Good day all. For the last few days, the world has been following the loss of OceanGate’s Titan Deep diving submersible. This was a private mini-sub that was selling tours to the wreck of the titanic. However, over the last few days, information has come out on just how shady this operation was.
The CEO, who was on board the Titan when it imploded, appears to have cut corners and put D.E.I. ahead of competence. He announced that he didn’t want to hire “50 year old white Navy submarine guys,” and instead hired people who literally had no qualifications for the job. (The old white navy guys who looked at the Titan beat feet as quickly as possible apparently)
There will be a “Deep Dive” into OceanGate, (Soon to be closing it’s doors no doubt), by others far more qualified then I am. In the mean time, here are the details to date from Fox News:
The search for the missing OceanGate Titan submersible came to a tragic end Thursday when search-and-rescue teams discovered a “debris field” on the ocean floor near the wreck of the Titanic, where the crew was headed before losing contact with their surface vessel Sunday morning.
“The debris is consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber. Upon this determination, we immediately notified the families,” U.S. Coast Guard Rear Admiral John Mauger told reporters. “On behalf of the United States Coast Guard and the entire unified command, I offer my deepest condolences to the families.”
That’s a nice way of saying the sub was crushed like an empty beer can by Bubba at a family barbecue.
The Titan lost contact with its surface vessel, the Polar Prince, around 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive Sunday morning, about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and around 400 miles southeast of St John’s, in Canada’s Newfoundland.
I’m guestimating that the Titan was at least 10,000 feet deep at that point. From what little I’ve seen, it was basically a cylinder with minimal equipment in it and it wasn’t using standard materials. They used Carbon Fiber in it’s construction. While this is fine for aircraft, from what little I know, it’s never been properly tested and certified for submarine use. It’s possible that the hull simply weakened from use, (This wasn’t it’s first dive), and just let go.
There was some hope that the sub simply lost power and was sitting on the bottom. It had enough oxygen on board for 96 hours. From what I’ve been reading, most people who understand how things work didn’t think that was the case. One of the many issues with the design of this deathtrap was that there was no way to manually drop ballast and float to the surface.
There were a number of design shortcuts made apparently, and at least one lawsuit over the safety of the vessel. All of this will be investigated. We can’t ask the CEO about how he did things since he was pulverized when the hull let go. I wouldn’t want to be the insurance company that backed OceanGate. While there were only four paying customers on board, they were worth in the billions of dollars. As for OceanGate as a corporate entity? Stick the fork in, they’re done.
Thatisall
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