Table tennis balls and an iceberg: the craziest ways they’ve wanted to raise the Titanic

The wreckage is under the protection of the UNESCO International Convention, so it should remain untouched in its final resting place, but that hasn’t stopped some absolutely insane suggestions on how to raise the Titanic.

For decades, the exhibits have allowed visitors to get in the passenger seat and get a glimpse of what it was like on the Titanic, and it’s clear that the tragic voyage spree will continue for many years to come.

No wonder people are desperate to remove a sunken ship from the deep – some for the noble ambitions of historical research, others for money.

Fortunately, the wreck is currently under the protection of a UNESCO International Convention so it should remain untouched at its final resting place, but that hasn’t stopped some absolutely insane proposals for how the Titanic might be raised, writes IFLScience.

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How to remove sunken ships?

Before moving on to the Titanic, let’s try to understand how sunken ships are usually lifted in simpler conditions. Spoilers – they usually don’t.

Recovering debris can be a profitable business, as the value of the salvaged property is legally owned by the salvator. However, the ships themselves are too heavy to realistically lift off the seafloor (not to mention the water that comes with them) unless they are sunk somewhere in shallow water.

Another important factor is age. The new wrecks are still solidly built, but over time nature wears them down until they break apart under any load. And for its part, it makes almost any movement impossible.

However, there are several options. For light boats, lifebags can be placed under them and inflated to bring debris to the surface.

On older and fragile ships like the Mary Rose, a frame is fixed around the ship and then raised to reduce the load on the structure.

Finally, rescuers can disassemble the wreckage, which are then individually assembled to bring the ship to the surface.

So is it possible to upgrade the Titanic?

Earlier, the inspired Fox News suggested throwing a balloon at a sunken ship to raise it. And this is not the most surprising offer.

table tennis balls

So, more about this idea. He’s one of the first (hard to tell if he’s serious). It was proposed to lift the sunken ship with the help of table tennis balls. However, the plan falls through because the wreckage of the Titanic consists of not one but two pieces.

However, even assuming it was one piece, people calculated how many ping pong balls would be needed to make a floating structure when placed on the hull of a ship. And about 1.5 billion.

Unfortunately, water pressure at a distance of 3.8 kilometers will render such balls flat and useless.

float bag

The next idea came from an engineer in Stamford, Connecticut, in 1985, shortly after the Titanic was found. Then scientists struggled with how to remove the sunken ship.

The idea, described on The Night Lives On, was to put polyester bags on the body and then pump Vaseline into them, which would become hard and buoyant; The bags then somehow bring the sunken ship to the surface safely and soundly.

Again, someone calculated and realized that it would take 180,000 tons of petroleum jelly to provide enough lift to lift the massive structure. That’s a serious amount of Vaseline – the world’s largest cargo ship can carry around 120,000 tons, so we need one and a half times those ships filled with Vaseline.

Aside from the logistics of pumping so much stuff this deep underwater, the bags will likely rip off the top of the rotten metal or just pop out the open side as soon as the structure starts to rise. However, this is an interesting view.

The iceberg drowned, the iceberg and it will rise

Finally, we come to the best and most ironic idea – an iceberg sank the Titanic, so why not use an iceberg to raise it?

Even before the Titanic was found, a man named Arthur Hickey appointed himself head of the Titanic Salvage Company (worth £1 billion at the time, which is the equivalent now) in hopes of reclaiming the riches buried with the ship. about 5 billion pounds or 6 billion dollars).

He had a dream that inspired him to ask the price of liquid nitrogen. It would be used to create an iceberg around a sunken ship that would later resurface.

Hickey turned to the BOC group, an industrial gas company, to fulfill his dream. The scientists checked that this would require about half a million tons of liquid nitrogen, and they called this figure. That would have meant building an entire factory to liquefy liquid nitrogen above the debris and pump it down, which surprisingly the company decided not to do so.

The list of ways people have tried to upgrade the Titanic is endless, but these are some of the best.

Unfortunately, recent research has shown that the debris will soon be gone forever, so its remains may not even survive at the bottom of the ocean, let alone being brought to the surface. Maybe we should start stocking up on ping pong balls before they’re gone forever.

Previously Focus He wrote about the wreck of a steamship carrying $5 million worth of gold. Carrying at least 275 crew and passengers, the Pacific disintegrated on November 4, 1875, after colliding with the sailboat Orpheus.

Researchers discovered the remains of an Elizabeth I ship at the bottom of a quarry lake. It was a real surprise to find a late 16th century ship preserved in a quarry siege.

And also Focus I realized how true the legends and sea tales about ghost ships were.

Source: Focus

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