Titanic tourist submersible goes missing

[bilateralrope]

OceanGate's Titanic sub once had a battery go 'kaput' on a dive to the wreck, and Stockton Rush suggested sleeping in the sub overnight

Chris Panella Jul 4, 2023, 4:05 AM GMT+12

OceanGate's Titanic sub once had a battery die when passengers were almost at the wreck.
Stockton Rush suggested the team sleep in the sub, which was stuck near the ocean floor.
The crew ultimately made it back to the surface, according to a BBC travel show.

OceanGate's Titan submersible once had a battery die during a dive to the Titanic — and CEO Stockton Rush suggested the crew sleep in the vessel as it stayed on the ocean floor overnight, according to a BBC documentary.

In a 2022 episode of the BBC's "The Travel Show," Jaden Pan, one of the customers who took the Titan sub to the wreck, said his 2021 expedition was cut short when a battery "went kaput."

At the time, the sub was over two hours into its descent.

Pan said they were within two football fields' distance of the RMS Titanic wreckage when Rush said the submersible needed to return to the surface.

"At first, I thought he was joking because we were over two hours into our expedition and so close to the bottom," Pan said. "But then he explained that one of the batteries went kaput and we were having trouble using the electronic drops for the weights, so it would be hard for us to get back up to the surface."

One of the solutions Rush offered was for the crew to stay and sleep in the sub as it sunk to the ocean floor.

"We're down here for another 16 to 24 hours," Rush said in a video shown on the BBC show. "We will drift down. We'll hit the bottom. We'll have communications. We can talk to them."

Pan said the weights would have dissolved after 24 hours, allowing the vessel to rise to the surface. Half the crew, including Rush, were OK with sleeping under the ocean.

But the other passengers on the expedition didn't want to spend the night in the sub. Eventually, Rush managed to use hydraulics to drop the weights, allowing the vessel to float back up.

Before the Titan sub's ill-fated trip to the RMS Titanic last month, former OceanGate workers and industry professionals were worried about the vessel's safety, including a lack of testing for the carbon-fiber hull. Rush had previously said "innovation" was why the vessel wasn't checked to see whether it was up to industry standards.

Rush also said in the past that he wouldn't operate an unsafe sub and took issue with a former advisor who warned him about the Titan's issues.

This is the first I've heard of the dissolving weights. Probably a good safety feature if they work as described. Though a power failure still leaves the problem of locating the sub after it surfaced.

[Highlord Laan]

Or they could stop using a mass grave as a attraction for rich asshole tourists. Just a thought.

[Broomstick]

Sure, but it's not like there aren't other mass graves to attract tourists. Pompeii, for example.

I've been hearing about the devices holding weights that dissolve after awhile, and it's an interesting backup feature.

I think Rush got too comfortable with diving that deep, or complacent, or perhaps he never entirely grasped the hazards.

[LaCroix]

I think the problem was that he thought that areospace and space were the complicated things. The place where you hade to battle hostile environments and tremendous powers.

Water, on the other hand? Meh... It's not as if that was rocket science...

Funny enough - a hole in a submarine causes exactly what people think a hole in a space hull would cause(only in reverse -anyone remember the video of the crab walking over that cut pipeline and getting sucked through that slit?), while a hole in a space vessel is pretty much the equivalent of drilling a hole into the bottom of a canoe.

The idea of glue holding the endcaps to the hull at such pressures is mind-boggling - pretty sure the endcaps were the cause of failure. The one rule for fibreglass hulls of any kind is "one hull - one piece". And thats when you talk about comparatively miniscule forces like waves and such.

Even if they only used cameras, the entry hatch would still be a severe weak point - there is a good reason why all the fibreglass vessels that are sold as recreative submarines are not rated to go below a few meters.

[Broomstick]

At depth it's not really glue holding the end caps on, it's the water pressure. The glue is to make that join watertight.

One problem is that carbon fiber and titanium expand/contract/compress at different rates, which is why you need more than pressure to hold the end caps on, you also need a watertight-under-pressure seal of some sort.

At this point I'd say it's 50/50 whether the seams between the end caps and carbon fiber hull failed, or if the carbon fiber failed. That's one thing the investigation using the bits they've brought up from the bottom might eventually tell us.

[Lord Revan]

This whole thing reeks of arrogant ignorance from Rush. He thought he knew better then literal centuries worth of research (either intentional or not) into what makes a working sub and that all those safety standards were just slowing down innovations. Even though deep sea exploration is in many was harder then space exploration.

With space generally speaking we're probably talking less then 10 atmosphere of pressure even in the fuel tanks and vehicles themselves have to within stand only 1 atmosphere or so (the Apollo moonlanders were made of essentially tinfoil over a steel frame), ocean pressure where the Titanic is amounts to several times that pressure.

