Could you dive to the titanic?

[thin_air]

now this, this is a wonderful answer, thank you very much chefkoch.

sorry about that comment porky, but i had been monitoring the scuba forum for awhile and there seemed to be almost no one there period.

[crpntr133]

If you could find the "perfect" breathing soltion I still don't think it would be possible. The femur, upper leg bone, is hollow and would most likely shatter. Not an MD but it only makes since if you know much about the human body.

[efattah]

In my opinion there are several ways to dive to the titanic.

One method would be to breathe a superoxygenated liquid, and take only one breath of it, and hold your breath the whole way down and up.

Pelizzari has held his breath for 21 minutes on 100% oxygen gas. This could be dramatically extended by using a liquid which has more oxygen in it than O2 gas.

If we assume a maximum descent & ascent rate of 5m/s, then the descent time would be:
3800m/5 = 12.67 minutes

The ascent rate would be the same, so the dive would take 25.3 minutes, all on one breath of superoxygenated liquid.

Another method would be more technical (and a bit disgusting), but you you tap into a vein and regenerate the ATP directly without the use of oxygen at all. Your body does not run on oxygen, it runs on ATP. ATP can be regenerated by creatine phosphate or NADH. Normally, oxygen is burned to produce a high energy electron, which regenerates NAD + H + e --> NADH. This process could be done chemically by tapping into a vein, directly regenerating your NADH via electricity, without the use of oxygen. Because almost no oxygen would be burned, almost no CO2 would be produced, and life could be maintained.

I'm not sure about bones collapsing. Even that is not a real problem. You could fill the bones with water beforehand, via a microdrill operation. The bones could be resealed filled with water.


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[crpntr133]

water in the bone marrow? Doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

[efattah]

Okay, so how do whales dive to 3500m+ without their bones collapsing?


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[Baur]

Wheaties!

[Alison]

No answers! I just aint bright enough but what an interesting thread

[Murat]

may be their bone surface is as hard as sub marine glass


By the way, diving to the titanin in one breath is freaky cooolll

Do you get that 5m/s speed with anchor or some machine? I think there is no way to do this with fin

[Jay Styron]

(Whales)-
Maybe their bones are filled w/ fluid already or are maybe they're structurally developed in a way to handle the pressure. Also I'm almost positive our bones aren't hollow either or have large quantities of gas in them.
As far as the super saturated breathing liguid-maybe. I think you're gonna run into O2 toxicity problems long b/f you see the wreck.
Jay

[efattah]

Jay,

You can't get O2 toxicity from liquid breathing, unless the liquid starts off in the O2 toxic range. The amount of O2 in the liquid will not change with depth, so as long as the liquid is okay to breathe at the surface, it should be fine 'down there.'


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[Jay Styron]

Good catch Eric. I hadn't thought the whole thing through w/ respect to the O2 concentration not increasing w/ depth since it's in a liquid.
Still have to get past the pneumonia after flushing the liquid out of the lungs. As I recall thats been one of the big things if everything else went right on the dive. Well for the rats and some dogs I believe.
Jay

[efattah]

Yes, the recovery would be messy at best. Doing a one breath dive on a liquid mix, you would surface on the edge of running out of O2. Either you surface and then try to take some more breaths of liquid, or you cough out the liquid (and probably black out) as the paramedics do their thing! Pretty ugly. Well, we're discussing if it's possible, not if it's pretty!


Eric Fattah
BC, Canada

[Jay Styron]

Very true, I'll let you go first.....

[JHammer]

What about the other side of the problem- equipment failure. How deep can you go before the face piece cracks? How about the valves in the breathing system? Metal cylinders are strong, but even metal reches a point where it starts to deform. I'd hate to be strapped to a cylinder that implodes from the pressure. Not to mention the extreme cold at depth affecting the diver and the equipment. Trip of a lifetime but I think I'll let someone else go first!

[FreeFloat]

Yes, equipment failure. As any scuba diver will know paying attention to your gear usually tells you there is a problem requiring attention - mask flooding, regulator no longer delivering air, or breathing 'wet'. However, if you're already breathing a liquid, and your mask develops a leak, you wouldn't be able to tell that you are no longer breathing the special liquid as opposed to just plain water - and you can and will drown at that point. Or slowly suffocate as the mixture of liquids you breathe becomes more and more dilute and hypoxic............