Search for the Titan mini sub - and its passengers

[mizo]

I've been watching this news story over the last couple of days.

A massive search and rescue effort is continuing in the North Atlantic after a submersible exploring the wreck of the Titanic went missing deep under the ocean on Sunday. There are five people on board.

Researchers aboard the Polar Prince - its mothership on the surface - lost contact with the crew shortly after the Titan began its dive. There is limited oxygen on board, and it is estimated that supplies are set to run out by around 10:00 GMT (06:00 EDT) on Thursday.

Banging noises have now been detected in the search area, but it is not known where they are coming from or what they mean. From the BBC here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65934887

The Titan submersible have less than 24 hours of oxygen supplies left!

One interesting article from this developing situation about the passengers is that the British businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, is from one of Pakistan's richest families. He was travelling with his son, Suleman, a 19-year-old student, on the sub.

He works with his family's Dawood Foundation, as well as the SETI Institute - a California-based research organisation which searches for extra-terrestrial life.

[PlasmaVortex]

,it's an interesting development given the media where talking about the titanic dive site days prior to this incident. Call it conspiracy(JPF Voice)

[Mercedes]

I cannot help but think that at this day and age, how is it that they are so incapable to locate something they built with good technology and would supposedly have a GPS or a mechanism that would send signals for a radar to pick up or SOMETHING!! I mean this is not the 1800's not even 1900's , what is at stake here? It just seems so incredibly irresponsible to send a metal coffin to the bottom and just wait and see if it will float back to the surface. :boom:

[PlasmaVortex]

Good point, i'd wager a huge bet they have Star wars defense inititative satellites/platforms that can examine everything to a molecule on earth that work via phased array conjugation. This however is pure speculation but you get the point.

[mizo]

I cannot help but think that at this day and age, how is it that they are so incapable to locate something they built with good technology and would supposedly have a GPS or a mechanism that would send signals for a radar to pick up or SOMETHING!! I mean this is not the 1800's not even 1900's , what is at stake here? It just seems so incredibly irresponsible to send a metal coffin to the bottom and just wait and see if it will float back to the surface. :boom:

I read it has lots of design flaws -one potential flaw is the hatch is bolted closed from the outside and the crew will be reliant on the air supply inside the vessel, so even if the sub reaches the water surface the crew could still die from asphyxiation if the vessel isn't located in time.

[Mercedes]

I read it has lots of design flaws -one potential flaw is the hatch is bolted closed from the outside and the crew will be reliant on the air supply inside the vessel, so even if the sub reaches the water surface the crew could still die from asphyxiation if the vessel isn't located in time.[/QUOTE]

OMG, that is so perverse!! You would think there is by now a better way.:worried:

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I cannot help but think that at this day and age, how is it that they are so incapable to locate something they built with good technology and would supposedly have a GPS or a mechanism that would send signals for a radar to pick up or SOMETHING!!

GPS signals don't travel through water. This sub is about as technologically advanced as my garden shed. It has precisely ONE button, and for navigation they use a Sony Playstation game controller. I kid you not!!

I wouldn't have stepped into this tin can if you paid me!

See this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-65958697
(can't embed vid)

[seehas]

I cannot help but think that at this day and age, how is it that they are so incapable to locate something they built with good technology and would supposedly have a GPS or a mechanism that would send signals for a radar to pick up or SOMETHING!!

GPS signals don't travel through water. This sub is about as technologically advanced as my garden shed. It has precisely ONE button, and for navigation they use a Sony Playstation game controller. I kid you not!!

I wouldn't have stepped into this tin can if you paid me!

See this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-65958697
(can't embed vid)

thats some scary stuff right there, your life depending on a bluetooth connected game controller, i hope they brought some spare batterys with them.

one ticket costs 250.000$ and this thing is not even equipped with an emergency system, i would rather do a base jump from a bridge than go for a 3000+ meter dive in that thing

lets hope they find them alive

[Eagle Eye]

Never be curious of cursed places, get as far away as you can.

[Le Chat]

and this thing is not even equipped with an emergency system

Nor a toilet. What arrangements they have come to doesn't even bear thinking about....

[thepainterdoug]

I listened to a report regarding anologies to the appolo capsule that cought fire. this is scary. if too much oxygen rich content in the sub and then the electronics can potentially ignite a fire. no way out and no point of even trying if there was a way out in those depths

this is a very scary scenario. and the main owner said, he didnt want any 50 year old white guys running things, he wanted younger people attracting other younger people into exploration

this age gender garbage is beyond believable.

prayers/ d

[Nasu]

It’s crazy, two hundred and fifty grand and no backup plan. No emergency sub in case things go bad. No emergency transponder, miles away from any civilisation, nothing. Pay your money, sign the waver and hope for the best…

All to view a wreck of mistakes and miscalculations. The irony is strong.

I feel so sorry for them and their families. It seems like a doomed rescue attempt. Now we will see…….x…… N

[Mari]

It beggars belief that this vehicle seemingly had hardly any safety back-ups in case of emergency. Also, an up-down game-station joystick to steer the craft? The entrance/exit bolted shut from the outside? Carbon fibre hull instead of much stronger steel? The list goes on.
Accidents happen, of course. But there seems to be an arrogance in the way we regard raw nature, in this case the sea, as an 'adventure', or easy-ish conquest to be ticked off a bucket list. Thousands have died in our past on the quest for adventure and dominance and some of these casualties did the very best they could, with the best technology and equipment to hand and we salute those.
Until we know better, from the information we have, it seems that this Titan quest was a doomed mission. You really, really don't mess with the north Atlantic ocean, no matter the weather or the time of year.
I pray they are rescued, but it's looking like this will be a serious impediment to the space and ocean 'Tourist' industry. Much better regulations will have to be brought in, whatever the outcome of this latest situation.


These tragedies are sober reminders that even with the best technologies, when things go wrong, the ocean takes no prisoners.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370

https://www.marineinsight.com/maritime-history/mysterious-horrific-maritime-disaster-the-story-of-the-kursk-disaster/

[Mari]

this is a very scary scenario. and the main owner said, he didnt want any 50 year old white guys running things, he wanted younger people attracting other younger people into exploration

this age gender garbage is beyond believable.

prayers/ d


Yep, unbelievable. He needs to remember that most 'younger' people simply don't have £250,000 to splash out on a day trip to the bottom of the ocean. That remark will very quickly rear up and bite him on the arse.

The craft in all its glory: https://oceangate.com/our-subs/titan-submersible.html

[PlasmaVortex]

This feels similar to when that girl in the van went missing then her boyfriends bones were found even though there wasn't enough time for that to occur. I'm going with conspiracy.

[Operator]

It's a weird story. I've been working, amongst other things, on equipment for submarines. Military submarines have
pingers installed on the hatches so rescue vehicles can precisely locate the hatch in case of emergency.

Also ... they lost communication? What were they using? The only way comms work underwater is by ultrasonic
modulated audio used on specialized hydrophones (Or high powered ELF radio might work under the right circumstances).
Besides you have to deal with all kinds of layers on different depths that reflect, bend or block your signal (vertically).

What I don't understand is that if they went for a simple design why not just lower a submersible by cable and
combine it with a comms cable. But anyway you just don't build a submersible for that kind of depth either.
Even military grade submarines don't dive that deep ... as far as I know all military exercises I know of didn't go
deeper than a couple of hundred meters and were always accompanied by a support surface vessel.

By the way if you want to learn what it is to escape from a submarine in rescue suit watch this:
X_X8UCifzL8

They train in 37 feet (!) of water and claim it is tested to work up till 600 feet.
Ehh, yeah but at that kind of depths your ears won't survive the abrupt pressurization in the tube.

[PlasmaVortex]

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/titanic-billionaire-s-stepson-defends-bizarre-move-what-am-i-supposed-to-do/ar-AA1cPoTY?ocid=winp2fptaskbar&cvid=4e7dc2ff2db842c7aaddb08d418879da&ei=8

[sunwings]

These are very haunting words from the CEO Rush Stockton.

1671412919852998658

[mizo]

Some updates:

Seems the timeline of running of breathable air has a flexible (ish) some of those aboard could survive longer than expected?:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65981277

Although, I'd thought physically banging on the hull every 30 mins will deplete their air supplies faster, also, it'll increase the carbon dioxide build up.

Also, within the last 30 mins deep underwater drone subs reach sea floor, but other specialist equipment REMOTELY OPERATIVE VEHICLE (THE ROV) called Juliet-a sub that has recently scanned the Titanic wreck, producing a 3D view of the entire ship.

Albeit, The Juliet will take around 60 hours to reach the site of the missing vessel.

51063

Sadly time is running out ...

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I'm going with conspiracy.

Based on what exactly?

The truther community has a hard enough time against the constant barrage of propaganda and counter-intelligence; the last thing we need is bad discernment from within undermining all our efforts. That happens when people rush straight to the conspiracy angle without a single jot of anything to support it, perfect example: see the actual Titanic (https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?100604-The-Titanic-Conspiracy----A-Complete-Analysis) thread itself.

The only thing that sank this ridiculous death-trap was hubris, arrogance, and rank incompetence, the very thing that sank Titanic in the first place. Oh the irony!

[Hamish]

Hello,

Do not think there is any conspiracy here. People with large sums of money, doing a dangerous journey to see a relic.

No different in someone coming here and crashing their UFO whilst trying to watch what's happening below and or get involved, sometimes mistakes happen.

Mistake here is them trusting this company and if doing any research beforehand on the company and what machine your entering, seems they thought perhaps the impossible would not happen, i.e. considered the odds were in their favour.

What is happening to these poor souls is a nightmare and dread to think what they will find inside the capsule, if it is ever found.

[thepainterdoug]

Im curious were there any photos, celebrations, videos of the group getting in the sub? I would have to believe there would be a send off and some documentation on this? There has to be some evidence of this event to substantiate it. This is why suspicions rise and I can understand it

[PlasmaVortex]

I think appeals to scientism don't help the truther community either, you're replacing the cult of truth with the cult of scientis/reason.

[Paul D.]

It's 'DID THE SIMPSON'S PREDICT ' time , again ....

1671899341538357248


I've just noted that in this episode Homer is looking for his missing Dad ,'Mason '
Matt Groening , the creator of The Simpson's is a Freemason too ,33° I think .
Just saying.

[selinam]

There is more to this than meets the eye. Why would you enter such a contraption with all the possible safety issues as mentioned in this thread. Is it a distraction? Lots of opinions out there on this. Good point about any photos of actual entry by the participants- anyone seen anything like that? Or are we taking that fact at face value?

[Sue (Ayt)]

Interesting bio on this British billionaire businessman, Hamish Harding.
He certainly has been involved in a lot of interesting things...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamish_Harding

He even dove the Marianna Trench:

"That four-hour dive explored the bottom of Challenger Deep, which has a depth of 35,860 feet. For comparison, the Titanic is nearly 13,000 feet below sea level."
and

One year after his historic dive, Harding flew to space in Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket, New Shepard.
and even earned some Guiness World Records:

Harding earned two Guinness World Records for that dive — for the longest time spent traversing the deepest part of the ocean on a single dive and for the farthest distance traveled along the deepest part of the ocean. He earned a third record in 2019 for completing the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth by airplane.
Missing Sub Rider Hamish Harding Once Dove Mariana Trench, Accepted Risk Of No Rescue (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/daredevil-explorer-hamish-harding-dove-mariana-trench_n_64920ffde4b09137a9a4156c)

[PlasmaVortex]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/simpsons-eerily-predicted-missing-titanic-30294515



Call it conspiracy folks.....(JPF voice) "The Simpsons eerily predicted missing Titanic submarine 17 years ago in chilling episode" Strange..indeed. If you know, you know.

