Enough with the Titanic!

[Jimmy Higgins]

NPR had a guy on (who was part of the sea diving biz) worrying that government and bureaucracy would rush in and over regulate as a result of this. I'm thinking that the system didn't regulate itself. It tried to, but it didn't amount to a hill of beans. It sounds like one of the world's experts on ocean related search / discovery will be lost in this accident inevitable tragedy.

The pendulum swinging too far in the other direction is a real danger with such tragedies (if it turns out to be one). It would not be the 1st (or 1000th) time a government overreacted about something.

When there is no capacity to escape, failure is unacceptable. I'm uncertain why people have issue with redundancy. It is almost as if their lives aren't on the line. Redundancy costs money, just like how the Coast Guard being sent to attempt to find and maybe rescue costs money.

This appears to be another example of the unregulated free market fucking up and getting people killed. So many regulations exist because people died.

 

[Elixir]

Report of a debris field being detected in the search area. With the chance of rescue being zilch at this point, a catastrophic disaster is probably the best way to have gone, if going had to happen. They need to investigate, before concluding what the debris field consists of.

Trying to imagine … the kind of pressure exerted by 2+ miles of water. It would probably take less than one heartbeat from the first sign of hull failure to being literally squashed like a bug, faster than swatting a fly. I guess that’s the kind of a death that a billionaire could only hope to be able to buy.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I read it was supposedly an 8 or 10 hour trip, so 2 hours probably doesn't get them there yet.

 

[Elixir]

According to the BBC, "each full dive to the wreck, including the descent and ascent, reportedly takes around eight hours."

It was an hour and 45 minutes when they lost contact, so probably near if not at, the bottom. I think once you're a mile or so deep, a hull failure is a hull failure - another mile isn't going to make it any better or worse.

 

[Tharmas]

I read it was supposedly an 8 or 10 hour trip, so 2 hours probably doesn't get them there yet.

Two hours to reach the wreck, several hours loiter time, and two hours to get back up.

"The Guardian":

The Titan was expected to spend two hours descending to the Titanic, a few hours exploring the site, and two more resurfacing...

Contact was lost with the Titan one hour and 45 minutes into the expedition. By that time, experts believe it reached a depth of about 3,500 metres, where each square inch of the structure would have been subjected to a force equivalent to more than two tonnes.

 

[blastula]

It's over.

Expert claims debris found is ‘landing frame and rear cover of missing sub’ - follow live updates

US Coast Guard says a 'debris field” has been discovered within the search area

uk.news.yahoo.com

He said the president of the club, who is "directly connected" to the ships on the site, said to the group: "It was a landing frame and a rear cover from the submersible... Again this is an unconventional submarine, that rear cover is the pointy end of it and the landing frame is the little frame that it seems to sit on."

He said this confirms that it is the submersible: "It means the hull hasn't yet been found but two very important parts of the whole system have been discovered and that would not be found unless its fragmented."

 

[blastula]

The pendulum swinging too far in the other direction is a real danger with such tragedies (if it turns out to be one). It would not be the 1st (or 1000th) time a government overreacted about something.

But this incident isn't going to destroy that industry worse?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Man! Just keeps getting worse for this company.

A London-based travel company, Henry Cookson Adventures Ltd., accused OceanGate of not having a “seaworthy vessel” when it entered an agreement in 2016 to take up to nine passengers to the Titanic in 2018. The travel company sought to recover roughly $850,000 it paid OceanGate, according to a civil suit filed in 2021. OceanGate did not respond to the claims in court and could not be reached for comment about them.

A post on OceanGate’s website in 2018 stated “delays caused by weather and lightning” prevented the company from completing a series of test dives, but the Henry Cookson Adventures’ lawsuit questioned that description.

“The claim of a lightning strike has not been verified and the true reason may be…because the submersible vessel was unable to be certified at the time for safe operations,” the plaintiff alleged. The case was dismissed last July by the travel company, Cookson Adventures, whose spokesperson declined comment on the litigation and said the company decided not to go ahead with any projects involving OceanGate.

More recently, a Florida couple alleged in a lawsuit this year they were unable to get a refund after their planned Titanic expedition in 2018 with OceanGate was repeatedly postponed. The online docket for the case shows no response to the lawsuit.

This company should never have been allowed to do what they did.

 

[lpetrich]

That minisub also had only one window: a small one, at the front end. That is not very good for a tourist submarine, since such a sub ought to provide its passengers with a good viewing experience.

Indeed I find several tourist submarines are already in service, and most of them have plenty of windows. They are also restricted to much less depth, however, usually well within the well-illuminated or  Photic zone - extending down 200 meters. Going further is the twilight or dysphotic zone, extending down 1000 meters, and the rest of the way down is the midnight or aphotic zone.

