The operator of an experimental submersible that imploded while seeking out the sunken Titanic was either putting profits over safety or pushing humankind’s boundaries.
Two weeks of testimony suggested the company responsible for an experimental deep-water submersible that imploded, killing five people, either recklessly ignored warning signs in the name of profits or represented the nation’s explorer spirit in taking calculated risks to push humankind’s boundaries.
Those contrasting viewpoints emerged as the Coast Guard panel tasked with determining why the carbon-fiber Titan was lost 12,500 feet (3,810 meters) deep wrapped up testimony Friday with new information that could have changed how rescuers responded and more discussion of the company co-founder’s cavalier attitude.
Capt. Jamie Frederick, commander of the Coast Guard sector based in Boston, appeared surprised to learn that the crew of Titan’s support vessel, in hindsight, felt there was a slight shudder around the time the submersible imploded on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic last year.
Frederick said it was “unconscionable that they wouldn’t share that” and it could have changed the rescue response. “It certainly would’ve changed the equation,” he testified.
Also Friday, an OceanGate employee testified that he resigned after a “tense” conversation in which co-founder Stockton Rush told him the vessel would be flagged in the Bahamas and launched from Canada to avoid U.S. scrutiny — and arrogantly brushed aside U.S. regulatory concerns if it went to a U.S. port.
The risks weren't unknown. People have been building submersibles capable of reaching that depth for quite some time, most of the people involved are very willing to share their lessons learned and give feedback. They were consulting with NASA and Boeing, both dropped it (I suspect because of a distinct unwillingness to heed their advice and warnings.).
OceanGate willfully ignored the risks, and the warnings, cut corners and found out. unfortunately four others found out, too. Though I only really feel bad for the kid.
Composites like that have a limited lifespan, and they’re very hard to model- there’s a lot of assumptions going into the modeling like “the fibers are all laid perfectly” and “the resin-to-fiber ratio is perfect” and similar. It’s also super hard to check for defects.
Normally, a lot of this is worked around by increasing the amount of CFC to provide a margin if error.
The problem is that you eat up that margin of error as defects expand under the cyclic stress of going down and coming back up.
Worse, they were not inspecting the pressure hull in a way that could detect the nano- and -micro-cracks so they could tell when it was time to take it out of service.
(That kind of inspection is ridiculously expensive. Like. Yeah.)
Well.
Normally this is avoided by using (very expensive) materials like titanium alloys that are “strong” enough to not fatigue after a few trips. (Strong isn’t quite the right word.
Or extremely expensive (to make) acrylic (PMMA,). It’s expensive to make because of some extremely exacting tolerances.
Incidentally, one of the reasons acrylic is used a lot is its transparency makes it super easy to see defects like cracks. (Literally you can see them with no special equipment.)
In any case while CF isn’t exactly cheap, it was less expensive than a titanium hull, or the acrylic bubble hull you see on the Triton subs; but the whole inspection thing got nixed because of greed.
Fun fact; the only reason this hearing is happening is because two of the passengers were rich. Normal people don’t get this dog and pony show.
Other fun fact: they signed liability waivers. Which makes this a very fun dog and pony show.
They had done successful dives in the past. The hull could withstand compression/decompression a few times, but eventually it gave up (something they were undoubtedly warned about by people that knew better than to use carbon fibre for this application).
It is my understanding that the sub had made the trip several times before. The design flaws involved repeated trips increasing the chance of failure at an exponential rate, plus the company ignoring signs of structural failure from earlier dives.