2y ago

More presumed human remains recovered from submersible that imploded, killing 5, Coast Guard says

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.

57 comments

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.
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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
  
  You mean that otherwise just fly around in circles despite a supposed pilot shortage? I'm surprised.
- 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.
  
  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.
- How many of years of my teens with teeth that hurt and we are spending money on this.
  
  We have enough wealth in America to afford both, just need the voters to make it happen.
I'm not trying to be insensitive, but I thought the bodies turned to goo. And I assumed that included the bones.
- I’m guessing “presumed human remains” means something close to “goo plus bones, we think”.
  
  The bones would be dust after that shockwave
- I'm guessing a few bits of flesh/goo got wedged in little nooks and crannies in the wreckage. Not very much...
  
  Yeah this is what I thought too. Hard to imagine that whatever paste is left would be able to hold a shape or stay together if it's free floating.
- Given that it’s “presumed” human remains, and needs testing by medical professionals… It sounds like what they found is said goo
- I remember that being said as well
...so what all do we do with the bits of oligarch goo once it's recovered?
- It forms a rich organic compound.
  
  Should we.... eat it?
- Eat the rich?
  
  I don't know... after it's been in the ocean this long? Too salty. I say we feed them to the pigs.
- We prefer the term ooze...
One thing I’ve never found: what are remains like in this situation? Chunks? Entire limbs?
- 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.
  
  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
  
  You are a perfect example of:
  "It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear clueless than open it and remove all doubt."
- 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.
  
  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.
- Human based meat paste product. Goes great on crackers!
- Is this what is meant by "trickle-down" economics?
- Its just a few people, less than 300 kg of organic material. How much sea life could it feed?
Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
- That would be different, knowing your fate was sealed and nothing could be done. But this submarine imploded, and the whole event took a few milliseconds. There was no time to even see the water rushing towards you, it was just going from living breathing person looking out the window, to a puddle of goo with no capacity for thought, in less time than an eye blink.
  
  Yea, this is actually a great way to go. I idea before hand, having a good time doing something fun, and then lights out.

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