The  Wreck of the Titanic is well within the midnight zone, at 3,800 meters (12,500 feet, 2,100 fathoms).

What's the pressure? Every 10 meters down, the pressure goes up by close to 1 bar or 1 atmosphere. So at the Titanic's depth, the pressure is nearly 400 times that on the surface.

 

[lpetrich]

Titanic sub updates: OceanGate knew about safety concerns for years : NPR
Will Kohnen, the chair of the Marine Technology Society's Submarine Committee (formerly the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee) was interviewed.

"Most of the companies in this industry that are building submersibles and deep submersibles follow a fairly well-established framework of certification and verification and oversight, through classification societies," he said. "And that was at the root of OceanGate's project, is that they were going to go solo, going without that type of official oversight, and that brought a lot of concerns."

He does not think that it's any reason to go slow, but instead to use existing experience.

"We have submarines all over the world diving 12,000 to 20,000 feet every day of the year for research," he said. "We know very well how to build and how to design these machines and how to operate them safely."

The same is true for tourism purposes, he adds: "It just gets expensive."

 

[lpetrich]

Also,

OceanGate's own former director of marine operations also flagged potential safety issues with the Titan around the same time — and says he was fired after doing so, as NPR station WBUR reported.

David Lochridge, himself an experienced submarine pilot, alleged in a 2018 lawsuit that he was fired after raising concerns that the company wasn't properly testing the vessel's carbon fiber hull. He had also pushed for the company to utilize a classification agency to inspect and certify it.

Lochridge said he first raised his safety and quality control concerns verbally to executive management, which ignored them. He then sought to address the problems and offer solutions in a report

The day after it was submitted, the lawsuit says, various engineering and HR executives invited him to a meeting at which he learned that the viewport of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, even though the Titanic shipwreck lies nearly 4,000 meters below sea level.

Using ocean depth as a pressure unit.

Lochridge reiterated his concerns, but the lawsuit alleges that rather than take corrective action, OceanGate "did the exact opposite."

"OceanGate gave Lochridge approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises," it said.

OceanGate said in legal filings that it had relied on acoustic tests "better suited" to detect safety issues, and accused Lochridge of breaching his contract, according to WBUR.

"The company said Lochridge was not an engineer and refused to accept assurances from the lead engineer that testing was sufficient," WBUR's Walter Wuthmann told Morning Edition.

They settled out of court in 2018.

"Previous expeditions haven't all gone smoothly"

"With each of these expeditions that OceanGate makes, they spend five days over the [Titanic] shipwreck," Pogue said. "And typically of those five days, they managed to get down only once or twice. And this season it's been zero."

 

[lpetrich]

Safety concerns about missing Titan vessel voiced by former OceanGate employees years ago | CNN

In a 2021 court filing, OceanGate’s legal representative touted the specs and a hull monitoring system built into the Titan that he called “an unparalleled safety feature.” The legal representative informed the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia – the court that oversees matters having to do with the Titanic – of the company’s expedition plans at the time.

The filing lays out the Titan’s testing details and its specifications, including that it had undergone more than 50 test dives and detailing its five-inch-thick carbon fiber and titanium hull.

The filing says OceanGate’s vessel was the result of over eight years of work, including “detailed engineering and development work under a company issued $5 million contract to the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.”

But according to the University of Washington, the laboratory never dealt with design or engineering for OceanGate’s Titan vessel.

The lab’s expertise involved “only shallow water implementation,” and “the Laboratory was not involved in the design, engineering or testing of the TITAN submersible used in the RMS TITANIC expedition,” Kevin Williams, the executive director of UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement to CNN.

This minisub had gone down to the Titanic before.

“On the first dive to the Titanic, the submersible encountered a battery issue and had to be manually attached to its lifting platform,” the filing reads. “OceanGate decided to cancel the second mission for repairs and operational enhancements” after the vessel “sustained modest damage to its external components,” it reads.

There were not any submersible-related issues that canceled dives on the third, fourth, or fifth missions, according to the court filing.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Titanic is 50 times deeper in the ocean than Andrea Doria, and both have claimed lives from subsequent explorers (assuming this new story turns out the way it's shaping up.) In the case of Andrea Doria, it's divers who go into the wreck to retrieve relics and get lost inside her. They continue to chance it, even knowing the history of the wreck. If all are lost on the submersible, it's hard to see how the tourist shuttle business continues.
This, from someone who stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon, because it was there and I was there.

NPR had a guy on (who was part of the sea diving biz) worrying that government and bureaucracy would rush in and over regulate as a result of this. I'm thinking that the system didn't regulate itself. It tried to, but it didn't amount to a hill of beans. It sounds like one of the world's experts on ocean related search / discovery will be lost in this accident inevitable tragedy.

