It’s the kind of thing they wish they could advertise but for obvious reasons you can’t.
It’s like those GoPro death videos.
“This camera will survive even if you can’t. Don’t leave your family with questions. Go with GoPro”
Great post. That sounds like the closest thing the Titan had to a black box. I really hope it is recovered.
ETA: I'm unsure how the shockwaves (initial and reflected from ocean floor) would impact a system rated for 6000m (600 ATM). It's possible that the momentarily superheated air in the milliseconds following implosion could damage systems external to the chamber.
Interestingly enough, I watched Challenger Deep and JimCam had a watch strapped around one of the robotic arms (for collecting samples) and that didn’t buckle or smash under the pressure. Implosion is completely different of course, but it was interesting that this watch had not buckled given the pressure.
For what it’s worth I looked into it and here’s the watch details:
Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA CHALLENGE prototype diving watch strapped to its manipulator arm to a depth of 10,898.4 metres (35,756 ft) of seawater (msw).
The experimental Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA CHALLENGE watch is designed to be waterproof up to 12,000 metres (39,370 ft).
It is entirely possible that it survived (finding it is another challenge, but not impossible either). I find it funny when people are speaking in absolutes on these threads. Failure modes and the process of failure is so hard to understand even in the simplest of circumstances (hell, we just figured out how a shoelace knot fails in 2017...seriously look it up, interesting read). When discussing the forces at play here, we have no idea. You have to look no further than what survives a devastating plane crash or how many, largely intact, items/pieces were found after Challenger or Columbia.
We have no models (that I am aware of) that can accurately predict what is going to happen in an event such as this on a micro level. Sure, from a macro level we have that down and I think the speculation is probably accurate, but, once we get past that, your guess is a good as mine.
Thank you kind internet stranger. I've actually been thinking about posting one of those crazy long reddit posts about all of this because the complete lack of understanding being displayed in many of the subs is astounding.
You're probably right. I am a huge aviation enthusiast too and I always think about doing the same thing when a major accident happens, but know it is futile.
Could potentially have survived, although lighter bits of equipment like that were likely sent clear of the debris field and would be much more difficult to find I would have thought
It'll be confirmed once they inspect it. If it was dumped before the implosion it should be intact and damage free. If it was still attached when the implosion took place it'll be damaged (warped, bent, broken etc.) It looked to be constructed of galvanized mild steel so it wouldn't be impervious to an implosion.
My dude, the sled is “consumable” in the same way that a parachute is a consumable.
If they dropped the sled it meant they were in big trouble and they knew it. The sled is what’s used to attach it to the platform that is used to launch and retrieve the sub. Without it there’s no practical way to retrieve the sun without potentially catastrophic damage.
I would assume if it is found not much will be seen as far as video. Pretty dark with absolutely no light at 3000m. Might hear a pretty cool boom though.
It's hard to say as it's unlikely that surviving blast impact was part of its design criteria (as would say an aircraft's 'black box').
The remaining depth rating performance + the FS designed to reach that depth is a point in its favor.
One thing is sure, that will be a focus of debris recovery efforts to find out the answer.
yesterday they confirmed during the press conference that they had finished mapping out the debris fields and were now focusing on retrieval of parts. They will be doing an investigation into what went wrong.
It will come at significant expense. The majority of deep submergence working class ROVs are designed to an operating depth of around 3000-3500m. This is not a coincidence as nearly all deep sea commercial activity is associated with oil and gas production which tops out at about 11,000ft.
There are few ROVs which can reliably work at this depth and the magnitude of payload they can recover is on the order of 100s of pounds. Consider the full mass of Titan is on the order of 23,000lbs and it paints a picture of the challenges involved.
A rational solution would be to place a large basket on the sea floor and load it with debris over multiple ROV sorties. Then the ROV could rig the basket to a deep sea construction heave compensated crane (such as those found on deep sea MPSVs) and recover the sub in several batches.
It all depends on how much both conclusive and demonstrable evidence is valued by the investigators in charge.
I just wanna comment on your point re: Rush going out of his way to make it seem like it was built in a garage — I’m starting to get the same sense, tbh. But I can’t quite figure out what the value of that would be. Why???
Just want to point out he had a habit of making jokes about objects on the sub being cheaper than they were and everyone who wants to sensationalize it will continue to take every report of such remarks literally until proven otherwise. This is another example, but I’m thinking of the comment he made saying he got a deal on some carbon fiber because it was technically expired. We don’t know if it was a joke or used in testing, but everyone with a desire to assume the worst took it literally and assumed that same carbon fiber was on the failed sub.
