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What really bothers me about the coverage of this, and I'm not totally anti media etc, was that nobody mentioned on the fact that the tracking system lost conta

What really bothers me about the coverage of this, and I'm not totally anti media etc, was that nobody mentioned on the fact that the tracking system lost contact also. It was only mentioned that the communications was lost, if there had of been media mentioning that the tracking device also lost contact, I think a lot of people would have recognised straight await that it was a critical collapse. No deep gauge device loses contact from distances <4000M unless it was exploded. I feel bad for the families given some false hope, I didn't personally think they would be found, but did believe they were suffering a far worse way to go.

bradstewart 3y ago
Power loss?
- bilekas 3y ago
  Power loss is a real stretch to happen at the same time of communications, I understand that the coms to fail is a non-zero chance of failing, it happens. A transponder is super rare on it's own, but when they both go at the same time, protocol dictates you declare an emergency straight await (the top-side cnc). Not that it would have made a difference, but they certainly would have told the coast guard all of this. Even after waiting FAR too long IMO.
  - activiation 3y ago
    Comms need power...
    - bilekas 3y ago
      Yes indeed, but the transponder itself is a self-powered device, they are battery powered when needed and those batteries are usually no joke from the ones I've encountered, as it should be. Specific times I'm not sure. I'll link one I have worked extensively with. They are designed to be extremely fault tolerant with a lot of redundancy and fail safes. It's genuinely extremely hard to not notice it losing power. V5 https://www.sonardyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sonardyne_compatt_5-_-mini.pdf https://www.sonardyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sonardy... Edit: Battery Life (Listening, Disabled) 417 days (Lithium) 417 days (Lithium) It's actually longer than I even imagined. And this is an old version I believe.
      - themoonisachees 3y ago
        The thing uses Bluetooth for mission-critical controls, so maybe assuming that they implemented best practices is not exactly correct.
        archagon 3y ago
        The Logitech controller they used uses a proprietary wireless dongle, not BT. No pairing is involved.
        activiation 3y ago
        But a lot of owners of this controller had serious issues with it.
        catiopatio 3y ago
        Why is that notable? I wouldn’t expect it to be more reliable - or less likely to cause harmful interference — than using Bluetooth.
        archagon 3y ago
        I just see this mistake a lot. I own this controller, and as long as it's reasonably close to the dongle, the connection is rock-solid. No disconnections as you would get with a bonafide Bluetooth link -- the dongle is paired to the controller out of the box.
        scarab92 3y ago
        The fascination with the gaming controller is a bit silly. It's not safety critical like the ability to drop ballast is. If something goes wrong with it you just kill propulsive power, resurface, and replace it. Also more engineering effort will have gone into making the controller reliable by its manufacturer than most would want to be able to justify spending creating something custom.
        bilekas 3y ago
        > The thing uses Bluetooth for mission-critical controls Mission critical - I'm not a marine, but as I heard they did have redundancies for buoyancy. If the best of the worst happened, I would guess they would have surfaced pretty soon..
crazygringo 3y ago
Can you expand? To a layman like myself, tracking is part of communications and it seemed clear there was no tracking because they didn't know where the sub was. What is the specific type of tracking device you're referring to? What signals does it emit? And if overall power was lost, for example, why wouldn't the tracking stop just like communications stopped?
- nicce 3y ago
  Both will be lost at the same time. We don't really know such signal. Submarines cannot communicate more hundred meters in the bottom of sea. Sea water absorbs the signal quite well. When the signal is lost, the expectation is that the submarine is under the water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines
  - bilekas 3y ago
    > When the signal is lost, the expectation is that the submarine is under the water. Yes! This is true, I would just like to clarify that there is a difference between 'coms' and 'transponder' here. Some friends of mine conflate the two and think they are almost on the same 'circuit'. In most cases of the Sub (specifically military because there are not many tourist subs), you don't WANT to be located unless in an emergency, whereas here in this situation you most certainly do and in that case you can be located by way of the transponder. Th
  - krisoft 3y ago