[Sue (Ayt)]

Apparently, the Oceangate CEO, Stockton Rush, has taken tourists down there before.

The video here (https://www.today.com/video/new-8k-titanic-video-reveals-unseen-details-of-sunken-ship-147401285647), dated Aug. 31, 2022 shows some of the camera footage taken.
https://www.today.com/video/new-8k-titanic-video-reveals-unseen-details-of-sunken-ship-147401285647

[Operator]

TTfIpR6U7qc

Found ... the debris of it.

[Paul D.]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/simpsons-eerily-predicted-missing-titanic-30294515



Call it conspiracy folks.....(JPF voice) "The Simpsons eerily predicted missing Titanic submarine 17 years ago in chilling episode" Strange..indeed. If you know, you know.

I know , y'know :bigsmile:

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?121365-Search-for-the-Titan-mini-sub-and-its-passengers&p=1563727&viewfull=1#post1563727

[PlasmaVortex]

https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/simpsons-eerily-predicted-missing-titanic-30294515



Call it conspiracy folks.....(JPF voice) "The Simpsons eerily predicted missing Titanic submarine 17 years ago in chilling episode" Strange..indeed. If you know, you know.

I know , y'know :bigsmile:

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/showthread.php?121365-Search-for-the-Titan-mini-sub-and-its-passengers&p=1563727&viewfull=1#post1563727

Sorry about that I didn't see your comment.

[Matthew]

...

The only thing that sank this ridiculous death-trap was hubris, arrogance, and rank incompetence, the very thing that sank Titanic in the first place. Oh the irony!

That's the strong impression I've gotten. It's easy to take our regulated world with its high production values for granted. Failsafes and better quality always come after tragedy, which can come after complacency, which can come after successfully making things like cars, trains, subs & planes safer. The cycle keeps going round, like the airbuses falling out the sky in the 1980's because of software bugs.

But then when things explode (or implode) it is natural for us to stay very open to the idea it might have been sabotage or shenanigans. That's because it's a frame of reference that crops up time and time again... 'accidents'.

Rest in peace.

[mizo]

The only blessing for those in the vessel is that their demise would have been instantaneous, given the pressure at Titanic depth is immense - some 4,000 tons per square metre.

If you're going to die, let it be unknowing, quick and instant, rather than a drawn out- being slowly asphyxiated and wondering if your going to be rescued.

RIP

[Ernie Nemeth]

Very sad but also, again, it is lack of common sense that caused this accident. Both on part of the company and the adventurers.

I'm in a dilemma myself to do with safety on the job. A load of garbage from the roof came crashing down not ten feet from where I was working. We didn't stop work and no safety person came around. They just picked up the fallen garbage and kept on like they were doing. No danger tape around their work site, no remedial meeting to identify the problem and take steps to remedy it.
Then later that day one of our electricians cut his arm badly. Someone slapped six! bandages on it and he went back to work like a fool. After work he went to the hospital and got five stitches. This is not how it is supposed to go. When I got hurt the other day because I was forced to use the new 'safe' ladder the 'Ministry' has approved, they wanted to sweep that one under the rug. But I know my rights and the safety procedures. I made him write up an accident report and submit it to the 'Ministry' and my doctor...I think I must quit to keep myself safe. Damn!

Anyways, RIP submarine guys. May your souls find peace among the Titanic dead. And sue the pants off the owner, please. Waiver be damned. Willfully sloppy safety protocols deserve massive, company destroying fines - and maybe even jailtime.

[eagle0027]

Reporters asking about body recovery...hummm a 6000 psi i wd think the implossion quite possibly could be a record for the fastest deaths on the planet.Not likely to take the seacreatures long to take care of cleanup of remains prob similar to ketchup
What better way to leave the planet...doing something way out there crazy...with the meatbag remains doing a quick recycle.
Its just painful for the ones left behind.And expensive of course...lotsa lessons to be learned from this bit of earthly drama.

[scotslad]

Forgive me, but...

...I'm not an engineer or a physicist, but if the airforce in a plane could detect "banging every 30 mins" under the water and....


With the metological office being able to detect the tiniest of tremors globally,
the navy, space force, armed services, coas guards even DEA all with radar, sonar, and SOUND DETECTION equipment that can detect stealth arircraft, vessels and USOs, NASA and other private telecon companies, oil companies, drilling ships and "gold salvage" recovery vessels all equipped with the latest tech....

...lets not forget underwater listening stations, listening devices, including the global network of hydroacoustic monitoring international organisations and all the underwater sensors and SATELLITES...

...Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), maintain a global network of hydroacoustic sensors designed to detect underwater explosions. These sensors could potentially detect the implosion of a submarine, though their primary purpose is monitoring nuclear test bans.


...why the heck did noone on the planet detect the BOOM of a sonic implosion from within the sea?

and if reports are true, the debris was found at its last known position and depth - 1600ft from the hull of the titanic!!!!

Yet they were searching hundreds of miles away and refused help from the UK navy and rescue organisations?

and while we're at, thinking about it...

If a submarine were to implode at 12,000 feet below sea level, it would experience significant effects due to the immense pressure at that depth.

Implosion Effects

When a submarine implodes, it means that the external pressure exceeds the structural integrity of the submarine, causing it to collapse inward. At 12,000 feet (about 3,658 meters) below sea level, the water pressure is approximately 400 times atmospheric pressure (around 4,000 atmospheres or 400 megapascals). This immense pressure would subject the submarine to the following effects:

a. Structural Failure: The external pressure would compress the submarine's hull, which could lead to the collapse of weaker points, such as portholes, hatches, or any compromised sections. The cast iron structure would likely crumple or rupture, causing the implosion.

b. Compression of Air Spaces: Air-filled compartments inside the submarine would be compressed due to the external pressure. This compression would potentially cause secondary structural failures, rupturing pipes, bulkheads, or other components.

c. Crushing of Equipment: Equipment and systems within the submarine would be subjected to the extreme pressure. Delicate instruments, electronics, and mechanical components would be crushed or deformed, rendering them inoperable.

Tragic - yes?
Could have been avoided - yes?
impending lawsuit - yes?

Eeeeee me. Sad, very sad.

[Operator]

Things to consider ....


Does an implosion sound as loud as an explosion?
It might have been an explosion e.g. if they had highly pressurized tanks to create buoyancy or
just to provide breathable air. It would make sense to bring pure oxygen (more dangerous though)
instead of compressed air. But was it that sophisticated ... ?
In any case gas bubbles should have reached the surface ... visibly ?
Gas can be compressed but solids and fluids not. A human body is mostly water and can't be compressed.
So I am not so sure that the bodies would be pulverized ... Pehaps the lungs and other body cavities.
(That's the same danger b.t.w. when using the rescue suit at 600 (!) foot of water). It also happens
when scuba diving but then the pressure increases slowly while descending and for recreational diving
you shouldn't dive deeper than 30 meters because the nitrogen saturation might impair your awareness.

[Johnnycomelately]

Forgive me, but...



Hi scotslad. My best understanding of the fail is from the comments below this vid. Multiple mentions of the poor compressive strength of carbon (or any, like glass) filaments in a “composite” structure. Where it works is in internally-pressurised vessels, like SCUBA or SCBA tanks or solid-rocket casings, where it takes on a tension role.

Cumulative structural degradation of the main body tube, in the few even less-depth excursions prior, may have been a factor.

The vid itself (bless Juan, as he is a great citizen-reporter) doesn’t talk about that ‘engineering’ choice.

This story needs a big oof. Damn.

Sub Update Catastrophic Structural Failure.

blancolirio
368K subscribers

90,508 views Jun 22, 2023


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_a7oNnfKXPQ

[Matthew]

...

...why the heck did noone on the planet detect the BOOM of a sonic implosion from within the sea?
...

They did hear it but I'm speculating that the news attention was convenient. What else was happening over the last few days? It might be a sincere explosion/implosion but one way or another we're being played.

U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago
Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first detected Titan tragedy
...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12

[scotslad]

While all the worlds press focus on a sub, theres not much on how the biden family get off the hook and Durham's daming evidence indemnifying Trump but laying out the facade of the fbi, cia, doj, democrats, hillary, obama et al.

Some could argue - perfect timing - misdirection, distraction and convenient ;)

The world is f***ed up

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Occam's razor.

I reached the conclusion I did based on the following facts.

This I wrote last night in the mod's section, before today's announcement.

**
This sub was doomed to sink at some point. No skulduggery was needed, because:


Sub was constructed with components from a hardware store, some of it from scrapyards (!) for instance the ballast pipes

It was controlled by a Playstation Video Game Controller (!)

CEO Rush waived on key safety concerns: "[the sub had]....not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death".

OceanGate stated "that getting the sub 'classified' - or certified as safe - would be too lengthy a process."

Previous year OceanGate: "fired their director of marine operations, David Lochridge, after disagreeing with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including 'testing to prove its integrity',"

Lochridge was also in strong opposition to OceanGate's position "to dive the submersible without any non-destructive testing to prove its integrity, and to subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.'"

During one meeting Lochridge "discovered that the viewport was only built to a certified pressure of 4,250 feet (1,300 meters) – despite OceanGate intending to take passengers down to nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 meters)."

The wreck-site is extremely dangerous, US Journalist Michael Guillen reported a near miss (and near disaster) on a similar sub in 2000

Sub contained no food, no water, no extra oxygen - no survival supplies at all.

A group of industry experts wrote to CEO Rush warning that "the current 'experimental' approach' of the company could result in problems 'from minor to catastrophic.'"


That's some of it, but the list of failures goes on and on, it really does – and what it boils down to is negligence. And by Rush, the CEO. If he was safe and sound on land, then the conspiracy theory has some legs. But he isn't, he was on board.

Safety was not his concern. If there was a conspiracy, it's that's Rush himself cared less about safety than money. He f***ed up and now people are (likely) dead, him included.

Conclusion: it probably imploded and thousands of feet down (possibly owing to the viewport uncertified at such a depth). A tragedy, absolutely, but an avoidable one.

[Matthew]

While all the worlds press focus on a sub, theres not much on how the biden family get off the hook and Durham's daming evidence indemnifying Trump but laying out the facade of the fbi, cia, doj, democrats, hillary, obama et al.

Some could argue - perfect timing - misdirection, distraction and convenient ;)
..

My thoughts exactly :chuckle:

This is where the money is imho.

[Ravenlocke]

#BREAKING: A top secret US Navy acoustic detection system first picked up on the Titan submersible implosion just HOURS after the sub began its mission on Sunday, officials involved told WSJ.

Almost immediately after the sub lost communication with its mothership, the Navy began listening in. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion near the debris site which was discovered on Thursday.

https://twitter.com/nicksortor/status/1672015964014084096

1672015964014084096

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1672228579084742656

1672228579084742656

[PlasmaVortex]

Occam's razor.