[LaCroix]

My problem with the end cap flange is that once the glue fails, the titanium edge in contact with the carbon hull becomes a 6000psi(1100 atmospheres) shearing tool that is aligned along the layers of the wrapped carbon - so while the water pressure from the outside is facing a criss crossing pattern of carbon fibre, this pressure is acting along their axis - cutting through the epox, alone, with no reinforcement. Everyone knows how relatively easy it is to split carbon fibre along that axis.

This action seperates the hull into an "outer" and "inner" tube, if only for a few fractions of a mm until it comes to a stop against the bulk of the hull, but there is now a crack that was wedged open.

At the same time, 6000psi of water pressure force into that crack, widening it even further, and then compressing a now thinner inner hull... With a few seconds of that failure of the glue you suddenly do nothave 5 inches of pressure hull, anymore, even though it is still completely assembled and everything held in place by the pressures.

So yeah, pretty sure the carbon hull failed, but I am quite sure that these titanium components were the reason it did...

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Titanic sub: company than owned submersible that suffered fatal 'catastrophic implosion' ceases operations

OceanGate's Titan sub was at the centre of an enormous search and rescue operation, before debris was found thousands of metres below the sea.

The firm that owned the submersible Titan has announced it has suspended commercial operations.

OceanGate said on its website on Thursday evening (6 July) it had “suspended all exploration and commercial operations” following what was described as a likely "catastrophic implosion" of the vessel last month, while on a voyage down to the wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Canada.

All five people onboard were killed, including UK citizens Hamish Harding and father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, alongside OceanGate Expeditions’ chief executive Stockton Rush and the submersible’s pilot, French national Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

Presumed human remains were recovered from the wreckage of the Titan submersible on 29 June, the US Coast Guard said. They will be analysed by medical professionals.

After the implosion, Guillermo Sohnlein - who founded OceanGate alongside Rush - defended the firm, describing regulations surrounding visits to the Titanic as “tricky to navigate”.

Since the submersible was first reported overdue on 18 June, past concerns about the vessel emerged - including court documents which revealed the company had faced a lawsuit over its safety in 2018.

An employee had claimed they were fired for raising concerns about the depths its submersible could safely travel to - with the man alleging he initially told OceanGate's executive management team about his safety concerns, which included "potential danger to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths", but was ignored.

At a meeting to discuss his findings, he claimed to learn the main viewing window in the submersible was only certified to withstand pressures at depths of up to 1,300 meters - while OceanGate intended to take passengers down to more than three times that depth. The case was settled out of court.

It was also revealed passengers had to sign a waiver, which admitted that the vessel “has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used in human occupied submersibles.”

It included the statement “I understand the inherent risks in the activities that will be undertaken during the operation, and I hereby assume full responsibility for all risks of property damage, injury, disability, and death". However, lawyer and ex-Secret Service agent Timothy Allen said there are similar situations “where waivers may be deemed invalid”, such as if gross negligence can be argued.

Speaking after evidence was recovered from the wreck last week, Marine Board of Investigation chairman Captain Jason Neubauer said he was "grateful for the co-ordinated international and inter-agency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths".

“The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy," he said. “There is still a substantial amount of work to be done to understand the factors that led to the catastrophic loss of the Titan and help ensure a similar tragedy does not occur again.”

EDIT: And for those who haven't seen it, here's the video in question:

[Solauren]

After the implosion, Guillermo Sohnlein - who founded OceanGate alongside Rush - defended the firm, describing regulations surrounding visits to the Titanic as “tricky to navigate”.

Did you ever stop to think there was a legitimate fucking reason for that? Moron!

It was also revealed passengers had to sign a waiver, which admitted that the vessel “has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and may be constructed of materials that have not been widely used in human occupied submersibles.”

Which should be a major warning sign to anyone looking into it, at the same level of staring down the barrel of a loading firearm.

[Isolder74]

This has been a trsin wreck from start to finish. You can't just improvise a pressure hull! This is about as bad as a british sub that's crush depth was not as deep as it was long. It could have the stern still on the surface and still implode.

[bilateralrope]

Fake audio of the Titan sub implosion is spreading online, but the Navy will probably never release the actual audio

Grace Eliza Goodwin
Jul 8, 2023, 9:01 AM GMT+12

• Fake audio supposedly depicting the Titan sub's underwater implosion is spreading across social media.
• A spokesperson confirmed that the Navy hasn't publicly released recordings of the fatal incident.
• It's unlikely the Navy will ever release the audio obtained through its secret monitoring systems.