What I've read says that while subs like this aren't actually regulated (unlike a ship they never sail into a port, nobody has authority over them) the industry has pretty much managed to come up with it's own guidelines that work. Oops, this sub wildly violated those guidelines.

 

[ZiprHead]

 

[lpetrich]

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush defended over 'catastrophe' warning

He said: “OceanGate runs an extremely safe operation.

“Our full focus right now is getting that submersible located and getting those people brought back safely.”

He added: “We’re in constant contact with the crew of the Polar Prince.

“Our emergency procedures kicked in immediately.

“Our emergency room is staffed 24/7 with a group of extremely capable people and there’s live communication with the vessel at all times.

“We’ve got 17 people on board the ship.”

They may be good at some safety things, but not what was needed for that lost sub.

 

[lpetrich]

Maker of Lost Titanic Sub Told a Reporter 'Safety Is Just Pure Waste'

In a November 2022 episode of CBS journalist David Pogue's "Unsung Science" podcast, Rush discussed the Titan sub's mechanics and build.

He said there was a "limit" to safety, telling Pogue: "You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed, don't get in your car, don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question."

Rush added that his Titan sub features, and trips to the Titanic wreck, can be done outside of what's been previously done, saying: "I think I can do this just as safely while breaking the rules."

...
In the podcast episode, Pogue said the sub's build — which includes "MacGyvered" ceiling lights and an Xbox controller for navigating the vessel — as well as the safety waiver, gave him cause for concern.

Lost Titanic Sub Maker: 'Innovation' Was Why Vessel Wasn't Classed

In a 2019 blog titled "Why Isn't Titan Classified?" OceanGate said its submersible had innovative features that were outside preexisting standards.

"By definition, innovation is outside of an already accepted system," the blog said. "However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, but it does mean that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm."

OceanGate also said "new and innovative designs and ideas" on its vehicle, such as carbon-fiber material and a "real-time hull-health-monitoring system," would've gone through a "multiyear approval cycle due to a lack of preexisting standards."

As if being innovative is a substitute for being safe.

 

[lpetrich]

Titanic Tourist Sub: Titan CEO Complained About 'Obscenely Safe' Regs

It chronicles Rush's passion for exploring and his efforts to energize the market in private submersibles, which had long been dampened by the number of industrial accidents in offshore submarine work.

A 1993 regulation put strict controls on safety standards and who could pilot a submersible.

Rush called these developments "understandable but illogical," saying he felt the law was well meaning but lamenting the stifling effect it put on commercial innovation.

Titanic Tourist Sub: Page One of Waiver Says Death 3 Times, Ex-Passenger Says

Reiss told the BBC that he had done three dives with the company — one to the Titanic and two off the coast of New York — and that communications were lost every time.

"This is not to say this is a shoddy ship or anything: It's just, this is all new technology, and they're learning it as they go along," he said. "You have to just remember the early days of the space program."

Missing Titanic Tourist Sub Was Piloted Using Video-Game Controller

Several dives were canceled due to weather and one group got lost for several hours, per the report.

...
"We only have one button, that's it. It should be like an elevator, it shouldn't take a lot of skill," Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, which conducts deep-sea tours in the Titan submersible, told Pogue.

Some of the parts inside the submersible were "off-the-shelf components" and one of its interior lights was bought from the recreational-vehicle company CamperWorld, Rush said.

"We run the whole thing with this game controller," Rush continued, showing Pogue a modified Logitech gamepad controller.

CBS also shot footage of a small space inside the Titan where one can relieve themselves in a bottle.

But Rush disagreed when Pogue said the Titan, which is supposed to carry passengers to depths of 13,000 feet, seemed to have a "MacGyver jerry-riggedness."

 

[Elixir]

As if being innovative is a substitute for being safe.

Is it not?
When we elect to expose ourselves to elevated levels of risk, novelty of the experience or expected outcome can contribute to the “pro” side of the decision. This sub debacle is just the XB (“Xtreme Billionaire”) iteration of that dynamic.

 

[lpetrich]

James Cameron Reacts On Titan Sub: “Struck By Similarity Of Titanic Disaster” – Deadline

Titanic filmmaker James Cameron spoke out Thursday about the loss of the Titan submarine that had dived to explore the historic shipwreck.

“Many people in the [deep-submergence engineering] community were very concerned about this sub, and a number of you know of the top players in the community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and needed to be certified and so on,” he told ABC News in an exclusive interview. “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night. And many people died as a result.”

Cameron added: “And for a very similar tragedy, where warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site, with all the diving that’s going on all around the world. I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

 

[bilby]

"You have to just remember the early days of the space program."

Ah, yes. Who could forget the plucky billionaires who built and flew half-arsed unregulated rockets made from car parts and bits of old refrigerators?