I reached the conclusion I did based on the following facts.

This I wrote last night in the mod's section, before today's announcement.

**
This sub was doomed to sink at some point. No skulduggery was needed, because:


Sub was constructed with components from a hardware store, some of it from scrapyards (!) for instance the ballast pipes

It was controlled by a Playstation Video Game Controller (!)

CEO Rush waived on key safety concerns: "[the sub had]....not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death".

OceanGate stated "that getting the sub 'classified' - or certified as safe - would be too lengthy a process."

Previous year OceanGate: "fired their director of marine operations, David Lochridge, after disagreeing with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible, including 'testing to prove its integrity',"

Lochridge was also in strong opposition to OceanGate's position "to dive the submersible without any non-destructive testing to prove its integrity, and to subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.'"

During one meeting Lochridge "discovered that the viewport was only built to a certified pressure of 4,250 feet (1,300 meters) – despite OceanGate intending to take passengers down to nearly 13,000 feet (4,000 meters)."

The wreck-site is extremely dangerous, US Journalist Michael Guillen reported a near miss (and near disaster) on a similar sub in 2000

Sub contained no food, no water, no extra oxygen - no survival supplies at all.

A group of industry experts wrote to CEO Rush warning that "the current 'experimental' approach' of the company could result in problems 'from minor to catastrophic.'"


That's some of it, but the list of failures goes on and on, it really does – and what it boils down to is negligence. And by Rush, the CEO. If he was safe and sound on land, then the conspiracy theory has some legs. But he isn't, he was on board.

Safety was not his concern. If there was a conspiracy, it's that's Rush himself cared less about safety than money. He f***ed up and now people are (likely) dead, him included.

Conclusion: it probably imploded and thousands of feet down (possibly owing to the viewport uncertified at such a depth). A tragedy, absolutely, but an avoidable one.

I have seen the error of my ways and you are right.

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

I have seen the error of my ways and you are right.

Possibly.

There's rarely such a thing as an open and shut case, not with tragedies like this. More may come to light we're not aware of just yet. But on the face of it, this seems to be what we're looking at. Gross and criminal negligence. In a macabre sort of way Rush, the CEO, was probably better off going down with his ship - a victim of his own folly. He'd been facing ruin otherwise, and scandal, and jail.

[Matthew]

The unified press paint a convincing picture that he lived his life as an example how not to be, and this episode was more than convincingly a safety/neglect problem.

But the press also did a good job on Brian Harvey, another fool to laugh at. After learning a bit more about Brian Harvey's story I've changed my mind about him and hold him in high regard. Not trying to say that it's the same with this case but, just sayin' I'm with Mark on the open mind! Certainty is tempting because it feels nice but it's overrated.

[Johnnycomelately]

The mothership returned to St. John’s Newf’n Land today, and investigations have been announced. This incident is generating lots of work.

2-part post: a CBC story focusing on the aftermath and current scrutiny, and a YT vid discussing legal aspects of that waiver that the passengers signed.

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6887770


RCMP to investigate deaths aboard Titan sub, TSB reviewing logs


As well, TSB officials said they will be collaborating with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board.
CBC News
Posted: 8 Hours Ago
Last Updated: 38 Minutes Ago

The below quote is the entirety of the text, besides pic descriptions. IMO, only one pic rates clicking to the story, and it is of the deployment raft floating, back in the harbour, empty.

Tragic for those lost, even the pilot. His thinking was flawed, but it seems obvious that he did not believe his scheme would kill his passengers.


The Transportation Safety Board and the RCMP will be conducting separate investigations into the deaths of five people aboard the submersible Titan.

RCMP Newfoundland and Labrador Superintendent Kent Osmond says a team has been formed for a preliminary study to determine if a full investigation is warranted, or if any laws have been broken. No timeline has been set for the preliminary inspection.

He says this case is a unique circumstance due not only to the nature of the incident, but the number of jurisdictions involved.

Osmond says such a review does not necessarily mean anything criminal has occurred, adding that such investigations are common, as they have jurisdiction to investigation offshore deaths.

This, separately and in addition to the collaborative investigation being carried out by the Canadian and U.S. Transportation Safety Boards. Osmond says they expect cooperation between the separate endeavours.

He says their interviews have already begin, but it is too early to tell how long such preliminary work will continue.

TSB reviewing Polar Prince bridge logs

Meanwhile, the Transportation Safety Board has begun gathering data from the Polar Prince, following the tragic loss of five people aboard the submersible Titan earlier this week.

TSB officials spoke to media Saturday and said they have a mandate to find out why the incident happened and reduce the chance of it ever happening again.

They say the voyage data recorder keeps a record of all audio from the bridge, and they will be reviewing those logs.

The TSB will be collaborating with the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and estimate that the full investigation could take between 18 months and two years.

Meanwhile, the RCMP will be conducting a separate investigation into the incident and will provide details later Saturday afternoon.

Titan sub's support ship returns

The Polar Prince, the Miawpukek Horizon ship which towed the Oceangate submersible Titan out to sea before her final dive, returned to St. John's harbour Saturday morning.

ADVERTISEMENT

It represents the end of a harrowing voyage for the support ship, which saw those on board losing connection with the sub on Sunday.

The Titan, a submersible used to visit the wreck of the Titanic, went missing an hour and 45 minutes into its dive about 700 kilometres southeast of Newfoundland.

This kickstarted a multi-day international search effort, which culminated on Thursday when the US Coast Guard announced that a debris field was found near the Titanic. They said the debris was consistent with a catastrophic loss of pressure on the submersible and declared the five men aboard as presumed dead.

While the US Coast Guard is continuing with some recovery and salvage efforts, most Canadian ships involved in the search have either returned to port or are en route there.

The Polar Prince had been involved with the search effort throughout the week and was carrying family members of some of the five missing crew. It's return to St. John's comes in the wake of the Transportation Safety Board of Canada's announcement that it will be investigating the Polar Prince's role in the Titan's operations.



Sub Passengers Probably Signed Restrictive Waivers

Steve Lehto
409K subscribers

67,760 views Jun 23, 2023
“Lawsuits here will be a longshot.”


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzQmdFGvvwo

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

What happens to the passengers when a sub implodes?

This is a little grim, but less so when you understand the implications. They probably wouldn't have known a thing about it.

Less than 3mins
yHD6D612nXI

[korgh]

Excuse my cold analysis of the facts to justify this tragedy, but the only thing that comes to mind is the Darwin Award.

[Paul D.]

A very short video - 1.20 min.

1672946642301988866

A reply, summarising video.

The distraction in a nutshell…….
THE MEDIA IS THE ENEMY OF THE
PEOPLE!!
Here's what you missed in the news
cycle this week because they were
intentionally distracting you with
OceanGate:
1. JP Morgan and Jeffrey Epstein emails
were released and now they have just
"mistakenly" deleted 47 million emails
2. Joe Biden is undergoing an
impeachment vote in the House
3. The Pentagon fat-fingered $6 Billion
to Ukraine
4. Hunter Biden gets a slap on the wrist
while FBI whistleblowers are going
missing
5. John Durham had his congressiona
hearing this week regarding the Russia
Hoax
But everyone was so busy and
consumed by the Billionaire's who
ended up going *missing"

[Mark (Star Mariner)]

Distractions are usually contrived, often propaganda, and sometimes just pure BS.

Five people were killed here, under quite spectacular circumstances due stunning criminal negligence, and while visiting the most famous shipwreck in the world.

I believe this was legitimately newsworthy.

[Paul D.]

Distractions are usually contrived, often propaganda, and sometimes just pure BS.

Five people were killed here, under quite spectacular circumstances due stunning criminal negligence, and while visiting the most famous shipwreck in the world.

I believe this was legitimately newsworthy.

I only posted the video .
I haven't formed a personal opinion.That said I have learned too be very cautious believing anything in the news .I personally feel the scale & extent of deception at play is absolutely staggering & paradigm shifting , it was for me .

[Mari]

What happens to the passengers when a sub implodes?

This is a little grim, but less so when you understand the implications. They probably wouldn't have known a thing about it.

Less than 3mins
yHD6D612nXI


Well, I have to admit that I did pray that the occupants would pass 'quickly' (before we knew about the implosion) because it seemed they were facing a truly nightmarish situation of their air running out, waiting to die etc etc. This has seemed a blessing. Personally, I would choose the implosion way.

[onawah]

Joseph Farrell's take on the incident is worth considering.


Joseph P. Farrell | News and Views from the Nefarium | June 22, 2023

Source: gizadeathstar.com (http://gizadeathstar.com)

62Wvi3WmJYQ

An unusual (and unhappy) anniversary today, and two VERY different and odd stories to talk about, after a storm update from Joseph. He's today's articles, courtesy of KM and EE:

Articles:

Internet and cell outages in Northwest Alaska, North Slope caused by offshore fiber optic cut (https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2023/06/12/internet-and-cell-outages-in-northwest-alaska-north-slope-caused-by-offshore-fiber-optic-cut/)

Explorer, Pakistani Businessman Aboard Missing Titanic Sub (https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/billionaire-explorer-pakistani-businessman-aboard-missing-titanic-sub)

[gini]

Nobody's Buying the Titan Sub Story ⇄ It Stinks-zSRYdl-GJWg---26/6/23--10 min

[onawah]

More unanswered questions about the sinking of the Titanic
Unbelievable: The 3D Scan That SHOCKED Everyone About the Titanic!
History X
53.7K subscribers
155,778 views May 24, 2023

"Where is the damage the iceberg caused to Titanic's hull?

A complete 3D reconstruction of the shipwreck of the Titanic, assembled from more than 700,000 images, taken from every conceivable angle, reveals the ship like we’ve never seen it before.

0:00 3D Scan Reveals Titanic Shipwreck
1:09 Same theory for 100 years
2:11 Portion of damage covered by mud
3:04 Iceberg did NOT scrape side of Titanic!
4:04 Parks Stephenson challenges history
5:13 So where is the hull damage? "

0OOq_SsYd5Q


Joseph Farrell's take on the incident is worth considering.


Joseph P. Farrell | News and Views from the Nefarium | June 22, 2023

Source: gizadeathstar.com (http://gizadeathstar.com)

62Wvi3WmJYQ

An unusual (and unhappy) anniversary today, and two VERY different and odd stories to talk about, after a storm update from Joseph. He's today's articles, courtesy of KM and EE:

Articles:

Internet and cell outages in Northwest Alaska, North Slope caused by offshore fiber optic cut (https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/rural-alaska/2023/06/12/internet-and-cell-outages-in-northwest-alaska-north-slope-caused-by-offshore-fiber-optic-cut/)

Explorer, Pakistani Businessman Aboard Missing Titanic Sub (https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/billionaire-explorer-pakistani-businessman-aboard-missing-titanic-sub)

[Matthew]

Distractions are usually contrived, often propaganda, and sometimes just pure BS.

Five people were killed here, under quite spectacular circumstances due stunning criminal negligence, and while visiting the most famous shipwreck in the world.

I believe this was legitimately newsworthy.

Sure is!

