[William May]

Originally Posted by DankStank ↗

After minimal modifications to my mail box I am now giving tours of the bottom of my irrigation canal.

It'll be fine, as long as they ride off the edge of the canal on carbon fibre bicycles!

[kellyhound]

Originally Posted by Dodecahedron ↗

They’re starting to bring up the wreckage. I didn’t expect it to be in pieces for some reason. Just crumpled.

It’s the moment of implosion, when the Titan’s hull was compromised by all that pressure and it suddenly came rushing into the compartment, that provided the fatal blow.

“Implosions like explosions are very violent,” explained Arun Bansil, physics professor at Northeastern University. “As the hull breaks apart under the huge external pressure, a large amount of energy is released, and the five occupants would have died instantly.”

That violent moment also blew apart the Titan, leaving it shattered on the sea floor, but still able to hold its shape once the pressure around it was equalized.

Next up, the pieces will be inspected closely so that investigators can determine where the point of failure was in Titan’s construction that eventually led to the violent implosion.

[b0g]

in fact the organic material and air under that kind of pressure increase will self ignite,
and this is similar to what happens in a diesel engine, but much faster

the black faced boys of the titan

next year on Netflix

[William May]

Originally Posted by kn0mthis ↗

I wonder if they didn't share the video from the ROV for... reasons DR would want them...?

Perhaps they were under too much pressure?

[kellyhound]

The last words transmitted by the crew on OceanGate’s Titan submersible before they perished in last year’s catastrophic implosion in the North Atlantic came to light today during the opening day of public hearings held by the U.S. Coast Guard.

“This is PH,” veteran explorer P.H. Nargeolet tapped out in a message that sent out during the fatal dive to the Titanic shipwreck on June 18, 2023, and shown at the hearing. “All good here.”

The very last message reported that the crew had dropped two weights from the sub. The sub’s mothership, the Polar Prince, received the final ping from Titan just seconds later. And then, nothing. Investigators say that Nargeolet and Titan’s four other crew members perished when the sub’s hull yielded to the crushing pressure in the ocean’s depths.

The four other victims were Stockton Rush, who was the CEO and co-founder of Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate and served as Titan’s pilot; Hamish Harding, a British aviation executive and adventurer; and Pakistani-born business executive Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.

Jason Neubauer, chair of the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation, began today’s hearing in North Charleston, S.C., with a moment of silence for the crew — and then he introduced a presentation that traced the development and operation of the Titan submersible.

A host of problems
The message record from the fatal mission indicated that Titan was having problems communicating with the support crew on the Polar Prince. “I need better comms from you,” the Polar Prince crew messaged at one point. “Lost system and chat settings,” Titan’s crew responded.

Other records documented a host of problems that arose before and during last year’s series of five expeditions from Newfoundland to the Titanic site. For example, the Coast Guard said that the submersible was stored in a parking lot without protection from the elements during the winter months preceding the expeditions. Investigators said the sub had to be towed in the water during the 400-mile journey to the dive area because there was no room on the mothership’s deck.

During one of the trips, Titan and its diving platform were partially sunk after a night of high seas, the Coast Guard said. And during another expedition, a ballast-tank issue reportedly caused the platform to tip about 45 degrees, slamming the sub’s occupants onto the back of the crew compartment.

The Coast Guard also listed dozens of equipment issues that cropped up during Titanic expeditions in 2021 and 2022.

The hearing’s first witness, Tony Nissen, discussed his role as OceanGate’s director of engineering from 2016 to 2019, during a time when the company was developing and testing the first version of its submersible for Titanic trips.

At times, Nissen had to stop and compose himself, citing the revelations that were made just before his testimony. “There are some things that I saw in this presentation that are disturbing,” he said.

When Nissen was asked whether he felt pressure to rush through the development schedule, he replied, “100%.” But he said that sense of pressure didn’t have a negative impact on his approach to safety and testing.