    > Submarines cannot communicate more hundred meters in the bottom of sea. Sorry if I am misunderstanding you. It sounds like you are saying that it is impossible to design a system which would be able to keep in contact with the submarine/submersible all the way down to the bottom? Because if that is what you are saying that is simply false. We have the technology to keep in contact with a submarine all the way to the bottom of even the deepest oceans. This is not even speculative. We know it is possible because James Cameron had full communication during his dive all the way to the deepest point on earth. Here is a really cool article about the technical challenges with that system: https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/communications-to-the-deepest-point-on-earth https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/communic...
mattacular 3y ago
Based on accounts of previous voyages it didn't sound like it had a tracking system. They relied on text communication with a ship topside for navigation (and got lost for several hours on a past voyage - while still in communication with the operators).
- kzrdude 3y ago
  Host ship was doing their navigation for them, they must have had some tracking to be able to do that I think
  - mattacular 3y ago
    One would think!
ApolloFortyNine 3y ago
More than that, one report mentioned the US Navy notified the search teams that they heard an explosion Sunday night and used it to limit the search area. The US Navy has literally has experience detecting underwater explosions (see project Azorian). It's not guaranteed of course, but any loud sound near the point of contact loss seems pretty open shut. Imo, it made a more interesting story in a slow news cycle. How many people died in car accidents the last few days? Has to be more than 5.
- yreg 3y ago
  It's not entirely the media's fault that people are drawn into this topic even though it's fairly unimportant as you say. Take a look at /r/worldnews, users consistently chose to upvote all stories about Titan to the top of the page.
  - Auracle 3y ago
    Reddit upvoting rich people dying from something extravagant? No, never.
    - ncann 3y ago
      That's too cynical. I'm sure if it was 5 unknown poor people or 5 random people the interest would have been the same. People just love following search and rescue stories, that's all there is to it. E.g. the Thailand Cave rescue, or the various mining-related rescues, the interest is always high.
      - _yb2s 3y ago
        No, it seems to me that Reddit broadly has a culture of hatred for specific groups they blame for most of the world's problems: boomers, and the extremely wealthy.
        sacnoradhq 3y ago
        Who are most culpable for the decades of profiteering, coverup, and disinformation propaganda campaign of extractive industries that contribute the most to climate change? It's not you or I but the extremely wealthy. It seems more that you're white knighting for a phony "victim" class who should be both in prison and sued to recover damages they've wrought.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
goodbyesf 3y ago
> I feel bad for the families given some false hope And for the general public. The headlines I saw implied that they were hearing sounds and these people could be rescued. Turns out it was a lost cause from the get go.
YLYvYkHeB2NRNT 3y ago
The cynic in me whispers that the alphabet media were told what really happened, but said, wait a minute... We can milk this. Here's the narrative for the next few days...
- mulmen 3y ago
  That doesn't make you a cynic, it makes you a conspiracy theorist.
  - LanceH 3y ago
    Not because any one of them would be against doing something like that, but no one of them could resist breaking it themselves.
  - bdowling 3y ago
    Being a conspiracy theorist doesn’t make you wrong, it means you believe that the likely motivations or interests of various parties are likely the actual cause of the observed behavior, even when there is no proof. Here, news outlets probably would have been motivated to carry the “hope” story even if they knew it was false, because money. A conspiracy theorist would believe that because the news outlets probably would have been so motivated, then they probably actually were so motivated.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
EdwardDiego 3y ago
I can't believe they can operate this as a paid trip, I guess international law has a loophole
ziml77 3y ago
I just saw an interview with James Cameron about the incident and he said from the info he had it was clear that the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion. He says he stayed silent on the matter because it wasn't his place to say anything contrary to what the search teams were saying, but he was upset that the families were being given false hope. And I certainly agree that it was terrible for the search team to manage to both give the families hope and make them even more worried at the idea of their loved ones suffering.
animal531 3y ago
I just watched the James Cameron clip and he mentioned that he heard on Monday that both were lost simultaneously. For those that don't know, the tracking system runs in its own environment with its own battery, so if both are lost then that means its 99% an implosion. He also mentioned that they reached out to civ/military nets and confirmed the noise event.