Did you see this as well though? Seems like the implosion was heard yet it wasn't reported by the news when it happened. It's anyone's guess but the implication to me is they kept the story going because it was a particularly good distraction.



...

...why the heck did noone on the planet detect the BOOM of a sonic implosion from within the sea?
...

They did hear it but I'm speculating that the news attention was convenient. What else was happening over the last few days? It might be a sincere explosion/implosion but one way or another we're being played.

U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago
Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first detected Titan tragedy
...
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12

[pabranno]

It was absolutely detected at the time of occurrence. I have experience in being one of the “detectors”. They saw it. They knew.

Pamela

[Bill Ryan]

Here's a 5-minute mainstream news interview with James Cameron and Bob Ballard, both of whom know a great deal about this kind of technology — and all the associated risks.

They explain how their small specialist community of deep underwater explorers immediately knew what had happened when contact was lost less then 2 hours into the dive.

Short, clear, and recommended. :flower:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBCw7hTRJLU

[Bill Ryan]

More from James Cameron (for those who may not have seen this). Just 7 minutes of impeccable common sense, and recommended. :flower:

'Titanic' Director James Cameron Accuses OceanGate of Cutting Corners


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCTZgHl5y4M

[Arcturian108]

Bill,
The reasoning of James Cameron seems pedestrian to me. I feel that there is an agenda here to keep people away from the Titanic wreck from now on.

[Satori]

“They”, working with mainstream source, and using tried and true means and methods, strung the public along for 4-5 days with the riveting news of the desperate and critical search for the Titan, when all the while the official sources already knew, within hours, that it had imploded.

Why string us along?

For the same reason they always do. To maintain power and control. In this case, by means of distraction, diversion, deflection and lies so that the sheeple remain focused on trivial aspartame for the brain, while the critically important information that really matters to humanity passes largely unnoticed into the memory hole and soon forgotten.

Just stop to think for a minute: How many truly important matters were taking place, particularly in the USA and Russia (and elsewhere), this past week?

And, I may take flack for this, but…. We are told 5 people died in that experimental, untested and ultra-hazardous craft. Ok. We were also told by MSM that it is ok to grieve. Grieve for what? For who? Why?

What about the 1000s of people who die every day somewhere in the world for myriad reasons, often involving negligence, or worse. It is not uncommon for a car accident to kill 5 or more people each day, somewhere.

What about the millions of people who died and who continue to die from the so-called Covid vaccine. Are we told it is OK to grieve for them and their loved ones?

Do we need to be told when to grieve? Or when to feel anything else?

Hell no.

[Ravenlocke]

https://twitter.com/Sprinter99880/status/1674085764101992453

1674085764101992453

https://twitter.com/Sprinter99880/status/1674081150443089922

1674081150443089922

[Bill Ryan]

Bill,
The reasoning of James Cameron seems pedestrian to me. I feel that there is an agenda here to keep people away from the Titanic wreck from now on.This is a short but very interesting 5 minute interview with Julie Cook, author of The Titanic and the City of Widows it Left Behind (https://www.amazon.com/Titanic-City-Widows-left-Behind/dp/1526757168), and a descendant of one of the Titanic stokers who died. She was due to have embarked on a Titanic 'sightseeing' trip with OceanGate (not this last one!), but had to cancel, and now feels she kind of dodged a bullet.

The connection here with the quoted post is that she too feels that it's all a sign that everyone should now leave the Titanic alone. :flower:

Titanic sub: 'I had no idea it was this botched'. Julie Cook shares her experience with OceanGate


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ0GjNM7E1Y

[Gwin Ru]

...

... I get that parts of that contraption were recovered... but... any bodies or parts thereof recovered? Where are they?

[Bill Ryan]

... I get that parts of that contraption were recovered... but... any bodies or parts thereof recovered? Where are they?Gwin, they'd have suffered the same fate as being impacted by an industrial hydraulic crusher weighing 1000 tons. All the specialist commentators have been very careful about what they've said, simply for reasons of sensitivity, but absolutely nothing would be left.

[avid]

Probably not even a cell, instantaneous annihilation, blessings they wouldn’t even had a chance to think. Stupid manufacturers however, they should be sued despite folk paying to go. This was absolute folly, renegade company. Utterly disgraceful.

[Gwin Ru]

...

... I got that from Mark's video, however, even when a car is crushed into a cube, one can still determine it was a car... a body, in part, is also elastic... so - I would expect - some chance of meatballs floating around in the middle of some surfacing oily patches... just to ascertain there were bodies there in the first place... just theorizing and won't insist on it.

[Bill Ryan]

instantaneousMany might have seen this video already, showing the instant implosion of a rail tanker in which there was a vacuum.

That's the effect of just 1 (one) atmospheric pressure. The Titan had over 300 atmospheric pressures on it, from the huge column of water above it. This is a 17 second video, but the implosion happens right at the start.

:flower:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz95_VvTxZM

[JackMcThorn]

[From the Irish National Public Media this morning]

'Presumed human remains' discovered in Titan sub wreckage

https://www.rte.ie/news/2023/0628/1391676-titan-submersible-wreckage/

Experts have recovered "presumed human remains" from the remains of the Titan sub that imploded during a dive to the Titanic wreck killing five people, according to the US Coast Guard.

"United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered," the agency said in a statement after parts of the wreckage were recovered from the ocean floor near the remains of the ship.

[Bill Ryan]

This seems most interesting and significant, and if it's what it purports to be as best I can see the media hasn't caught this yet.

A Pakistani YT channel posted this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2HjMP_nbg), and here's an exact transcript. It claims to report the text communications between the Titan and their support team on the surface vessel.

