Titanic tourist submersible: Search for missing vessel has covered over 10,000 square miles

[Stevicus]

The Titan submersible imploded 3 months ago. What happens now?

The airwaves were consumed with the search for the missing sub for days. So where are we now?

www.newsnationnow.com

Its website says, “OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations,” and all social media accounts are gone.

Though the company no longer exists, a controversial relationship between Canada’s Memorial University and OceanGate has come to light in the past month.

The submersible company partnered with the school’s Marine Institute, striking a deal where the institute housed the sub in exchange for students working on OceanGate projects, potentially even diving in the Titan. The university says no student was ever onboard the Titan, and it would have reviewed OceanGate’s safety if that were to happen. But in light of what happened, the university is facing backlash for not properly vetting OceanGate.

“My primary goal is to prevent a similar occurrence,” said Captain Jason Neubauer, who has been tasked with leading the investigation into what happened. The National Transportation Safety Board is also assisting in the investigation.

There is a one-year deadline to report the findings.

The accident is still under investigation, which they have a year to complete.

The co-founder of the now-defunct OceanGate has launched a new venture, Humans2Venus

Meanwhile, science-based expeditions continue, with adventurers and thrill seekers undeterred.

Guillermo Söhnlein, co-founder of OceanGate, who worked hand-in-hand with Stockton Rush
to start deep-sea expeditions, is soaring to his latest venture: Humans2Venus.

The 900-degree planet is not inhabitable yet, but he dreams of 1,000 people traveling to and living in Venus’ sulfuric acid clouds by 2050.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The Titan submersible imploded 3 months ago. What happens now?

The airwaves were consumed with the search for the missing sub for days. So where are we now?

www.newsnationnow.com

The accident is still under investigation, which they have a year to complete.

The co-founder of the now-defunct OceanGate has launched a new venture, Humans2Venus

2,050?? Sign me up.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The co-founder of the now-defunct OceanGate has launched a new venture, HumansDummyCorpses2Venus

Fixed it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Fixed it.

Or soon to be corpses. At 94 I figure I would not have much to lose. I hear at that age a person prefers a bit more warmth anyway.

 

[Stevicus]

Here's a detailed follow-up investigatory article about the submersible disaster:

The Titan Submersible Disaster Shocked the World. The 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.

www.wired.com

It's an interesting read. It details numerous problems in testing and production leading up to the disaster.

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 by the New York Times.)

The company's CEO dismissed the need for extensive testing.

“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.”

"We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often." There's a quote for the record books.

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.

The Titan did make a successful dive in 2021.

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.

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.

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.

 

[Stevicus]

I came across a recent video which presents a reasonably good overview:

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I came across a recent video which presents a reasonably good overview:

Haven't watched it, but from what I've heard OceanGate really can't be any worse than what I already think. The guy was warned it's a ticking time bomb and not a matter if but when it suffers a catastrophic failure. The materials used, the shape of it, I even finally found out what was really wrong with the video game controller and that is it was connected via Blutooth and there were no controls hardwired into the vehicle. Lies to designers saying it wasn't going to the Titanic, firing people for refusing to sign off on it's safety, and while I'm all for giving people a chance it seems the wanker who owned the company primarily and heavily hired among people who were fresh out of college and lacking real experience in the field. He even ignored warnings of emerging cracks.
And of course his death was ultimately caused by his belief safety hinders progress, even when that safety is firmly backed by science and deep sea craft that has already been and optimally designed in accordance to the Laws of Physics in order to have just a fighting chance at surviving such extreme pressures. Using designs and materials more appropriate for the depths of most submarines was foolish and probably could only have ended in catastrophe (think a survivable shallow waters incident would have deterred him? I don't).