“Given infinite time and infinite budget, you could do infinite testing, right? For the time that we had, and within the constraints, we did all the consulting, all the analysis,” Nissen said. “We built it like an aircraft.”

He said he voiced concerns about quality issues that he saw during the fabrication of the carbon-composite hull, but was ultimately overruled by Rush. “He would fight for what he wanted, and he wouldn’t give an inch much at all,” Nissen said.

The conflict came to a head when a crack in the hull was discovered after a series of test dives in the Bahamas in 2019. “I said the hull is done. That’s it,” Nissen recalled. “I wouldn’t sign off on it, so I got terminated.”

OceanGate canceled its plans to begin its dives to the Titanic that year, but at the time, Rush said the delay was due to logistical issues. He didn’t mention the crack. In 2020, OceanGate commissioned a new hull for Titan and began dives to the Titanic a year later.

Nissen was asked whether he would have felt comfortable making an underwater trip in Titan. “That’s almost the best question here, isn’t it,” he replied.

“They wanted me to be the pilot that runs the Titanic missions,” Nissen said. “And I told them, I’m not getting in it. They asked me why, and I said, because of the operations crew. I don’t trust them. That certainly was the death of me.”

Among other highlights from the hearing:

Nissen said OceanGate didn’t draw up any procedures for retesting Titan’s hull after a set number of dives, or for doing regular replacements of the hull. Instead, Rush put his faith in a sensor system that was supposed to provide an early warning about stress hazards.

Bonnie Carl, who was OceanGate’s director of human resources, finance and administration from 2017 to 2018, said the payments that mission specialists made to participate in dives went directly into the company’s operating fund.

“There was no money for refunds,” she said. Money was so tight that Rush would occasionally have to write a check to cover payroll, she said.

Carl said she had concerns about Titan’s safety — and discussed them with David Lochridge, who was OceanGate’s director of marine operations at the time. Lochridge was fired in 2018 after criticizing OceanGate’s safety standards in a whistleblower complaint. He’s due to testify on Tuesday.

Tym Catterson, an expert on submersibles who was a contractor on the Polar Prince for the last expedition, said there were “no red flags” on the day of Titan’s fatal dive.

“It was a good day,” he said.
Catterson said OceanGate’s routines for training and operations at sea “could have been better.” He noted that much of the training was done in Puget Sound around Everett, which is “like a bathtub compared to going out into the North Atlantic. It’s just bigger out there.”

Catterson also said that he raised concerns about the integrity of the hull at least half a dozen times during conversations with Rush, but that Rush told him, “I have several engineers working on this, and they say otherwise.”

Catterson said “we agreed to disagree.”
After the debris from Titan was located, Catterson stayed behind to assist with recovering pieces from the sub. Based on his observation of the debris, he said his theory is that the fatal pressure point was at the forward glue line between the hull and the titanium ring.

“This had to happen extraordinarily fast, which means the people in there, they had no idea this was coming,” Catterson told the investigation board. “I just want to make sure that you let the public know that nobody was suffering in there. As a matter of fact, they were probably happy, that they were all waiting to see the Titanic when this happened.”

OceanGate has suspended all exploration and commercial operations, and reportedly has no full-time employees at this time. The company was represented at the hearing by a team of lawyers who were allowed to review exhibits and pose questions to witnesses.

[HIGHTECHDUDE]

NOAA just released sound recording of Titan implosion obtained from acoustics sensors positioned in the Atlantic...

[Bletch]

It’s good that James Cameron is clairvoyant and had foreseen this

[gimlet]

Various videos and descriptions had the implosion compressing the submariners until they detonate while being extruded thru a point of singularity / black hole. But the wreckage looks tame, more like it cracked open going over Niagara Falls. I wanna see pics of the human remains

[Mr.NoCredit]

Stockton sure got what was coming to him. Sadly he had to take a few others with him.

[gimlet]

Originally Posted by b0g ↗

the black faced boys of the titan

next year on Netflix