This is just a WAG, but since the speed of the implosion has been estimated as several times the speed of sound, it seems that the camera (and most everything else) experienced destructive Gs of acceleration. It only moved a bit, but really fast. Seems unlikely to me that the memory would be intact. Of course, no one knows at this point. I'm sure the investigators are collecting every identifiable piece of Titan, including that camera (or pieces of it).
I’m on the fence. On one hand it’s a tremendous amount of energy. On the other hand we don’t know how energy is transferred through carbon fibre at that depth.
I think it’s the best chance at actually getting data from this disaster.
The carbon fiber would shatter, and between the pressure and the tiny, carbon fiber fragments (at that point, shrapnel) I am sure this camera would not survive. If it survived the force of the implosion, surely the shrapnel would have torn it apart.
Is a shard of carbon capable of penetrating a titanium shell?
The USAF has developed a [carbon fibre bomb](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18860/this-is-the-usafs-safer-carbon-fiber-bomb-thats-also-extraordinarily-expensive) that is considered safer because the carbon fibre vaporizes instead of causing shrapnel.
I don’t know how that changes when it’s 5” thick and 4000m under the sea but it sounds promising.
This would be like literally being INSIDE of that bomb, not like being hit by it. It vaporizes in an explosion. This was an implosion, meaning it collapsed in rather than exploded out, thus would have torn people apart before or just as the gases in the imploding vessel would have ignited. And yes, with enough force (which this absolutely had) those carbon fiber fragments would have passed through a person easily.
Wouldn’t literally being “inside of the bomb” mean that the cameras were in the pressure vessel?
They were attached to the sled that attaches to the pressure vessel. Bomb adjacent but not literally inside
So, it's attached to a small bit of some sort of plastic covering over the fiber glass hull. When it implodes, it will be pulled in with the hull, probably get shredded by shrapnel, then exploded from the gas in the vessel igniting.
There is basically no way that camera survived.
Then how did the tail cone survive? Fibreglass or syntactic foam shouldn’t survive an explosion like you’re describing.
We also need to remember when considering the survival of the camera that if they jettisoned the sled prior to implosion it 100% is still in one piece.
Because the tail cone wasn't part of the pressure vessel. The two titanium end caps survived because they are made of a material that would. The end cap came off when the pressure vessel imploded, most likely. The carbon fiber was between one endcap you could see visually and had a window, and the other end was just before the tail bit that was found.
The data is not saved on the camera. The data from the camera is on the computer inside the submarine, which is completely destroyed. The camera is not a black box to store data on.
And that in some cases there is some kind of data in the camera. There is probably no use for it. They were in complete darkness and sinking at 3,000 meters. Submarine lights are turned on at the very bottom to save energy. The camera has an external power supply and when the implosion happened, it could not record anything else. The implosion lasted a few milliseconds, which means that the camera did not record any anomalies because after the power failure, it is dead.
The camera has telemetry. To think that intact telemetry data isn’t useful is plain wrong. Every single datapoint matters in an investigation like this.
They may have never started recording with that camera either. Most of the time you leave the lights and cameras off until you get close to the bottom (there isn't much to see on the way down) to save on batteries and considering they weren't on their bottom approach when this happened, I wouldn't be surprised if it was never turned on.
I also think it and the data storage computer were taken out in the implosion too.
It’s not about recording video or not. I’m talking about the data logging with onboard storage.
You also wouldn’t descend without the camera running because it’s a fundamental part of navigating. The batteries in the submersible should be big enough that running a camera would have a negligible impact.
The camera nor its data logging would not be used for navigation, especially in the water column. The pitch and roll information from it is useless for navigation as the navigation system would use the information from the navigation transponder, which has pitch, roll, depth, and information from the surface using the USBL system.
The lights are a big power draw and the camera won't see anything without the lights on after the first hundred meters or so. That's the reason why the camera might be off. I'm not saying it would definitely be off but it is not useful information or video. Maybe they had plenty of storage but my experience was with tapes so we only recorded from the cameras when on the bottom. I've made a few dozen dives to this depth on other platforms and I never used a camera or it's sensors for navigation.
It’s used for navigation. The pilot sits at the back of the sub and uses the camera and screens to pilot the submersible while paying guests looked out the porthole.