bradstewart 3y ago

Power loss?

bilekas 3y ago
Power loss is a real stretch to happen at the same time of communications, I understand that the coms to fail is a non-zero chance of failing, it happens. A transponder is super rare on it's own, but when they both go at the same time, protocol dictates you declare an emergency straight await (the top-side cnc). Not that it would have made a difference, but they certainly would have told the coast guard all of this. Even after waiting FAR too long IMO.
- activiation 3y ago
  Comms need power...
  - bilekas 3y ago
    Yes indeed, but the transponder itself is a self-powered device, they are battery powered when needed and those batteries are usually no joke from the ones I've encountered, as it should be. Specific times I'm not sure. I'll link one I have worked extensively with. They are designed to be extremely fault tolerant with a lot of redundancy and fail safes. It's genuinely extremely hard to not notice it losing power. V5 https://www.sonardyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sonardyne_compatt_5-_-mini.pdf https://www.sonardyne.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sonardy... Edit: Battery Life (Listening, Disabled) 417 days (Lithium) 417 days (Lithium) It's actually longer than I even imagined. And this is an old version I believe.
    - themoonisachees 3y ago
      The thing uses Bluetooth for mission-critical controls, so maybe assuming that they implemented best practices is not exactly correct.
      - archagon 3y ago
        The Logitech controller they used uses a proprietary wireless dongle, not BT. No pairing is involved.
        activiation 3y ago
        But a lot of owners of this controller had serious issues with it.
        catiopatio 3y ago
        Why is that notable? I wouldn’t expect it to be more reliable - or less likely to cause harmful interference — than using Bluetooth.
        archagon 3y ago
        I just see this mistake a lot. I own this controller, and as long as it's reasonably close to the dongle, the connection is rock-solid. No disconnections as you would get with a bonafide Bluetooth link -- the dongle is paired to the controller out of the box.
        scarab92 3y ago
        The fascination with the gaming controller is a bit silly. It's not safety critical like the ability to drop ballast is. If something goes wrong with it you just kill propulsive power, resurface, and replace it. Also more engineering effort will have gone into making the controller reliable by its manufacturer than most would want to be able to justify spending creating something custom.
      - bilekas 3y ago
        > The thing uses Bluetooth for mission-critical controls Mission critical - I'm not a marine, but as I heard they did have redundancies for buoyancy. If the best of the worst happened, I would guess they would have surfaced pretty soon..

crazygringo 3y ago

Can you expand? To a layman like myself, tracking is part of communications and it seemed clear there was no tracking because they didn't know where the sub was. What is the specific type of tracking device you're referring to? What signals does it emit? And if overall power was lost, for example, why wouldn't the tracking stop just like communications stopped?

nicce 3y ago
Both will be lost at the same time. We don't really know such signal. Submarines cannot communicate more hundred meters in the bottom of sea. Sea water absorbs the signal quite well. When the signal is lost, the expectation is that the submarine is under the water. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines
- bilekas 3y ago
  > When the signal is lost, the expectation is that the submarine is under the water. Yes! This is true, I would just like to clarify that there is a difference between 'coms' and 'transponder' here. Some friends of mine conflate the two and think they are almost on the same 'circuit'. In most cases of the Sub (specifically military because there are not many tourist subs), you don't WANT to be located unless in an emergency, whereas here in this situation you most certainly do and in that case you can be located by way of the transponder. Th
- krisoft 3y ago
  > Submarines cannot communicate more hundred meters in the bottom of sea. Sorry if I am misunderstanding you. It sounds like you are saying that it is impossible to design a system which would be able to keep in contact with the submarine/submersible all the way down to the bottom? Because if that is what you are saying that is simply false. We have the technology to keep in contact with a submarine all the way to the bottom of even the deepest oceans. This is not even speculative. We know it is possible because James Cameron had full communication during his dive all the way to the deepest point on earth. Here is a really cool article about the technical challenges with that system: https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/communications-to-the-deepest-point-on-earth https://www.hydro-international.com/content/article/communic...