Do note: this may or may not be authentic — though if it's faked, it looks extremely real. The original source was said (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2HjMP_nbg) to be https://www.unilad.com/news/titanic-submarine-imploded-debris-text-messages, but that link does not work. (Of course, it may have been quickly redacted for legal or other reasons.)

~~~

07:58:16 [SUB] Launch sequence complete, rdy?

08:00:39 [TOP] All clear

08:01:11 [SUB] Proceeding.

08:03:09 [TOP] Enjoy the dive gentlemen.

08:19:53 [TOP] you're 15 minutes into the dive, current depth. Systems check, please.

08:21:28 [SUB] Systems check complete, all in order. All lights are green. We are 756, proceeding.

08:34:02 [TOP] 30 minutes in, update please.

08:34:57 [SUB] All systems are functioning normally. We're in good shape. Continuing our descent as planned.

08:36:05 [TOP] Superb, proceed.

08:49:10 [TOP] Over 45-minute mark. Current depth? Confirm status.

08:51:30 [SUB] Depth at 1934. All systems stable and descent continuing as planned. Happy crew.

08:52:28 [TOP] Excellent!

09:01:46 [TOP] You're at the hour mark.

09:02:13 [SUB] All is smooth sailing here.

09:15:21 [TOP] You are at 75 minutes, depth? Status? Do you need to adjust velocity?

09:17:50 [SUB] All under control. At 2960. No adjustments needed. We're enjoying the ride.

09:28:16 [SUB] we're noting an alarm from the rtm*
* Real Time Monitoring

09:28:35 [SUB] reducing velocity descent depth 3433

09:28:47 [TOP] Understood. Do you need to ascend?

09:30:36 [SUB] no change with thrust the rate of descent is increasing. At 35. going to release the ballast now.

09:30:55 [TOP] Yes, agree. Release the ballast.

09:32:12 [SUB] No improvement. Preparing to jettison the frame.

09:33:00 [TOP] Affirmative. Update when able. RTM indicator status?

09:35:48 [SUB] frame jettisoned multiple attempts needed. But starting the ascent now.

09:36:33 [TOP] Multiple attempts? What is your status? RTM indicators? Depth?

09:37:38 [TOP] Update please when able.

09:38:09 [SUB] crackling sound at aft

09:38:44 [TOP] Can you identify source? RTM indicators status?

09:40:12 [SUB] neg

09:42:12 [SUB] trying to run diagnostics. ascending now. but very slow. sounds have subsided. global RTM alert active all red.

09:42:57 [TOP] Understood. Any codes? Depth? Ascent rate?

09:43:16 [TOP] Updates when able please.

09:43:32 [SUB] slow ascent in progress. quarter predicted. unclear why rate is small. no indicator. at 3476. aiming for the surface.

09:44:03 [TOP] We are talking it over with the engineer. Standby.

09:45:11 [TOP] Depth and status please. What's the wattage on upwards thrust?

09:46:37 [SUB] reading red on the A power bus. I switched to B. at 3457m more sounds aft

09:47:19 [TOP] Understood, continue ascent. Talking to Carlos* about power bus situation right now. Standby.
* Carlos Rosas, OceanGate Electrical Engineer

09:48:49 [TOP] We are activating recovery procedures. Carlos is requesting wattage output from bus B. Status update please. Velocity of ascent?

09:50:09 [TOP] We're not receiving you. Update please.

09:51:16 [TOP] Status and depth report.

09:53:08 [TOP] We need you to respond with status and depth. Carlos is requesting wattage update on thrusters.

09:55:01 [TOP] We are unable to read you. We are moving to recovery coordinates. Report if you read.

09:57:22 [TOP] Please respond if you're able.

[palehorse]

Probably not even a cell, instantaneous annihilation, blessings they wouldn’t even had a chance to think. Stupid manufacturers however, they should be sued despite folk paying to go. This was absolute folly, renegade company. Utterly disgraceful.

agreed! this company should be banned from any activities from now on.

Just imagine the moment been inside that egg shell and it started to crack and boom, implosion!!! no time to think or do anything.

[Bill Ryan]

A Pakistani YT channel posted this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJ2HjMP_nbg), and here's an exact transcript. It claims to report the text communications between the Titan and their support team on the surface vessel.Here's another Pakistani YT channel reporting the same information. The presenter, whose name is Captain Zahid, appears to be a professional authority on shipping, and according to the comments seems to be greatly appreciated by his large audience.

You can see purported screenshots of the text messages, but the narration is not in English (is it Urdu?) and there's no auto-translate option. The significance here is that this man seems both intelligent, knowledgeable and respected. It'd be VERY interesting to know what he is saying in his commentary.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OISAVH8Tx1s

[Bill Ryan]

And look at this. Here's a video, mostly captured real-time in the craft, of the earlier incident when they were troubleshooting the thruster that had been installed backwards.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKvEUz8C5Y0
At exactly 4:24, there's a frame where the comms terminal can be seen. Here's a screenshot:

https://projectavalon.net/Titan_comms_screenshot.png

And here it is, cropped and enhanced:

https://projectavalon.net/Titan_comms_screenshot_cropped.jpg

You can see that apart from the capitalization of the message (i.e. in upper case), the formatting is exactly the same as in the video report.

https://projectavalon.net/Text_message_sample_screenshot.jpg

[Bill Ryan]

There's now an extensive (and commendably intelligent and well-informed) discussion about this on reddit.


https://old.reddit.com/r/OceanGateTitan/comments/14lzb3c/leaked_titan_communications_transcript

There are many hundreds of comments, and I've only just skimmed them so far. Some of them argue persuasively that these claimed text messages are an extremely clever fake — and despite James Cameron having stated earlier on video that a scenario very much like this is what was known to have happened, faked messages (which may be close to the reality) have to be possible.

[Mari]

There's now an extensive (and commendably intelligent and well-informed) discussion about this on reddit.


https://old.reddit.com/r/OceanGateTitan/comments/14lzb3c/leaked_titan_communications_transcript

There are many hundreds of comments, and I've only just skimmed them so far. Some of them argue persuasively that these claimed text messages are an extremely clever fake — and despite James Cameron having stated earlier on video that a scenario very much like this is what was known to have happened, faked messages (which may be close to the reality) have to be possible.


If these messages are fake, then why? Only thing I could think of (apart from a sick/mischievous mind) is perhaps they are a deliberate decoy of some sort (in a world racked by 'decoy' news) - either by an individual or organisation. But then again, why?

[happyuk]

There's now an extensive (and commendably intelligent and well-informed) discussion about this on reddit.


https://old.reddit.com/r/OceanGateTitan/comments/14lzb3c/leaked_titan_communications_transcript

There are many hundreds of comments, and I've only just skimmed them so far. Some of them argue persuasively that these claimed text messages are an extremely clever fake — and despite James Cameron having stated earlier on video that a scenario very much like this is what was known to have happened, faked messages (which may be close to the reality) have to be possible.

Jeez, this comment really hits it home for me.


Probably too compromised. And the propulsion system was these repurposed little fans, I think. I saw an interview where a reporter who went down briefly. He said fans weren’t designed to bring them up. Only to drive them around down there. That’s why they had so many ways to reduce weight. But it was never going to bring them up fast enough in a crisis. Just a killing waiting to happen to people this guy took in.

Stockton Rush despite once being a flight-test engineer for the F-15, clearly didn't have an engineering mindset. A deadly combination of hubris, isolation and groupthink.

[Bill Ryan]

More analysis of the purported Titan messages, with some interesting added observations. The video has had 1.9 million views in less than 24 hours and there are 10,500 comments, many of them intelligent and worthwhile.

Leaked Titan Sub Transcript Shows Crew in Battle for their Lives


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dj8IJbP41c

[mizo]

An update to the saga


https://twitter.com/DylanMAllman/status/1691828292351881674

[Bill Ryan]

Here's a new article in Vanity Fair, published a couple of days ago. It's excellently written, and casts even more light on the background to the whole chaotic and tragic thing.

It's way too long to copy here, but I do recommend it for anyone who's been following this all closely — which is more of a Shakespearean human condition story than a technical or scientific one.

:flower:

https://vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/titan-submersible-implosion-warnings

The Titan Submersible Disaster was Years in the Making, New Details Reveal

To many in the tight-knit deep-sea exploration community, OceanGate’s submersible dives were reckless and often dangerous, writes best-selling author Susan Casey.

(... the long and detailed article (https://vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/titan-submersible-implosion-warnings) continues)

[ExomatrixTV]

James Cameron reveals new information about Titanic sub disaster | 60 Minutes Australia:

Cb9uqlr7b4Q
Hollywood director and undersea explorer James Cameron’s new information in the search for answers about the Titan submersible catastrophe.


*Synopsis | Unfathomable (2024)*

A year on from the OceanGate sub tragedy, there are still so many unanswered questions. Most fundamentally, why did the strange-looking craft on a mission to the wreck of the Titanic fail so spectacularly? And why, for days on end, was the world wrongly led to believe there was hope for a successful rescue mission? The lack of credible information about what really happened is now becoming increasingly unfathomable, not only for the families of the victims, but also for other undersea explorers like legendary Hollywood director James Cameron. Speaking exclusively to 60 Minutes, Cameron reveals that this is a catastrophe that could and should have been avoided.


LEAKED Titan Sub Transcript Shows Crew In Battle For Lives:

4Dj8IJbP41c
Jeff Ostroff reviews the leaked Titan Sub Transcript which the internet is debating the authenticity of, to see if this scenario is real, and whether the Titan submarine crew really spent 20 minutes fighting for their lives with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush at the helm, only to have the OceanGate Titan submarine implode before it could resurface. Do you think this is the authentic leaked Oceangate Titan Sub transcript?

00:00 Introduction To Leaked Titan Sub Transcripts: Is it authentic or fake?
01:12 Review of Titanic Sub Transcript starting 7:52 AM
02:33 Transcript shows Titan sub descending to fast to Titanic shipwreck
05:24 First sign of trouble for Titan sub in transcript
06:51 About Titan Sub RTM Real Time Monitoring System for Hull integrity
07:34 Initial crisis communication between Titan Sub and Polar Prince support vessel
08:23 Titan Sub jettisoned the ballast weights and frame, ascending now
08:35 First message from Titan sub about crackling noises aft
10:21 Tutan Sub reports slow ascent, 1/4 of speed expected
12:45 Topside Polar Prince support vessel loses all communication with Titan Submarine
13:01 Time of Titan Sub implosion estimated: 9:47 AM
13:39 Last message from Titan Submarine to Polar Prince support vessel


@theodoreboosalis (https://www.youtube.com/@theodoreboosalis) quote:

"It's very unfortunate this happened - but tragedy brings wisdom. We know that Carbon Fiber unto itself is NOT suitable for diving expeditions of any kind. Further the Titan was constructed without an escape hatch (yes at the lower depths not worth anything) but we don't build subs without a topside escape hatch. It was all wrong".

[Bill Ryan]

James Cameron reveals new information about Titanic sub disaster | 60 Minutes Australia:

Cb9uqlr7b4Q
Hollywood director and undersea explorer James Cameron’s new information in the search for answers about the Titan submersible catastrophe.


*Synopsis | Unfathomable (2024)*

A year on from the OceanGate sub tragedy, there are still so many unanswered questions. Most fundamentally, why did the strange-looking craft on a mission to the wreck of the Titanic fail so spectacularly? And why, for days on end, was the world wrongly led to believe there was hope for a successful rescue mission? The lack of credible information about what really happened is now becoming increasingly unfathomable, not only for the families of the victims, but also for other undersea explorers like legendary Hollywood director James Cameron. Speaking exclusively to 60 Minutes, Cameron reveals that this is a catastrophe that could and should have been avoided.A few comments on this. :flower:

It's not 'new information' at all, as Cameron has stated in much earlier interviews (all posted on this thread a year ago) that he knew with certainty that when the implosion happened two hours into the dive, which had been immediately reported to him by a US Navy source, that the Titan crew had all died instantly.

But this Australian 60 Minutes feature is absolutely worth watching. The interview with P.H. Nargeolet's daughter Sidonie was very sensitively done, and I'd NOT known that OceanGate hadn't contacted her at all since her father's death, even to offer condolences. (Wow.)

Moreover, the interview at 14:00 with Jamie Frederick, the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue Captain, showed him in the very best light, and properly so. He explained that in search operations, maintaining hope is of the utmost importance. He said:
If there's one thing that I've learned in 30 years of doing search and rescue. if you don't have hope and you're conducting a search and rescue case, you're in the wrong business. Because I've seen some pretty remarkable things happen over my career.
As a personal aside, from my own knowledge (and some experience) of mountain rescue operations, this is absolutely how all search teams operate. You never give up until either you have definitive evidence of what has happened, or until all you know for sure that all possible hope is lost.





LEAKED Titan Sub Transcript Shows Crew In Battle For Lives:

4Dj8IJbP41c
Jeff Ostroff reviews the leaked Titan Sub Transcript which the internet is debating the authenticity of, to see if this scenario is real, and whether the Titan submarine crew really spent 20 minutes fighting for their lives with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush at the helm, only to have the OceanGate Titan submarine implode before it could resurface. Do you think this is the authentic leaked Oceangate Titan Sub transcript?

00:00 Introduction To Leaked Titan Sub Transcripts: Is it authentic or fake?