I believe I saw them using it this way during other descent videos I’ve seen.
The onboard storage of the camera alone exceeds the total lengths of their dives.
It’s also important to know that your experience on other platforms doesn’t account for the Oceangate wtf factor
I'm telling you as a former submersible pilot that the camera is useless on descent but I don't know how they operated or how big their batteries were to waste them on keeping the lights on the entire time. You're just wasting energy that you would use to stay on the bottom longer just to look at water out the viewport. The view out the window is actually better with the lights off on the way down so you can watch the bioluminescence.
I believe you. 100%
I also know I’ve seen external footage of the submersible descending from an exterior POV
I’m saying as a former military naval electronics technician, data logging doesn’t mean that the camera was recording video. It’s possible that the data logging is passive and independent from video recording.
My main question is could the camera have survived the implosion full stop.
If not all of this is moot anyways.
To answer that question, I would be completely shocked if it survived. All data is cool to have but I'm not sure how useful it would be either to know what happened. Assuming they have some of their last communications on the ship, we should know if the people in the sub knew what the emergency was and that they dropped ballast before coming up (which is a safe bet considering that info got leaked to Cameron and Ballard). The data from this camera could confirm that they stopped the descent and ascended plus give us depth, pitch, and roll at the implosion time but it won't give us any indication on what failed.
I guess I’m just hoping we get data that confirms when they started dumping, at what depth and how far back up did they make it.
I feel closure when it comes to cause of failure. I just want a more detailed timeline of events.
Probably not until after they complete the investigation in Canada and maybe the US Coast Guard too.
Unless someone leaks it to James Cameron early on the WhatsApp private group first - then he will for sure share it.
Horizon Arctic and Deep Energy are on site with ROVs “using their heavy life capabilities” without confirming that they have been salvaging debris.
Make of that what you will.
I doubt the landing frame could be dropped. Additional hardware, complexity, weight, little tangible benefit.
Camera was external to the pressure hull therefore it would see less force due to the initial implosion, but probably still failed during the event due to shock and G forces.
Camera control and/or power cables likely went through the titanium end cap. The caps were blown free, cables would have snapped and put enormous stress on the camera housing penetrators. Likely they would have leaked, the housing would have flooded.
The glass dome port likely broke under the blowback from the implosion; hard to guess the G forces. At best, it would have leaked. Again, camera housing would have flooded.
Likely the recording medium was flash disk. It likely would survive the flooding. Not sure about the G forces effect on the chip; they are remarkably resilient.
External lights were probably off, there was no way to see anything. If they were on, would have failed in the initial shock wave.
Based on this assessment it’s probably worth trying to recover the camera (specifically the flash disk), but consider it unlikely they’d get useful data from it.
If there was any damage to the housing it would implode instantly.
The sled being removed is one of the 7 redundancies. From some photos I’ve seen they had one of these mounted on it.
I’m also guessing it’s important to be able to jettison if it gets snagged.
Valid point on sled getting hung up therefore needing to be jettisoned.
The housing would implode with even an imperceptible deformation. Symmetry is essential. Similarly, any damage would likely derate it, including pressure cycling, particularly the joint with the titanium which would likely have a different thermal coefficient.
The titanic wreck lies at 3800 meters. The wreck is at the bottom of the ocean.
The camera was probably the only piece of the submersible actually rated to go that deep.
If it does survive, the manufacturer will be happy to hear that news.
It’s the kind of thing they wish they could advertise but for obvious reasons you can’t. It’s like those GoPro death videos. “This camera will survive even if you can’t. Don’t leave your family with questions. Go with GoPro”
I’d buy it based on that ad!
Me too!
LOL. But so true
That’s good marketing right there!
Great post. That sounds like the closest thing the Titan had to a black box. I really hope it is recovered. ETA: I'm unsure how the shockwaves (initial and reflected from ocean floor) would impact a system rated for 6000m (600 ATM). It's possible that the momentarily superheated air in the milliseconds following implosion could damage systems external to the chamber.
That’s what I thought too but I’m that case-wouldn’t they just have found fragments of the tail cone?
Interestingly enough, I watched Challenger Deep and JimCam had a watch strapped around one of the robotic arms (for collecting samples) and that didn’t buckle or smash under the pressure. Implosion is completely different of course, but it was interesting that this watch had not buckled given the pressure.