mattacular 3y ago

Based on accounts of previous voyages it didn't sound like it had a tracking system. They relied on text communication with a ship topside for navigation (and got lost for several hours on a past voyage - while still in communication with the operators).

kzrdude 3y ago
Host ship was doing their navigation for them, they must have had some tracking to be able to do that I think
- mattacular 3y ago
  One would think!

ApolloFortyNine 3y ago

More than that, one report mentioned the US Navy notified the search teams that they heard an explosion Sunday night and used it to limit the search area. The US Navy has literally has experience detecting underwater explosions (see project Azorian). It's not guaranteed of course, but any loud sound near the point of contact loss seems pretty open shut. Imo, it made a more interesting story in a slow news cycle. How many people died in car accidents the last few days? Has to be more than 5.

yreg 3y ago
It's not entirely the media's fault that people are drawn into this topic even though it's fairly unimportant as you say. Take a look at /r/worldnews, users consistently chose to upvote all stories about Titan to the top of the page.
- Auracle 3y ago
  Reddit upvoting rich people dying from something extravagant? No, never.
  - ncann 3y ago
    That's too cynical. I'm sure if it was 5 unknown poor people or 5 random people the interest would have been the same. People just love following search and rescue stories, that's all there is to it. E.g. the Thailand Cave rescue, or the various mining-related rescues, the interest is always high.
    - _yb2s 3y ago
      No, it seems to me that Reddit broadly has a culture of hatred for specific groups they blame for most of the world's problems: boomers, and the extremely wealthy.
      - sacnoradhq 3y ago
        Who are most culpable for the decades of profiteering, coverup, and disinformation propaganda campaign of extractive industries that contribute the most to climate change? It's not you or I but the extremely wealthy. It seems more that you're white knighting for a phony "victim" class who should be both in prison and sued to recover damages they've wrought.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

goodbyesf 3y ago

> I feel bad for the families given some false hope And for the general public. The headlines I saw implied that they were hearing sounds and these people could be rescued. Turns out it was a lost cause from the get go.

YLYvYkHeB2NRNT 3y ago

The cynic in me whispers that the alphabet media were told what really happened, but said, wait a minute... We can milk this. Here's the narrative for the next few days...

mulmen 3y ago
That doesn't make you a cynic, it makes you a conspiracy theorist.
- LanceH 3y ago
  Not because any one of them would be against doing something like that, but no one of them could resist breaking it themselves.
- bdowling 3y ago
  Being a conspiracy theorist doesn’t make you wrong, it means you believe that the likely motivations or interests of various parties are likely the actual cause of the observed behavior, even when there is no proof. Here, news outlets probably would have been motivated to carry the “hope” story even if they knew it was false, because money. A conspiracy theorist would believe that because the news outlets probably would have been so motivated, then they probably actually were so motivated.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

EdwardDiego 3y ago

I can't believe they can operate this as a paid trip, I guess international law has a loophole

ziml77 3y ago

I just saw an interview with James Cameron about the incident and he said from the info he had it was clear that the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion. He says he stayed silent on the matter because it wasn't his place to say anything contrary to what the search teams were saying, but he was upset that the families were being given false hope. And I certainly agree that it was terrible for the search team to manage to both give the families hope and make them even more worried at the idea of their loved ones suffering.

animal531 3y ago

I just watched the James Cameron clip and he mentioned that he heard on Monday that both were lost simultaneously. For those that don't know, the tracking system runs in its own environment with its own battery, so if both are lost then that means its 99% an implosion. He also mentioned that they reached out to civ/military nets and confirmed the noise event.