[-] Tangent5280@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

In some cases that's exactly what happens. This was a known scenario and the failure was predictable.

It would have been different if they followed all industry standards and the sub still failed - that would produce valuable data that could contribute to making our understanding of the science, as well as prevailing industry standards, better.

In cases like this you can gather all the remains and data you want, and analyse it, but only if you want to confirm what we already know - reproducing observations and confirming hypothesis is an important part of science, but everything costs money, and at some point you need to triage the studies you want to put money into.

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[-] Notorious_handholder@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Not the guy you replied to, but... Yeah? There's not a lot of valuable data in that wreckage to be gained. At least not any data that wasn't already anticipated, known about, or already tested prior. Like the previous guy said, a multitude of experts said it was a bad idea. People who worked for the company and spoke up about the issues where fired.

The entire internet mocked the situation because the man had the hubris to think he knew better than decades of scientific and engineering testing and safety of the materials being used. Many engineers even sent letters to the guy telling him to not use certain materials because they are and have been known and proven to fail at the types of pressures, temperatures, and environment he wanted to take them too.

The only valuable data that I can even image being in that wreckage is figuring out what exactly failed first, the window that wasn't rated for that pressure. Or the carbon nanotube hull that engineers already knew would fail since carbon nanotubes are not good at repeated exposure to stress and microfractures and breakages.

There really isn't that much data to be gathered here that hasn't already been tested and proven multitudes of times before. Except maybe seeing how well the game controller held up if they can even find it

[-] Thetimefarm@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

I mean kind of... it's like trying to make a kamikazi plane safer. Literally everyone with a shred of knowlege knew it was going to fail and told him, he just did't listen.

[-] AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

It sounded to me like it was more of arrogance ('I know better than everybody else') than cost cutting. Although the part about not getting the design certified was probably for cost cutting and time saving reasons.

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You mean that otherwise just fly around in circles despite a supposed pilot shortage? I'm surprised.

[-] meco03211@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Of there's no legitimate reason to fly, then yes.

[-] Son_of_dad@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

Why are they spending more money on this? The remains are just as hard to reach as the bodies on a mountain, and we know what happened.

[-] brygphilomena@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Training. Putting their training against a real world experience and seeing where it holds up and where it doesn't.

Because they have to do something. It's not like they just sit there with their dicks in their hands all day.

[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

It’s not like they just sit there with their dicks in their hands all day.

The U.S. Navy?? You didn't think we call them seamen cuz of the water, did you?

[-] atetulo@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago

It’s not like they just sit there with their dicks in their hands all day.

I mean, if there's not a job to be done then what are we paying them for? They can find some other way to be useful to society in the interim.

Why are we giving them bullshit tasks just so they can be occupied and take up resources?

[-] lightnsfw@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

I would rather we pay them to sit around with their dicks in their hands than to look for thos stupid submarine.

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[-] afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

How many of years of my teens with teeth that hurt and we are spending money on this.

[-] kobra@lemm.ee 6 points 1 year ago

We have enough wealth in America to afford both, just need the voters to make it happen.

[-] robocall@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago

I'm not trying to be insensitive, but I thought the bodies turned to goo. And I assumed that included the bones.

[-] TheColonel@reddthat.com 36 points 1 year ago

I’m guessing “presumed human remains” means something close to “goo plus bones, we think”.

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[-] meldroc@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm guessing a few bits of flesh/goo got wedged in little nooks and crannies in the wreckage. Not very much...

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[-] BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 1 year ago

Given that it’s “presumed” human remains, and needs testing by medical professionals… It sounds like what they found is said goo

[-] Steveanonymous@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

I remember that being said as well

[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 27 points 1 year ago

...so what all do we do with the bits of oligarch goo once it's recovered?

[-] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 22 points 1 year ago

It forms a rich organic compound.

[-] Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Should we.... eat it?

[-] bradorsomething@ttrpg.network 12 points 1 year ago

It might be a little too rich for your palate.

[-] BluJay320@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago

We’ve been saying it all this time… It would be wrong not to

[-] Fades@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Eat the rich?

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I don't know... after it's been in the ocean this long? Too salty. I say we feed them to the pigs.

[-] Dorgel@feddit.de 7 points 1 year ago

We prefer the term ooze...

[-] stolid_agnostic@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 year ago

One thing I’ve never found: what are remains like in this situation? Chunks? Entire limbs?

[-] SeaJ@lemm.ee 18 points 1 year ago

Well it was about 400 atmospheres of pressure. The bodies would have been cooked like in a pressure cooker and then turned into a gel. Maybe some of the thicker bones did not turn into paste though.

[-] Natanael@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago

It's very brief though, only the outer layer is likely to have been heated notably due to rapid compression. The bones would turn to dust from the pressure

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[-] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 11 points 1 year ago

I would imagine something similar to the worst of the Byford Dolphin decompression accident, which was a torso and large limbs crushed to the point of being almost unrecognizable with internal organs and some chunks of soft tissue separated from the body. Photos of that exist and you can find the relevant research paper by googling "Byford Dolphin Autopsy," but seriously those pictures are gruesome. In the case of the Titan, because the hull was compromised, large portions of those bodies were probably lost to the sea.

[-] Dogyote@slrpnk.net 11 points 1 year ago

I read the report you mentioned and I don't think this accident is a good comparison because the people in the Titan went from 1 atm to 400 atm while the victims of the Byford Dolphin accident went from 9 atm of pressure to 1 atm. Three (possibly four) of them were intact and died because all the fat in the blood suddenly precipitated, completely stopping circulation. Another guy was blasted through an opening that was much smaller than he, and was very much discombobulated as a result.

There's an order of magnitude difference between the incidents in pressure differentials and it was more like an instantaneous compression in the Titan than an explosive decompression like the Dolphin. So whatever happened in the Titan probably left an entirely different mess than that seen in the dolphin autopsy.

[-] Chetzemoka@startrek.website 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

something similar to the worst of the Byford Dolphin

That's why I qualified my statement. I think the fourth victim is probably the closest analog we have decent reference for. (No one was ever recovered from the Thresher, which also wasn't at this same level of pressure as Titan when it imploded.)

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[-] NegativeLookBehind@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

Human based meat paste product. Goes great on crackers!

[-] droidpenguin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

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this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023

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