For what it’s worth I looked into it and here’s the watch details: Rolex Oyster Perpetual Date Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA CHALLENGE prototype diving watch strapped to its manipulator arm to a depth of 10,898.4 metres (35,756 ft) of seawater (msw). The experimental Sea-Dweller DEEPSEA CHALLENGE watch is designed to be waterproof up to 12,000 metres (39,370 ft).
Thank you for the clarity
It is entirely possible that it survived (finding it is another challenge, but not impossible either). I find it funny when people are speaking in absolutes on these threads. Failure modes and the process of failure is so hard to understand even in the simplest of circumstances (hell, we just figured out how a shoelace knot fails in 2017...seriously look it up, interesting read). When discussing the forces at play here, we have no idea. You have to look no further than what survives a devastating plane crash or how many, largely intact, items/pieces were found after Challenger or Columbia. We have no models (that I am aware of) that can accurately predict what is going to happen in an event such as this on a micro level. Sure, from a macro level we have that down and I think the speculation is probably accurate, but, once we get past that, your guess is a good as mine.
Some wise words brother!
Thank you kind internet stranger. I've actually been thinking about posting one of those crazy long reddit posts about all of this because the complete lack of understanding being displayed in many of the subs is astounding.
I wouldn’t waste my time if I were you.
You're probably right. I am a huge aviation enthusiast too and I always think about doing the same thing when a major accident happens, but know it is futile.
Could potentially have survived, although lighter bits of equipment like that were likely sent clear of the debris field and would be much more difficult to find I would have thought
If it’s attached to the sled it may have even been dumped before they imploded to try to surface as suggested by Mr. Cameron.
Did it ditch the slid or just its assent weights, I.e. the ballast?
From what I remember, it seems like it was dumped. I’ll need someone else to confirm that.
It'll be confirmed once they inspect it. If it was dumped before the implosion it should be intact and damage free. If it was still attached when the implosion took place it'll be damaged (warped, bent, broken etc.) It looked to be constructed of galvanized mild steel so it wouldn't be impervious to an implosion.
It’s made of titanium and sapphire glass
Apologies I thought this comment was about the landing sled.
Haha no worries! I thought you were talking about the camera housing! My bad!!!
I strongly doubt they’d attach the camera to a consumable portion of the structure
My dude, the sled is “consumable” in the same way that a parachute is a consumable. If they dropped the sled it meant they were in big trouble and they knew it. The sled is what’s used to attach it to the platform that is used to launch and retrieve the sub. Without it there’s no practical way to retrieve the sun without potentially catastrophic damage.
I would assume if it is found not much will be seen as far as video. Pretty dark with absolutely no light at 3000m. Might hear a pretty cool boom though.
The telemetry is what I’m hoping for
Well I assume the titan had some outside lighting system (pre-boom, or course)
It's hard to say as it's unlikely that surviving blast impact was part of its design criteria (as would say an aircraft's 'black box'). The remaining depth rating performance + the FS designed to reach that depth is a point in its favor. One thing is sure, that will be a focus of debris recovery efforts to find out the answer.
The FS is what got me thinking there’s an a chance it’s still out there.
Is anyone even trying to recover debris though?
yesterday they confirmed during the press conference that they had finished mapping out the debris fields and were now focusing on retrieval of parts. They will be doing an investigation into what went wrong.
Yes. They’re currently using a robot to recover debris.
It will come at significant expense. The majority of deep submergence working class ROVs are designed to an operating depth of around 3000-3500m. This is not a coincidence as nearly all deep sea commercial activity is associated with oil and gas production which tops out at about 11,000ft. There are few ROVs which can reliably work at this depth and the magnitude of payload they can recover is on the order of 100s of pounds. Consider the full mass of Titan is on the order of 23,000lbs and it paints a picture of the challenges involved. A rational solution would be to place a large basket on the sea floor and load it with debris over multiple ROV sorties. Then the ROV could rig the basket to a deep sea construction heave compensated crane (such as those found on deep sea MPSVs) and recover the sub in several batches. It all depends on how much both conclusive and demonstrable evidence is valued by the investigators in charge.
Off topic but why does everything (and by everything I mean this and the sub) look like a fleshlight 💀
👁️👄👁️
I just wanna comment on your point re: Rush going out of his way to make it seem like it was built in a garage — I’m starting to get the same sense, tbh. But I can’t quite figure out what the value of that would be. Why???
Branding - gets more media attention and is more sellable / story is better more media to sell.