Fake audio clips of the Titan sub imploding underwater have flooded social media, but they're fake — and it's unlikely you'll ever hear the real thing.

A spokesperson for the Navy — the military branch that reportedly first recorded the sound of the sub's suspected implosion — told Insider that the Navy has not released its audio.

And it likely never will.

"The Navy generally does not release audio to protect our tactics, techniques, and capabilities," the spokesperson told Insider. That's because publicly sharing such audio could provide enemies of the state insight into the Navy's top-secret acoustic detection systems.

The fake audio clips are racking up millions of views

The Navy wouldn't confirm that the clips circulating are fake, but a quick search on the internet shows the audio is bogus, even as the clips rack up millions of views on social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and TikTok.

A viral audio clip of someone screaming has been viewed over 20 million times, but it's actually a clip from a fan-made horror video based on the "Five Nights at Freddy's" video game.

One of the most shared audio clips circulating online claims to feature a sound that the Navy itself captured. That one is really a 2013 recording of a remotely-piloted underwater vehicle's glass imploding on a dive in Canada.

Other clips are of the "banging sounds" that The US Coast Guard supposedly detected during the 4-day-long search for the missing submersible. But rescuers now say that the sub imploded within hours of entering the water on Sunday, meaning the so-called banging in the audio couldn't be from the sub.

Of course people are already lying about having recordings from the sub.

[LadyTevar]

Of course people are already lying about having recordings from the sub.

Of course they are. Everyone wants their own 5seconds of fame, or to troll the gullible.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Of course people are already lying about having recordings from the sub.

Of course they are. Everyone wants their own 5seconds of fame, or to troll the gullible.

The fake audio was also accompanied by fake transcripts supposedly detailing Titan's final communications with the surface.

[LaCroix]

I just have been made aware of the difference in compressibility in carbon fibre and titanium.

At depth, the tube would have wanted to compress at least 1cm in diameter.
The titamium- nil.


That would put immense strain on the glue and the result would be the outer edge of the tube lifting off the flange, as the inner edge woud be pressing against the inner flange,creating a hinge point.

That would easily allow water to rush in and break the rest of the seal.

[The_Saint]

To be fair (as much as the inherent issues have all?mostly been pointed out) novel designs such as using carbon fibre for pressure hulls could show promise... the major issue here is how much testing has the design had AFTER cycling through more than one descent. For many pressure related engineering it's the cyclic nature that kills things in ways never expected when you just engineer them to survive 'the trip'.

I'm sure on paper the maths said the design could make the trip and back but did they ever factor in and then test (they clearly didn't because it would require taking the hull apart to assess) to see whether reality matched expectation regarding how the hull held up to repeated trips to the depths.

[LaCroix]

Not really - any material scientist will tell you that carbon fiber is the worst material for pressure hulls.

Doesn't take pressure too well. It only works well in tension.
Not homogenous, as the fibre/glue ratio is never uniform across the structure.
Always a possibility of voids in the structure.
Prone to delamination&fibre rupture after compressions.
Vastly different elasticity/plasticity/etc than any other material it would be combined with.
Pretty much any connection to other components relies solely on glue, as mechanical fasteners are not recommended on the material.

Everybody who knew his stuff was YELLING at him that this would not work, and he ignored it. Fired them. And hired people that would do what he told them.

If he had replaced the hull after every dive, it might have worked out for longer, but basically, what he did was to build the equivalent of a lead balloon (which also does work in theory - see Mythbusters - but makes a product so fragile that it barely can survive in it's supposed environment without constant patching up) , just to prove that it could be done.

And then he added windows that were not rated for the target depth, probably relying on engineering of those windows being done with huge safety margins, added a propulsion with no redundancy of controls, especially no mechanics that could be used to physically do anything, no positioning beacon, etc.

Even with single use and all non-invasive testing that could be done, there were so many points of failure in this hull design that each dive was a roll of the dice.

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Honestly I'm amazed it didn't implode on its very first dive.

[Lord Revan]

The problem with Carbon fiber isn't that it has no compression resistance what so ever, so making the hull thick enough means it won't fail on the first run.

The issue is like LaCroix pointed out that due the poor and uneven compression resistance the stresses of the dive start creating multiple points of failure, points of failure which are pretty much impossible to predict until they've already happened and then it's too late and after that it's just roll of the dice and you can't assume you roll a natural 20 on each dive.

One of the reasons why carbon fiber is such a poor choice here is the fact that due the very nature of the material your internal load will always be uneven so it's very hard to model how the hull will react and all it takes is 1 flaw and I think we've all seen the Mythbusters episode with the railway tanks or at least the clip from that episode (and that was metal which will bend when it implodes, carbon fiber is more likely to shatter).