For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
I wonder…is that only because we use probes? Or is it something to do with atmospheric pressure? Like I’m assuming water is heavier than space so even if you had a space suit on underwater you’d still get crushed or eaten by some big ass squid.
I’d love if a scientist could weigh in on this.
So, I’m not a scientist, but I’ve watched plenty of space and ocean documentaries because it’s interesting to think about, so I’m pretty qualified, right? So, space is actually the opposite of heavy. It’s a vacuum, so the vessels designed to operate there have to deal with holding pressure IN, instead of out. Also, there’s no big ass squid in space to eat you, lmao.
My layperson understanding is that with space you only have to have something robust enough to keep the atmospheric pressure in (as well as other considerations of course) which allows for less robust materials. For deep sea exploration you need something robust enough to keep the water pressure out.
For additional info: 10 metres of water depth is approximately equivalent to 1 atmosphere’s worth of pressure (ATM) - so 50 metres is 5ATM and so on and so forth. So theoretically a submarine would have to combat hundreds of ATMs of pressure, whereas a space craft only has to combat at most a couple of ATM.
In the ISS a minor hole can be patched pretty easily and quickly as it’s a slow leak of air out, however if a leak occurs in a submarine the results can be explosive and deadly.
Thank you, yes this is what I had in my head, I appreciate you wording it properly, with examples!