01:12 Review of Titanic Sub Transcript starting 7:52 AM
02:33 Transcript shows Titan sub descending to fast to Titanic shipwreck
05:24 First sign of trouble for Titan sub in transcript
06:51 About Titan Sub RTM Real Time Monitoring System for Hull integrity
07:34 Initial crisis communication between Titan Sub and Polar Prince support vessel
08:23 Titan Sub jettisoned the ballast weights and frame, ascending now
08:35 First message from Titan sub about crackling noises aft
10:21 Titan Sub reports slow ascent, 1/4 of speed expected
12:45 Topside Polar Prince support vessel loses all communication with Titan Submarine
13:01 Time of Titan Sub implosion estimated: 9:47 AM
13:39 Last message from Titan Submarine to Polar Prince support vesselI have to say, this purported transcript continues to hold my interest. For two reasons: (a) it seems entirely plausible and credible, and (b, importantly!) no authority, even James Cameron himself, has ever commented that this is a hoax... which would have been so very easy for anyone at all to do if they had known that for a fact.

[Bill Ryan]

There's an excellent new article about all this in Wired, long, detailed, with quite a lot of new information. It's the conclusion reached by their year-long probe involving “tens of thousands” of OceanGate documents and internal communications.

The article is free to access, but limited if one has already read too many of their articles. Here it is below:

(Audio here, 42 minutes: https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed/?pub=wired&articleID=titan-submersible-disaster-shocked)


https://wired.com/story/titan-submersible-disaster-inside-story-oceangate-files (https://wired.com/story/titan-submersible-disaster-inside-story-oceangate-files/)

The Titan Submersible Disaster Shocked the World. The Exclusive Inside Story Is More Disturbing Than Anyone Imagined

A year after OceanGate’s sub imploded, thousands of leaked documents and interviews with ex-employees reveal how the company’s CEO cut corners, ignored warnings, and lied in his fatal quest to reach the Titanic.

The Ocean Sciences Building at the University of Washington in Seattle is a brightly modern, four-story structure, with large glass windows reflecting the bay across the street.

On the afternoon of July 7, 2016, it was being slowly locked down.

Red lights began flashing at the entrances as students and faculty filed out under overcast skies. Eventually, just a handful of people remained inside, preparing to unleash one of the most destructive forces in the natural world: the crushing weight of about 2½ miles of ocean water.

In the building’s high-pressure testing facility, a black, pill-shaped capsule hung from a hoist on the ceiling. About 3 feet long, it was a scale model of a submersible called Cyclops 2, developed by a local startup called OceanGate (https://www.wired.com/story/titan-sub-oceangate-hull-failure-loss-tragedy/). The company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, had cofounded the company in 2009 as a sort of submarine charter service, anticipating a growing need for commercial and research trips to the ocean floor. At first, Rush acquired older, steel-hulled subs for expeditions, but in 2013 OceanGate had begun designing what the company called “a revolutionary new manned submersible.” Among the sub’s innovations were its lightweight hull, which was built from carbon fiber and could accommodate more passengers than the spherical cabins traditionally used in deep-sea diving. By 2016, Rush’s dream was to take paying customers down to the most famous shipwreck of them all: the Titanic, 3,800 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

Engineers carefully lowered the Cyclops 2 model into the testing tank nose-first, like a bomb being loaded into a silo, and then screwed on the tank’s 3,600-pound lid. Then they began pumping in water, increasing the pressure to mimic a submersible’s dive. If you’re hanging out at sea level, the weight of the atmosphere above you exerts 14.7 pounds per square inch (psi). The deeper you go, the stronger that pressure; at the Titanic’s depth, the pressure is about 6,500 psi. Soon, the pressure gauge on UW’s test tank read 1,000 psi, and it kept ticking up—2,000 psi, 5,000 psi. At about the 73-minute mark, as the pressure in the tank reached 6,500 psi, there was a sudden roar and the tank shuddered violently.

“I felt it in my body,” an OceanGate employee wrote in an email later that night. “The building rocked, and my ears rang for a long time.”

“Scared the **** out of everyone,” he added.

The model had imploded thousands of meters short of the safety margin OceanGate had designed for.

In the high-stakes, high-cost world of crewed submersibles (https://www.wired.com/tag/submarines/), most engineering teams would have gone back to the drawing board, or at least ordered more models to test. Rush’s company didn’t do either of those things. Instead, within months, OceanGate began building a full-scale Cyclops 2 based on the imploded model. This submersible design, later renamed Titan, eventually made it down to the Titanic in 2021. It even returned to the site for expeditions the next two years. But nearly one year ago, on June 18, 2023, Titan dove to the infamous wreck and imploded, instantly killing all five people onboard (https://www.wired.com/story/titan-sub-debris-found/), including Rush himself.

The disaster captivated and horrified the world. Deep-sea experts criticized OceanGate’s choices, from Titan’s carbon-fiber construction to Rush’s public disdain for industry regulations, which he believed stifled innovation. Organizations that had worked with OceanGate, including the University of Washington as well as the Boeing Company, released statements denying that they contributed to Titan.

A trove of tens of thousands of internal OceanGate emails, documents, and photographs provided exclusively to WIRED by anonymous sources sheds new light on Titan’s development, from its initial design and manufacture through its first deep-sea operations. The documents, validated by interviews with two third-party suppliers and several former OceanGate employees with intimate knowledge of Titan, reveal never-before-reported details about the design and testing of the submersible. They show that Boeing and the University of Washington were both involved in the early stages of OceanGate’s carbon-fiber sub project, although their work did not make it into the final Titan design. The trove also reveals a company culture in which employees who questioned their bosses’ high-speed approach and decisions were dismissed as overly cautious or even fired. (The former employees who spoke to WIRED have asked not to be named for fear of being sued by the families of those who died aboard the vessel.) Most of all, the documents show how Rush, blinkered by his own ambition to be the Elon Musk of the deep seas, repeatedly overstated OceanGate’s progress and, on at least one occasion, outright lied about significant problems with Titan’s hull, which has not been previously reported.

A representative for OceanGate, which ceased all operations last summer, declined to comment on WIRED’s findings.

I met Stockton Rush on June 24, 2015, while reporting on OceanGate for New Scientist magazine. A former flight engineer and tech investor, Rush was already styling himself a subaquatic Musk. “I wanted to be the first person on Mars until I realized there was nothing there,” Rush told me at a city center dock in Seattle. “But in the ocean, there are new life-forms, things people have never discovered.” Rush believed that Earth’s oceans, not outer space, were where humanity would find refuge from existential risks like climate change. “My goal is to move the needle,” he told me.

Around us, employees were prepping OceanGate’s prototype submersible, the Cyclops 1, for its deepest dive to date. The sub was a cylindrical, steel-hulled design rated for dives up to 500 meters. OceanGate had acquired it a few years earlier and refurbished it, adding LEDs and a PlayStation controller for easy steering, and replacing an ugly exterior cabin with a sleek white plastic fairing to protect components outside the hull. Together with the large acrylic viewport, the effect was a sort of one-eyed robot shark. Up to five people could squeeze inside—which is what Rush and I were about to do, for a test dive in Seattle’s Elliott Bay.

Ninety minutes later and 130 meters deeper, we were totally lost. First the thruster software had glitched, leaving us floating just above the seafloor. Now the sub’s compass was acting up. The shipwreck we aimed to explore, a rail ferry that had once carried Teddy Roosevelt, was nowhere to be seen. All I could spy outside the Cyclops’ forward dome was the occasional salmon dancing in the frigid water.

As I began to feel the chill seeping through the sub’s steel hull, Rush asked me to open my iPhone’s compass app. He wanted to compare it to the one on his phone. The headings did not match, but he rebooted the thrusters and we set off in what he was pretty sure was the right direction.

“You’re heading in exactly the wrong direction,” said a faint voice transmitted via an acoustic link from the support ship tracking us on the surface. We eventually located the sunken ship, its rotting bow emerging into the Cyclops’ headlight. It was an otherworldly experience, made more thrilling by the hint of danger.

Back at the dock, Rush brushed off the problems we had encountered. This is exactly why OceanGate started with the Cyclops 1, he said, rather than anything capable of diving deeper. “I could have built a multimillion-dollar version and all of a sudden I’ve got to figure out really stupid stuff like the magnetic compass,” he told me. “The Cyclops 1 is getting us ready. When we do the Cyclops 2, then all these bugs will be out.”

The Cyclops 2, which Rush renamed Titan in 2018, was already on the drawing board. And Rush believed he had the biggest bug—how to make a vessel that could safely dive 20 times deeper than America’s nuclear subs—worked out. He would use a modern wonder material: carbon fiber.

Carbon-fiber composites are some of the strongest materials available to engineers. They are formed of thin strands of atomic carbon within plastic resins, layer upon layer, then cured carefully at high temperatures. The resulting composites can be both stronger and lighter than titanium, and it was this combination that caught Rush’s attention. A carbon-fiber Titan could be roughly the same size and weight as the steel Cyclops and yet be able to dive up to 12 times deeper. It would be much cheaper for a support vessel to carry and deploy at sea than a metal sub, and would also be more buoyant, reducing the risk of getting stranded on the ocean floor. While carbon fiber has been used in everything from cars to rockets, no one had ever dived in a deep-water carbon-fiber submersible. Rush wanted to be the first.

In 2013, OceanGate struck up a partnership with the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory to develop the new sub. The university has a long history of working with composites and designing its own underwater vehicles. It also already had a relationship with OceanGate, after using its subs for research; the physics lab helped write the software used by Cyclops 1. The university touted the arrangement in press releases at the time: “UW, Local Company Building Innovative Deep-Sea Manned Submarine,” read one headline from October 2013. The story was updated with a note in 2023 saying that “the vessel that resulted from this partnership” was the Cyclops 1. Emails from OceanGate leaked exclusively to WIRED indicate that UW researchers provided hundreds of detailed 3D CAD drawings of components for a carbon-fiber sub between 2013 and 2016, as part of a $5 million contract. But the relationship between the lab and OceanGate was contentious, according to emails.

UW claims that OceanGate and the lab parted ways after just $650,000 worth of work, and former OceanGate employees told WIRED that none of UW’s hardware or software work wound up in the finished sub.

OceanGate also announced that Boeing Research & Technology was helping with the project. In October 2013, two engineers at Boeing, Mark Negley and William Koch, produced a detailed 70-page preliminary design containing renderings, manufacturing advice, and technical analysis. These details of Boeing’s involvement have not been reported before. “Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it,” Jessica Kowal, a spokesperson for Boeing, said in a statement. The company declined to answer on the record any other questions from WIRED. Negley and Koch, who are still employed by Boeing, did not respond to LinkedIn messages.

Even at this early stage, these engineers were warning of potential problems ahead.
Negley and Koch pointed out that although composites can be stronger than any metal, they have other challenges. Carbon fiber can get progressively weaker, sometimes in unexpected ways. The manufacturing process can introduce defects if the resin is cured too long or not long enough, if debris gets in, or if the material is laid or wound unevenly. And the more layers a structure has, the engineers wrote, the greater the risk of a defect that would weaken it. Titan would ultimately have 660 layers of carbon fiber. To mitigate these risks, the Boeing engineers suggested a rigorous quality assurance process during manufacture and ultrasound testing of the hull after it was made. Ultrasound scans could find defects or delaminations in the hull—places where the carbon-fiber layers had separated.

To manufacture the hull, Rush turned to a company called Spencer Composites. First, though, OceanGate needed a scaled-down model of the hull to test how it would fare against the intense pressures at the bottom of the sea. By 2015, according to a design document written by Spencer, OceanGate wanted its hull to be rated up to 6,000 meters and have a safety factor of up to 2.25—meaning that it should be stable to two and a quarter times that depth, or 13,500 meters. James Cameron’s record-setting Deepsea Challenger had a safety factor of 1.36. Alvin, the submersible that originally explored the Titanic, had a 1.8 or higher. (Spencer Composites did not respond to requests for comment.)

In June 2015, just before my trip in Cyclops 1, engineers placed a one-third scale model of Titan in an 8-foot-long testing tank at APL-UW for its first pressure test. This model was built entirely of carbon fiber, including the end domes, which ended up failing at pressures equating to around just 3,000 meters, according to a report written by Rush. OceanGate commissioned Spencer to make more domes, but these would take months to arrive. Meanwhile, the cylinder was tested again, this time with solid aluminum discs on the ends, and reached 4,100 meters without incident. But when OceanGate received the new carbon-fiber domes and tested the hull in March 2016, the new domes again imploded at 3,000 meters.

