Comment by ethbr0
3 years ago
Yes. "Missing"
Assuming it sunk, it'll be order of week before it's found. It'll be order of month before it's raised, if it can be. And then after analysis we might know why it sunk.
+60 hours after lost contact, while there are possibly still people alive inside the vehicle, seems premature and crass to be casting accusations for internet points.
They claim the vehicle has consumables to last 4 days, so while it’s a little premature at 3 days in to declare it’s over, if you have an injured person that requires an EMT and the ambulance won’t get there until the situation devolves…
In these situations you don’t do everything you can because it will change the outcome. You do everything you can so that someday soon you’ll be able to look at yourself in the mirror while you brush your teeth. So you can sleep at night.
I haven’t been in this bad of a situation, but I’ve been in plenty where people second guessed themselves or someone else for years even decades after. Everyone has to get to “enough” on their own terms or it festers.
So we are letting a bunch of people figure it out. If a miracle happens, awesome. But unless they’re all trance meditating down there and have Wim Hoff hypothermia training it’s not good.
The fact that they can’t even find it is in part because they didn’t outfit it with any capability to send a distress signal. They lost it multiple times but never added a radio beacon or anything.
Sonar beacon. Radio is useless underwater.
It reportedly has radar reflectors and radio, for when it's on the surface.
At 3800 m+ underwater, it'd need to be a powerful beacon. Even most military sonar maxes out around half that.
It's possible that it's floating just under the surface, in which case the radar reflectors won't help. Radar also isn't necessarily _great_ at finding anything bobbing in waves, as water will itself reflect radar.
Additionally, if the problem was a power outage then the radio also might not work unless it had a separate power supply.
Emergency beacons cost a few hundred dollars and are designed for this purpose, not having one is pure negligence.
If they're on the bottom of the ocean then even if they're found a rescue is unlikely to happen in time.
Couldn't you have a beacon that detaches from the vehicle, floats up to the surface and transmits the signal from there?
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