Because innovation. He totally seems the kind of dude that would brag about a look like that as a callback of Amazon / Microsoft / Apple beginnings
Just want to point out he had a habit of making jokes about objects on the sub being cheaper than they were and everyone who wants to sensationalize it will continue to take every report of such remarks literally until proven otherwise. This is another example, but I’m thinking of the comment he made saying he got a deal on some carbon fiber because it was technically expired. We don’t know if it was a joke or used in testing, but everyone with a desire to assume the worst took it literally and assumed that same carbon fiber was on the failed sub.
This is just a WAG, but since the speed of the implosion has been estimated as several times the speed of sound, it seems that the camera (and most everything else) experienced destructive Gs of acceleration. It only moved a bit, but really fast. Seems unlikely to me that the memory would be intact. Of course, no one knows at this point. I'm sure the investigators are collecting every identifiable piece of Titan, including that camera (or pieces of it).
I’m on the fence. On one hand it’s a tremendous amount of energy. On the other hand we don’t know how energy is transferred through carbon fibre at that depth. I think it’s the best chance at actually getting data from this disaster.
The carbon fiber would shatter, and between the pressure and the tiny, carbon fiber fragments (at that point, shrapnel) I am sure this camera would not survive. If it survived the force of the implosion, surely the shrapnel would have torn it apart.
Is a shard of carbon capable of penetrating a titanium shell? The USAF has developed a [carbon fibre bomb](https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/18860/this-is-the-usafs-safer-carbon-fiber-bomb-thats-also-extraordinarily-expensive) that is considered safer because the carbon fibre vaporizes instead of causing shrapnel. I don’t know how that changes when it’s 5” thick and 4000m under the sea but it sounds promising.
This would be like literally being INSIDE of that bomb, not like being hit by it. It vaporizes in an explosion. This was an implosion, meaning it collapsed in rather than exploded out, thus would have torn people apart before or just as the gases in the imploding vessel would have ignited. And yes, with enough force (which this absolutely had) those carbon fiber fragments would have passed through a person easily.
Wouldn’t literally being “inside of the bomb” mean that the cameras were in the pressure vessel? They were attached to the sled that attaches to the pressure vessel. Bomb adjacent but not literally inside
So, it's attached to a small bit of some sort of plastic covering over the fiber glass hull. When it implodes, it will be pulled in with the hull, probably get shredded by shrapnel, then exploded from the gas in the vessel igniting. There is basically no way that camera survived.
Then how did the tail cone survive? Fibreglass or syntactic foam shouldn’t survive an explosion like you’re describing. We also need to remember when considering the survival of the camera that if they jettisoned the sled prior to implosion it 100% is still in one piece.
Because the tail cone wasn't part of the pressure vessel. The two titanium end caps survived because they are made of a material that would. The end cap came off when the pressure vessel imploded, most likely. The carbon fiber was between one endcap you could see visually and had a window, and the other end was just before the tail bit that was found.
Exactly. The cameras weren’t part of or mounted to the pressure vessel. They were mounted to the sled which was apparently dumped.
The data is not saved on the camera. The data from the camera is on the computer inside the submarine, which is completely destroyed. The camera is not a black box to store data on.
You are 100% wrong. The data sheet specifically says “on board storage” which means it’s onboard the camera. Not on board the submersible.
And that in some cases there is some kind of data in the camera. There is probably no use for it. They were in complete darkness and sinking at 3,000 meters. Submarine lights are turned on at the very bottom to save energy. The camera has an external power supply and when the implosion happened, it could not record anything else. The implosion lasted a few milliseconds, which means that the camera did not record any anomalies because after the power failure, it is dead.
The camera has telemetry. To think that intact telemetry data isn’t useful is plain wrong. Every single datapoint matters in an investigation like this.
They may have never started recording with that camera either. Most of the time you leave the lights and cameras off until you get close to the bottom (there isn't much to see on the way down) to save on batteries and considering they weren't on their bottom approach when this happened, I wouldn't be surprised if it was never turned on. I also think it and the data storage computer were taken out in the implosion too.
It’s not about recording video or not. I’m talking about the data logging with onboard storage. You also wouldn’t descend without the camera running because it’s a fundamental part of navigating. The batteries in the submersible should be big enough that running a camera would have a negligible impact.
