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Transportation Graphics

Titanic: First Ever Full-sized Scans Reveal Wreck As Never Seen Before (bbc.co.uk) 41

"The first full-sized digital scan of the Titanic, which lies 3,800m (12,500ft) down in the Atlantic, has been created using deep-sea mapping," reports the BBC.

Their article includes a one-minute video showing the results. "It provides a unique 3D view of the entire ship, enabling it to be seen as if the water has been drained away. " "There are still questions, basic questions, that need to be answered about the ship," Parks Stephenson, a Titanic analyst, told BBC News. He said the model was "one of the first major steps to driving the Titanic story towards evidence-based research — and not speculation."

The Titanic has been extensively explored since the wreck was discovered in 1985. But it's so huge that in the gloom of the deep, cameras can only ever show us tantalizing snapshots of the decaying ship — never the whole thing. The new scan captures the wreck in its entirety, revealing a complete view of the Titanic. It lies in two parts, with the bow and the stern separated by about 800m (2,600ft). A huge debris field surrounds the broken vessel.

The scan was carried out in summer 2022 by Magellan Ltd, a deep-sea mapping company, and Atlantic Productions, who are making a documentary about the project. Submersibles, remotely controlled by a team on board a specialist ship, spent more than 200 hours surveying the length and breadth of the wreck. They took more than 700,000 images from every angle, creating an exact 3D reconstruction...

In the surrounding debris field, items are scattered, including ornate metalwork from the ship, statues and unopened champagne bottles. There are also personal possessions, including dozens of shoes resting on the sediment.

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Titanic: First Ever Full-sized Scans Reveal Wreck As Never Seen Before

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  • Looking at the images, I am still amazed at how over 120 years ago they were able to bang that heap of pot metal together well enough that it floated at all. And they did it without any CAD system support. Just paper and drafting boards.

    • Re:Still amazing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Sunday May 21, 2023 @11:26AM (#63539817)

      And they did it without any CAD system support. Just paper and drafting boards.

      That is the interesting part, isn't it? This massive (for the time), floating structure built solely on the basis of designs created by hand on paper, and slide rules, with all the nuances of the pieces fitting together as correctly as they do today with computerized drawings.

      And it wasn't just this ship. Britannic, Carpathia, and thounsands of other ships over multiple decades, including aircraft carriers and battleships, were all done this way. In hindsight, it's a wonder they ever got built.

      • Re:Still amazing (Score:5, Informative)

        by caseih ( 160668 ) on Sunday May 21, 2023 @11:46AM (#63539863)

        Speaking of the Titanic herself and her nearly identical sister ships, not only did they get built, they actually performed well. In fact one Titanic's sister ships, the "Olympic" was used a troop carrier in World War I and was nicknamed "Old Reliable." She sailed for 24 years, proving the design of the Titanic. Sadly the Britannic only saw service for one year before she sank, but that was due to war, not because of any design problem.

        • Yes, and one of the stewardess's, Violet Jessup, had also served on Titanic. In fact, you can see her briefly in the movie; she's the stewardess who gets told by an officer to get into a lifeboat because, "Women and children first," and even though she's not a passenger, she is a woman.
        • Not from what I've read. Supposedly the rudder on the Titanic was far too small for a ship of that size, which contributed to them being unable steer away from the iceberg in time.
          • Actually, very slightly [encycloped...tanica.org] too small. And refitting a rudder is not that big a deal.

          • by caveat ( 26803 )

            It was less the size and more the placement/design; it was a "blown" rudder in that it was directly behind the center propellor, so the wash would provide a lot of extra steering power. When the captain called for all engines hard astern, there was no more wash so the effectiveness sharply dropped and the rest, as they say, is history

        • by pjt33 ( 739471 )

          The pride of the White Star line [youtube.com].

        • Speaking of the Titanic herself and her nearly identical sister ships, not only did they get built, they actually performed well. In fact one Titanic's sister ships, the "Olympic" was used a troop carrier in World War I and was nicknamed "Old Reliable." She sailed for 24 years, proving the design of the Titanic. Sadly the Britannic only saw service for one year before she sank, but that was due to war, not because of any design problem.

          Yep. Back in the days when REAL engineers could do REAL MATH and resolve problems without resorting to copy&paste from StackOverflow or whatever.

          Same immense respect should be given to all of the incredible men & women that made the NASA Apollo missions possible through their design & engineering efforts.

    • If you can tour the internals of old warships, you see the mistakes that were made. Where one pipe came along, and encountered another they weren't expecting. Had to come up with a hatchet job on the spot to solve the conflict. Most of these were cleaned up if the ship was rebuilt later, but some of them are downright funny.
      • If you can tour the internals of old warships, you see the mistakes that were made. Where one pipe came along, and encountered another they weren't expecting. Had to come up with a hatchet job on the spot to solve the conflict. Most of these were cleaned up if the ship was rebuilt later, but some of them are downright funny.

        Medieval churches are great for that as well [wordpress.com].

        It makes me wonder if in a couple of hundred years future software architects (or whatever they're called) will be laughing at some of the code we wrote, I mean we do that already [thedailywtf.com] but just like source code is a level of abstraction above machine code I expect us to eventually end up a level above source code as well.

        • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

          It makes me wonder if in a couple of hundred years future software architects (or whatever they're called) will be laughing at some of the code we wrote,

          Oh there will be. I go back and look at code I wrote decades ago and laugh. But mostly I'm amazed.. "that shit worked!"

      • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

        With so much being done on computers today it makes you wonder how they could have done it all with out them. It's very cool though. Back in the late 80s the company I was working for introduced a cad software for ship building. It was amazing what it could do. You could have it route a pipe from one end to the other moving other parts and pipes as needed. Took forever on a 40mhz RISC processor but was fascinating to watch it work.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Looking at the images, I am still amazed at how over 120 years ago they were able to bang that heap of pot metal together well enough that it floated at all. And they did it without any CAD system support. Just paper and drafting boards.

      We've been making boats for millennia now, it's not a very new technology. We've had boats before we understood things like buoyancy. It's one of those "engineers vs. scientists" things where we've made things long before we actually understood why. (The people who built tho

  • Need I point out that those shoes used to have people in them.

    • by jwhyche ( 6192 )

      You don't need to point it out to me. This was fascinating when we first found the ship but do we really need to keep visiting it. Time to let those souls rest in peace already. enough is enough.

  • by antdude ( 79039 )

    Was James Cameron involved? ;)

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts." -- Bertrand Russell

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