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Comment by rodface | Hacker News Reader

It's worth contrasting the design of this vehicle with what is ostensibly the world standard for deep-sea research submersibles, Alvin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

https://www.whoi.edu/what-we-do/explore/underwater-vehicles/...

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As a US Navy-owned submersible, Alvin also undergoes extensive safety evaluation under the Naval Sea Systems Command SUBSAFE program: https://ndsf.whoi.edu/its-official/

Other manned submersibles undergo classification from groups such as DNV: https://www.dnv.com/services/manned-submersibles-1102

Yet OceanGate seems to have avoided this kind of safety classification: https://oceangate.com/news-and-media/blog/2019-0221-why-tita...

There’s a strange sense of scale on that thing. You wouldn’t immediately look at it and say that two people can fit inside for 30 days.

EDIT: 30 days between maintenance. I’m a dirty skimmer.

I think it's 30 days of diving, not 30 continuous days submerged. You can use it a whole month before you need to take a maintenance day.

There's a 3d panorama view of the interior of the sphere linked from the article - I doubt anyone's spending more than a day in there at a go, let alone with someone else.

Edit: apparently, it's 3 people - the pilot and 2 scientists.

What?

> Alvin enables in-situ data collection and observation by two scientists to depths reaching 6,500 meters, during dives lasting up to ten hours.

Maybe you misskimmed:

> Alvin is a proven and reliable platform capable of diving for up to 30 days in a row before requiring a single scheduled maintenance day

I did skim! :) Don’t do that.

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