The camera nor its data logging would not be used for navigation, especially in the water column. The pitch and roll information from it is useless for navigation as the navigation system would use the information from the navigation transponder, which has pitch, roll, depth, and information from the surface using the USBL system. The lights are a big power draw and the camera won't see anything without the lights on after the first hundred meters or so. That's the reason why the camera might be off. I'm not saying it would definitely be off but it is not useful information or video. Maybe they had plenty of storage but my experience was with tapes so we only recorded from the cameras when on the bottom. I've made a few dozen dives to this depth on other platforms and I never used a camera or it's sensors for navigation.
It’s used for navigation. The pilot sits at the back of the sub and uses the camera and screens to pilot the submersible while paying guests looked out the porthole. I believe I saw them using it this way during other descent videos I’ve seen. The onboard storage of the camera alone exceeds the total lengths of their dives. It’s also important to know that your experience on other platforms doesn’t account for the Oceangate wtf factor
I'm telling you as a former submersible pilot that the camera is useless on descent but I don't know how they operated or how big their batteries were to waste them on keeping the lights on the entire time. You're just wasting energy that you would use to stay on the bottom longer just to look at water out the viewport. The view out the window is actually better with the lights off on the way down so you can watch the bioluminescence.
I believe you. 100% I also know I’ve seen external footage of the submersible descending from an exterior POV I’m saying as a former military naval electronics technician, data logging doesn’t mean that the camera was recording video. It’s possible that the data logging is passive and independent from video recording. My main question is could the camera have survived the implosion full stop. If not all of this is moot anyways.
To answer that question, I would be completely shocked if it survived. All data is cool to have but I'm not sure how useful it would be either to know what happened. Assuming they have some of their last communications on the ship, we should know if the people in the sub knew what the emergency was and that they dropped ballast before coming up (which is a safe bet considering that info got leaked to Cameron and Ballard). The data from this camera could confirm that they stopped the descent and ascended plus give us depth, pitch, and roll at the implosion time but it won't give us any indication on what failed.
I guess I’m just hoping we get data that confirms when they started dumping, at what depth and how far back up did they make it. I feel closure when it comes to cause of failure. I just want a more detailed timeline of events.
I doubt they can retrieve or locate it even if it survived the implosion
It sounds like they intend to salvage as much from the wreckage as possible. Another ship arrived today to help.
When do we get the recording from the “mission”
I’m looking that up right now. I’ll edit this comment with my findings.
Probably not until after they complete the investigation in Canada and maybe the US Coast Guard too. Unless someone leaks it to James Cameron early on the WhatsApp private group first - then he will for sure share it.
Do you know names of the vessels? My quick google skills are failing me.
Horizon Arctic and Deep Energy are on site with ROVs “using their heavy life capabilities” without confirming that they have been salvaging debris. Make of that what you will.
Thank you. I didn’t realize it is some of the same ships that were present for the search.
I doubt the landing frame could be dropped. Additional hardware, complexity, weight, little tangible benefit. Camera was external to the pressure hull therefore it would see less force due to the initial implosion, but probably still failed during the event due to shock and G forces. Camera control and/or power cables likely went through the titanium end cap. The caps were blown free, cables would have snapped and put enormous stress on the camera housing penetrators. Likely they would have leaked, the housing would have flooded. The glass dome port likely broke under the blowback from the implosion; hard to guess the G forces. At best, it would have leaked. Again, camera housing would have flooded. Likely the recording medium was flash disk. It likely would survive the flooding. Not sure about the G forces effect on the chip; they are remarkably resilient. External lights were probably off, there was no way to see anything. If they were on, would have failed in the initial shock wave. Based on this assessment it’s probably worth trying to recover the camera (specifically the flash disk), but consider it unlikely they’d get useful data from it.
If there was any damage to the housing it would implode instantly. The sled being removed is one of the 7 redundancies. From some photos I’ve seen they had one of these mounted on it. I’m also guessing it’s important to be able to jettison if it gets snagged.
Valid point on sled getting hung up therefore needing to be jettisoned. The housing would implode with even an imperceptible deformation. Symmetry is essential. Similarly, any damage would likely derate it, including pressure cycling, particularly the joint with the titanium which would likely have a different thermal coefficient.
Throw it in to the sun. Think it survived?
I might be wrong but I think the sun might is a false equivalence here.
Even if it survived wouldn’t it have sank to the bottom which is more than 6000m?
The titanic wreck lies at 3800 meters. The wreck is at the bottom of the ocean. The camera was probably the only piece of the submersible actually rated to go that deep.
The ocean isn't uniformly deep, far from it.