The test that “scared the **** out of everyone,” in one engineer’s words, was OceanGate’s fourth. This time, the hull (again with aluminum caps) reached the equivalent of 4,500 meters before imploding, giving it a miserly 1.18 safety factor for any dives to Titanic depths.

https://media.wired.com/photos/664e3ba3982e64cbbf6cd509/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oceangate_3.jpg
Damage to the scale model after imploding in the testing tank.
Photograph: Courtesy of a former OceanGate employee

“Over the next months we will analyze the data in detail … and then run a test with a new cylinder through at least 1,000 cycles to confirm its durability,” Rush wrote to shareholders at the time. That replacement scale model was not made, and the new tests never happened, former employees tell WIRED, in part because Rush trusted OceanGate’s computer models. Even when OceanGate decided to change the domes in the final design from carbon fiber to titanium, Rush didn’t commission models to test the interactions between the new materials; one former employee who was familiar with Rush’s decision says the CEO balked at the high price tag.

“The modeling says it’s OK. The analysis says it’s OK,” one former employee says. “We build airplanes on the same type of analysis and then we go throw people in them.”

But a low-pressure environment, like flying, is different from a high-pressure one. Carbon fiber is inherently stronger when holding pressure in, like what happens with an aircraft in the stratosphere, than when keeping pressure out, as happens underwater. And all cylindrical vessels resist buckling better when the air pressure is higher inside.

Submersible experts not associated with OceanGate told WIRED that they would do much more testing on a new design. “We did at least 10 scale-model pressure hulls that we tested to destruction,” says Adam Wright, an engineer who had worked on explorer Steve Fossett’s 2005 carbon-fiber sub, which was shelved after Fossett died in a plane crash. And that was for a submersible that would only be used for a single mission. OceanGate was planning to use its submersible repeatedly—up to 10,000 times, according to internal design documents.

“Carbon fiber is a very sensible material if it’s been engineered correctly and manufactured in a controlled way,” says Chase Hogoboom, president and cofounder of Composite Energy Technologies, which has successfully tested small carbon-fiber vessels to the equivalent of 6,000 meters hundreds of times. “It takes millions of dollars and many years, but it’s not rocket science. It’s just connecting the dots.”

OceanGate tested the model hull to destruction only once, and never used the titanium components that would become fixtures on the final sub. Instead, the company simply increased the thickness of the carbon-fiber hull in its design specs from 4.5 to 5 inches, and commissioned Spencer to build the real thing. (Later, OceanGate engineers found that Titan’s full-size hull was too thick for portable ultrasonic scanners, and a coating Spencer had applied to it would further block the signals. Rush decided that moving the entire sub to a lab for scanning would be too expensive, says a former employee who was familiar with Rush’s thinking. As a result, no scans were made—going against the advice of both Boeing and OceanGate engineers.)

https://media.wired.com/photos/665a96ce096d21593a7e6358/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/titan-red%2520(1).jpg
Key components of the Titan submersible

Unlike Cyclops 1, with its large, 180-degree viewing dome, Titan’s front dome was made of solid titanium, with a smaller 23-inch viewport in the center. The viewport, made from 9-inch-thick acrylic, was an entirely new design by Tony Nissen, OceanGate’s director of engineering, and it was going to be manufactured by a company called Hydrospace Group.

Will Kohnen, Hydrospace’s CEO, told WIRED that he had originally expected Rush to thoroughly test the viewport according to rigorous standards set by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Under those standards, OceanGate would test at least five windows to destruction at high pressure, cycle a viewport from low to high pressure a thousand times, and subject another viewport to five times the intended pressure for 300 consecutive hours to see how much the plastic slowly shrank under pressure, says Kohnen.

“The more innovative you get, the more testing you’ve got to do,” Kohnen says. “Over a period of years, it was pretty obvious that OceanGate wasn’t going to do the testing.” The former employees who spoke to WIRED also said that OceanGate wasn’t testing the viewport to the society’s standards.

By the fall of 2017, Kohnen was getting worried. As a last-ditch effort, in November he sent Rush an email offering “a serious discount” to build a second viewport using a design that had been tested and certified to 4,000 meters. It could be swapped out for the experimental window within 24 hours, he wrote. Kohnen says that Rush told him he wasn’t interested.

Kohnen delivered OceanGate’s viewport in December. He would rate it to only 650 meters—one-sixth of the depth to the Titanic. He also shared an analysis, done pro bono by an independent expert, concluding that OceanGate’s design might fail after only a few 4,000-meter dives. OceanGate nevertheless installed the viewport in Titan later that month. Construction on the sub was almost complete, and the company was already advertising its first expedition to the Titanic in May.

It was time for the engineers to hand it over to OceanGate’s operations team for testing at sea. But there was another snag. David Lochridge, who oversaw marine operations at the company and who needed to sign off on the transfer, became convinced that Titan was unsafe. In January 2018, Lochridge sent Rush a quality-control inspection report detailing 27 issues with the vehicle, from questionable O-ring seals on the domes and missing bolts to flammable materials and more concerns about its carbon-fiber hull. Rush fired him the next day. (Although Lochridge later made a whistleblower report to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about Titan, Rush sued him for breach of contract. The settlement of that lawsuit resulted in Lochridge dropping his complaint, paying OceanGate nearly $10,000, and signing an NDA. Lochridge did not respond to WIRED.)

Will Kohnen also couldn’t forget about Titan, and the foreboding he had about the whole enterprise. “We have a rogue element within the submersible industry,” he remembers thinking. If something went wrong with Titan, it might scare people off deep-sea exploration more widely. In March 2018, he drafted a letter, signed by more than 30 crewed submersible experts, urging Rush to test the vessel with an accredited outside group. (The letter was earlier reported (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/oceangate-titanic-missing-submersible.html) by the New York Times.)

Virtually all marine vessels are certified by organizations such as the American Bureau of Shipping, DNV, or Lloyd’s Register, which ensure that they are built using approved materials and methods and carry appropriate safety gear. It has been widely reported that Rush was dismissive of such certification, but what has not been made public until now is that OceanGate pursued certification with DNV (then known as DNV GL) in 2017—until Rush saw the price. “[DNV] informed me that this was not an easy few thousand dollar project as [it] had presented, but would cost around $50,000,” he later wrote in an email to Rob McCallum, a deep-sea explorer who had also signed Kohnen’s letter.

“Titan and its safety systems are way beyond anything currently in use … I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market,” Rush wrote to McCallum. “Since [starting] OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often.”

Days later, Rush received an even more pointed warning from Boeing’s Mark Negley, who had stayed in contact with the CEO after he helped with a preliminary design. Negley had recently carried out an analysis of Spencer Composites’ hull based on information Rush had shared. He did not mince words when sharing his findings, which WIRED is reporting for the first time. “We think you are at a high risk of a significant failure at or before you reach 4,000 meters. We do not think you have any safety margin,” he wrote in an email on March 30. “Be cautious and careful.”

Negley provided a graph charting the strain on the submersible against depth. It shows a skull and crossbones in the region below 4,000 meters.

https://media.wired.com/photos/664e3ba362bc1a1607ba10ba/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oceangate_2.jpg
The chart Mark Negley shared with Stockton Rush
Chart: Courtesy of a former OceanGate employee

Despite repeated warnings, Rush seemed unfazed. His confidence in Titan was based in part on the new safety systems OceanGate had designed. “A lot of risk mitigation was supposed to ride on the real-time health monitoring,” says one former employee. The heart of that system, designed by an experienced electrical engineer and OceanGate board member named Mike Furlotti, was a suite of sensors and microchips that analyzed the hull’s acoustic emissions—the little pops made by carbon fibers as they break under compression. OceanGate’s theory was that the hull would be fairly noisy on its first few dives but would get quieter when taken to the same depths over and over, one former employee explains. If the acoustic monitoring system started getting really loud on a dive, that would be a clear indication to surface immediately. (Multiple attempts to contact Furlotti for comment were unsuccessful.)

Wright and other industry experts have been extremely critical of this setup. “I’m sure you can pick up these acoustic events fine, but you just don’t know when the end point is,” he says. “You don’t know how many pops is too many, and it could be different for every vessel.”

There was even skepticism within OceanGate itself. In September 2017, the engineer responsible for integrating Furlotti’s design into Titan sent an anxious email to management expressing concerns about the system’s ability to accurately track fiber breakage over time.

OceanGate hired an outside consultant named Allen Green to assess the acoustic monitoring. Green, an authority on the sounds that materials make under stress, endorsed the system in 2018. Later, though, when Green saw how Rush was describing the system to the public—the CEO claimed it could detect the sound of “micro-buckling” in the sub’s hull “way before it fails”—he wrote a concerned email to an OceanGate employee, reported here for the first time.

Rather than warning of failure, Green explained that the sounds indicated “irreversible” damage. “It is my belief, substantiated by many years of experience, that composite structures all have a finite lifetime,” wrote Green, who died in 2021. “While I do not intend to be an alarmist, I did not sleep well and arose early to send this message.”

Rush had pitched OceanGate’s board and investors on a grand vision of what his company could be. By 2018, that included a fleet of self-driving Titans that could dive to 6,000 meters, and satellite offices in Croatia, Israel, and the South Pacific. He imagined a world whose oceans were populated by OceanGate’s crewed underwater bases, which could be used for data storage or even “Plan B habitats” for billionaire preppers.

Reality was more prosaic. Like most startups, OceanGate was in constant need of funds. Rush was trying to save money wherever he could. Interns, who made up around a third of the engineering team, were paid as little as $13 an hour. (When a manager pointed out in 2016 that Washington’s minimum wage was just $9.47 an hour, Rush responded, “I agree we are high. $10 seems fair.”) Rush also downgraded the sub’s titanium components from aerospace grade 5 quality to weaker and cheaper grade 3, says one former employee.

According to internal documents, by 2018 the company had raised around $9 million in venture capital and another $4 million from subsidiary companies that profited off OceanGate’s research and scientific missions. But the real business opportunity would be trips to the Titanic.

Rush had planned six missions to visit the legendary shipwreck in the summer of 2018, each with nine people paying $105,000. With every mission bringing in nearly a million dollars in revenue but costing OceanGate only an estimated $333,000, the more visits Titan could make to the bottom of the North Atlantic, the better. Although the plan was for the finished sub to make more than 30 dives in shallow water before going to deeper waters, OceanGate managed just 18.

In mid-April, Titan was transported to Marsh Harbour in the Bahamas, where deep water could be found very close to land. But before Titan was even moved into the water, it was hit by lightning, damaging its electronics. Some of the damaged equipment was replaced, but the sub was without many components for weeks. Rush nevertheless insisted on attempting a shallow dive during high, rolling seas.

Choppy waves ripped fairings and foam from Titan as it was being towed back from the dive site, causing it to sink. “I was merely ‘spam in the can’ with no comms for 9+ hours inside the sub,” Rush wrote the next day. “I could see parts of the sub floating away on my cameras, but could not communicate to the tow team—a remarkably surreal and frustrating experience.”

Rush had to face facts: There was now no chance of OceanGate reaching the Titanic in 2018. Eager ticket holders (and investors) would have to wait another year.

While they were still in the Bahamas, the team did manage to lower Titan on a series of uncrewed dives, eventually reaching 4,000 meters. But engineers found the hull was warping more under compression than it was meant to, by perhaps as much as 37 percent. Nevertheless, Rush wanted to keep diving deeper with Titan, with himself at the helm. When one engineer expressed concern about performing crewed tests at this point, Nissen wrote to him, “Yesterday I told you if you don’t have the stomach for this type of engineering then OceanGate isn’t for you.”

On December 10, Rush successfully dove Titan to a depth of 3,939 meters—just enough to get to the Titanic. Nissen wrote to the engineering team: “Diving to such deep depths is extremely complicated if you want to be untethered, communicate with the surface, be location tracked with reasonable accuracy, and monitor the health of your vehicle. And, we have delivered. You all have a lot to brag about.”

Titan reached a similar depth again in April, with a crew of four including Rush. While OceanGate touted the dive as history-making proof of its submersible’s bona fides, even Rush was getting worried about loud noises the hull was making at depth. Then on June 7, three weeks before Titan’s maiden voyage to the Titanic, an OceanGate pilot inspecting the interior with a flashlight noticed a crack in the hull. He sent Rush an email warning that the crack was “pretty serious.” A detailed internal report later showed that at least 11 square feet of carbon fiber had delaminated—meaning the bonds between layers had separated.

