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.

  • krayj@sh.itjust.works
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    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
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      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
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        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
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          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
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            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.

      • solrize@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

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

    • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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      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
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        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
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          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
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          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
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          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.

      • kobra@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

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

  • robocall@lemmy.world
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    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.

  • stolid_agnostic
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    1 year ago

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

    • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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      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
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        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

      • elucubra@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        You are a perfect example of:

        “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear clueless than open it and remove all doubt.”

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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      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
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        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
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          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.)

        • Meldroc@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yeah, that 400 bar decompression would be like being inside an exploding bomb (except exploding in). Instantly turned into a smoothie.

    • brianorca@lemmy.world
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      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.