This time, Rush couldn’t ignore the data. The hull that was meant to last for 10,000 dives to the Titanic had made fewer than 50—and only three to 4,000 meters. It would have to be scrapped, and the Titanic missions would be delayed for yet another year. When Rush shared the news with GeekWire (https://www.geekwire.com/2019/oceangate-puts-off-plans-dive-titanic-shipwreck-due-topside-tangle/) a few days later, however, he blamed the delay on legal complications with Titan’s support vessel.

It’s true that OceanGate ran into issues with maritime law, says one former employee: “The lie is that it was not the reason we delayed.”

After the crack was found in Titan’s hull, OceanGate started searching for a new carbon-fiber contractor. By early 2020, many OceanGate engineers had been laid off or had left the company, insiders say. Tony Nissen was out, and a team that had once numbered more than 20 was reduced to just a handful. “Stockton never really wanted an engineering team, but he needed somebody to build it,” says one insider. “We were down to a skeleton team,” says another.

Rush then announced that the company had inked a partnership with NASA to “collaborate on the development, manufacturing, and testing” of a new carbon-fiber cylinder. (Covid-19 had other plans, shutting down NASA for months. Ultimately, the agency told ABC, “NASA did not conduct testing and manufacturing via its workforce or facilities.”)

The new hull would instead be made by two aerospace firms in Washington state, Electroimpact and Janicki Industries. Electroimpact laid the carbon fibers, and Janicki cured the material in its ovens, confirmed one former employee. Electroimpact did not provide a response to questions about its role, and Janicki declined to comment.

This time, OceanGate had two scale models made, which were once again tested at the University of Washington. Once again, the models imploded early, possibly due to warping of the hulls during manufacturing, says a former employee.

OceanGate scrambled to solve the issue. One idea: Rather than cure all the layers at once, they would cure the hull in stages. Electroimpact would wind about 100 layers of the hull, then ship it to Janicki to cure and settle. Then Janicki would send the hull back to Electroimpact to repeat the process. They were running out of time, so they went for it—skipping tests of the new procedure on samples and going straight to manufacturing the second hull. “The first time we did multiple cures was when we did the full hull,” says one former employee. The new hull was finished by January 2021. It passed pressure testing, similar to what was done at the University of Washington, but at a facility in Maryland that could accommodate the full-size cylinder.

OceanGate’s engineers now needed to integrate the new hull with the rest of Titan. But Titan’s two titanium domes were still attached to each end of the old hull, sitting on titanium rings glued to the carbon fiber with aerospace-grade epoxy adhesive.

Commissioning new titanium interface rings and domes was ruled “an absolute no” by Rush, one former employee says, because of the extra cost and delay. The company that made the original titanium components told WIRED that it did not make new rings for Rush, and three former employees say that OceanGate did, in fact, salvage and reuse the originals.

But staff had difficulty working out how to separate the old hull from the interface rings without damaging even a sliver of titanium. Gaps or bumps could have weakened the join with the new hull, say the sources. On dives, the hull and the rings needed to compress under pressure in perfect harmony. “I can’t imagine a situation where you could reuse the titanium rings,” Wright, the independent engineer, says. OceanGate somehow managed it.

By February 2021, photos of the newly reconstructed Titan were popping up on OceanGate’s Facebook page and other social media. After the implosion in 2023, one ex-employee looked back at these and noticed an unexpected addition: The company had added metal lifting points to both interface rings, apparently to provide a new way to hoist Titan into and out of the water. The addition of the lifting rings, reported by WIRED for the first time, was confirmed by a former employee who saw the engineering drawings, and by another source.

Previously, OceanGate had lifted Titan using a sling beneath the sub to avoid putting stress on the critical joins between the rings and the carbon-fiber hull. As far back as 2017, when the original Titan was first shipped to OceanGate, Nissen had warned the operations team to use only the sling: “The titanium cannot take load/tension.”

“Lifting points are a very serious part of a pressure vessel design and must be considered carefully, tested, and qualified,” says Will Kohnen. “Any lifting arrangement may impose loads and stresses into the pressure vessel, and this must be mitigated by analysis and test.” It is unclear whether such analysis or tests were carried out.

https://media.wired.com/photos/664e3ba386e2824291cf1287/master/w_1600%2Cc_limit/Oceangate_1.jpg
OceanGate originally used a sling system to lower its sub into the water, shown here.
Photograph: Courtesy of a former OceanGate employee

The diving season was about to begin, and after three years of expensive delays, OceanGate desperately needed income from the Titanic missions (whose tickets now cost $125,000 per person). “We were running out of time,” says a former OceanGate employee. Titan had only a few relatively shallow dives in Puget Sound before the company put it on a truck and sent it all the way across Canada to Newfoundland, the port closest to the Titanic wreck.

On July 13, 2021, OceanGate’s Titan made its first successful dive to the Titanic, with Rush serving as the pilot. “We had to overcome tremendous engineering, operational, business, and finally Covid-19 challenges to get here, and I am so proud of this team and grateful for the support of our many partners,” Rush said in a press release (https://www.prweb.com/releases/oceangate_inc_s_carbon_fiber_and_titanium_5_crewmember_submersible_dives_3800_meters_to_the_titanic_ wreck_site/prweb18066066.htm).

After the 2021 expedition, OceanGate was flush with success. The company announced plans for the following year’s expedition to document the wreck “in more detail than ever before” and urging “aspiring mission specialists” to get in touch.

The successes and warm media coverage continued in 2022. OceanGate was profiled by CBS Sunday Morning, which accompanied one of the missions that summer. When reporter David Pogue noticed how improvised the setup on the sub was, Rush reassured him. “The pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all, because that’s where we worked with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail, your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You’re still going to be safe.” The rest of Pogue’s mission was sort of a farce—the sub got lost, things broke—but he came back safely.

That’s not what happened the following year. In June 2023, five eager people got ready to dive back down to the Titanic. They were Rush; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a deep-sea explorer; and three paying passengers: a businessman named Hamish Harding and a father-son duo, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood. On June 18, they sealed Titan and dove. Within two hours, the support ship had lost contact with them.

Their disappearance set off a media frenzy. People speculated how long the crew might be able survive without power or aid. A massive search-and-rescue operation spent four days combing the sea before finding debris from the sub. The US Navy later confirmed it had detected loud sounds “consistent with an implosion” shortly after contact with Titan ended. OceanGate ceased its commercial and exploration activities a few weeks later.

The US Coast Guard is currently leading an international investigation into the deaths.
Several former employees said they were neither shocked nor surprised at OceanGate’s deadly accident. Three had left the company on safety grounds, and two separately described Titan as a ticking time bomb.

One former employee remembers preparing Titan for multiple successful Titanic missions, prior to 2023. “I put my heart and soul into building that sub,” he says. “Many, many hours inside the sub, outside the sub, building and testing it. She was my baby.”

Each time Titan was about to dip beneath the waves, he would pat her hull lightly. “I’d say, ‘Come on back to me baby, you’ll make it, you can do it.’ And when she’d come back up to the surface, I’d say, ‘Good job. You got everyone back up safe.’”

Until one day, she didn’t.

Now the bottom of the North Atlantic is littered with more evidence of human hubris, tiny pieces of a plastic video-game controller nestling among the barnacle-encrusted gold fixtures of the Titanic. Both vessels were at the cutting edge of technology, both exemplars of safety in the eyes of their overconfident creators. And in both cases, their passengers paid the price.

[Bill Ryan]

This sequence of detailed update videos is made by an engineer, Jeff Ostroff (and may best be viewed by engineers as well!), though many science-minded readers who've been following this story may find them very interesting.

The many photos and videos taken of the wreckage on the seabed are crystal clear and most impressive.

I'll post the 4 videos here, but I've only so far watched the most recent one (the last one embedded below), which showed the following:


The cylindrical carbon fiber pressure hull did NOT implode into a zillion small fragments, as many models had assumed.
One large 8 foot long piece of the carbon fiber hull was retrieved intact.
Microscopic analysis has revealed numerous tiny but critical defects in the manufacture.
Photos clearly show how it had become partially delaminated, though it's not yet known whether that was the cause or the result of the implosion.
There's evidence to suggest that the failure was at the front of the Titan (maybe the acrylic viewing port, which it seems has not yet been found), with the implosion violently forcing and compressing everything — including the crew :flower: — to the rear of the craft.

The YouTube comments, many also from engineers, are pretty interesting to read if one wants to go into all that detail as well.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFQGJKsN-Pg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7Fseh64Lq8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX04xMem3-I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xaePm9QhY


Edit to add:

The 3rd video cuts out at about 12:30, so it's only a short one. The problem was at Jeff's end. For armchair engineers, the 4th one may be the most revealing to watch.

[ExomatrixTV]

EXTENDED INTERVIEW: James Cameron on the OceanGate sub disaster | 60 Minutes Australia:

EwSaZfwBrz8
In an extended interview with 60 Minutes, Hollywood director and Titanic expert James Cameron reveals the failures in the OceanGate sub disaster.


Synopsis | Unfathomable (2024)

A year on from the OceanGate sub tragedy, there are still so many unanswered questions. Most fundamentally, why did the strange-looking craft on a mission to the wreck of the Titanic fail so spectacularly? And why, for days on end, was the world wrongly led to believe there was hope for a successful rescue mission? The lack of credible information about what really happened is now becoming increasingly unfathomable, not only for the families of the victims, but also for other undersea explorers like legendary Hollywood director James Cameron. Speaking exclusively to 60 Minutes, Cameron reveals that this is a catastrophe that could and should have been avoided.

[Johnnycomelately]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7xaePm9QhY


... For armchair engineers, the 4th one may be the most revealing to watch.


Interesting vid, Bill. It reminded me of my dad’s years as an airforce crash investigator when I was a kid. He’d be gone a week or more, some of those in winter.

I worked with composites a lot, during my time with a kit plane company. Mostly glass (e-glass, iirc), and some carbon. No pre-preg though, all vacuum bagged brushed vinylester resin on cloth layers. We did destructive testing on every design. So, not same, but I get most of the info. And that brings back more memories.

[Bill Ryan]

EXTENDED INTERVIEW: James Cameron on the OceanGate sub disaster | 60 Minutes Australia:


EwSaZfwBrz8
In an extended interview with 60 Minutes, Hollywood director and Titanic expert James Cameron reveals the failures in the OceanGate sub disaster.


Synopsis | Unfathomable (2024)

A year on from the OceanGate sub tragedy, there are still so many unanswered questions. Most fundamentally, why did the strange-looking craft on a mission to the wreck of the Titanic fail so spectacularly? And why, for days on end, was the world wrongly led to believe there was hope for a successful rescue mission? The lack of credible information about what really happened is now becoming increasingly unfathomable, not only for the families of the victims, but also for other undersea explorers like legendary Hollywood director James Cameron. Speaking exclusively to 60 Minutes, Cameron reveals that this is a catastrophe that could and should have been avoided.~~~

For those who've been following all this quite closely, this is a most excellent and interesting half-hour interview with James Cameron, who comes across as intelligent, grounded, and (while he's very scientifically minded) also very human. :flower:

[Bill Ryan]

This is a slightly geeky engineering video, just 20 minutes, and it may not be interesting to most readers. But as a (sort of! :)) scientist myself, I found it fascinating and significant. The video is very clear and well explained.

The core issue is that it's been found that uneven 'wrinkled' patches in the carbon fiber composite layers were manually ground down to flatten and smooth them off each time before the next layer was added. I'm no materials engineer, but I could understand instantly how that weakens the entire structure.

I'll try to explain it myself in the simplest terms. Below is a screenshot from the video of the wrinkles in the outermost carbon fiber layer. But that's the 5th and final layer added. The same wrinkles were present in each of the underlying four layers, and each time they were ground down to be flat and smooth.

But because the wrinkles are all part of the continuously laid carbon fibers, when they're ground flat the continuity and therefore the strength of the fibers is broken and compromised.

https://avalonlibrary.net/Bill/wrinkles_in_Titan_carbon_fiber_layers.jpg

OceanGate Titan Hull - Hundreds of Ill-advised Carbon Fiber Grind Spots


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE4uSjQoa3A