The submersible remains of Titan brought ashore after a fatal implosion
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A former OceanGate employee expressed his security concerns about the Titan in an ominous email he sent to a former associate of the company.
“I don’t want to be seen as a Tattle tale, but I am very concerned that he is killing himself and others in the pursuit of his ego boost,” David Lochridge, who worked for OceanGate between the 2015 and 2018. .
Lochridge later claimed in an August 2018 court document that he was unfairly dismissed for raising concerns about the company’s alleged “refusal” to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design. The documents say that Mr. Rush asked Mr. Lochridge to carry out a “quality inspection” report on the ship.
During that process, Lochridge “identified numerous issues that raised serious security concerns,” but was allegedly “met with hostility and denied access” to necessary documents before being fired.
A promotional video on OceanGate’s YouTube channel released ten weeks before the implosion advertised the $250,000-a-ticket trip as extremely safe, despite reports from previous employees and passengers who experienced various problems during the dives.
“OceanGate Expeditions offers the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a specially trained crew member who safely dives on the Titanic wreck site,” the speaker is heard in a voiceover. “Get ready for what Jules Verne could only imagine…a journey to the bottom of the sea.”
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Voice recordings under scrutiny in Titanic sub-implosion investigation
The voice recordings and other data will be reviewed as part of the investigation by an expert board appointed by the US Coast Guard into the catastrophic implosion of the submersible Titan last week.
US and Canadian marine authorities have announced investigations into the circumstances that led to the ship’s malfunction after its chambers were found in a sea of debris 1,600 feet from the wreck of the Titanic.
US Coast Guard Capt. Jason Neubauer, who is chairing the investigation, said he has convened a Marine Board of Inquiry, the highest level of investigation conducted by the Coast Guard. The role of the board is to determine the cause of the tragedy in order to pursue any civil or criminal penalties that may be necessary.
The researchers will review the voice recordings between the Titan and its mothership Polar Prince. The crew of the mothership is also being interviewed by different agencies.
Coast Guard investigators have mapped the crash site and salvage operations are expected to continue, said Capt. Jason Neubauer. Once the investigation is complete (no timeline has been set), a report with evidence, findings and recommendations will be published.
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 08:00
WATCH: Visibly emotional head of search and rescue company describes search for Titan
The head of the search and rescue company, visibly emotional, describes the search for Titan
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 06:00
Why did the Titanic sub explode?
On June 26, those worst fears were confirmed when the U.S. Coast Guard announced that it had found pieces of the submersible Titan strewn on the ocean floor about 1,600 feet from the bow of the ill-fated ocean liner.
But what exactly caused Titan to implode? While we still don’t know the truth of what happened, we do know enough to have an idea of what might have sealed the diver’s fate.
Io Dodds of The Independent reports:
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 05:00
Titan’s underwater victims spent their final moments listening to music and gazing at the sea
Passengers aboard the sunken Titan submersible probably spent their final moments listening to music in the dark and watching sea creatures in the depths, it has been revealed.
All five aboard the tourist submarine Titanic were confirmed dead on June 22 after the ship suffered a “catastrophic explosion”.
The submarine’s tail cone was found about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic wreck after a frantic five-day search operation in the North Atlantic Ocean.
Father and son Shahzada Dawood, 48, and Suleman Dawood, 19, were among the victims.
Christine Dawood, Shahzada’s wife and Suleman’s mother, explained the preparations carried out by Stockton Rush, the ship’s pilot and founder and CEO of OceaGate, the company that led the trip.
“It was like a well-oiled operation — you could tell they had done this many times before,” Ms. Dawood said of a briefing given to passengers in an interview with the New York Times.
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 04:00
Friend of late OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush warned Titan needed more testing after 2019 dive
Karl Stanley, who owns a diving expedition company in Honduras and is a close friend of Mr. Rush, toured aboard the Titan off the coast of the Bahamas in 2019, The New York Times first reported. In emails obtained by Insider of an alleged exchange between the two deep-water enthusiasts, Mr. Stanley told Mr. Rush who had heard a loud noise during the 12,000-foot deep dive.
“I believe the hull has a flaw near this flange, this is only going to get worse. The only question in my mind is whether it will fail catastrophically or not,” Stanley wrote in a foreboding email years before the catastrophic implosion of the Titan that killed the five passengers.
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 03:00
The head of the key sub-Titanic recovery team dodges the question about OceanGate
Since the submersible Titan imploded, killing five people on board, the topic of extreme tourism has been hotly debated online and by professionals.
But when asked what the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, the company that helped oversee the submersible recovery mission, thought of the voyages OceanGate took on the Titanic, he said he didn’t have a strong opinion.
“I don’t necessarily have an opinion on that, it’s a robust ongoing investigation at this point,” Edward Cassano said at a news conference last week.
Cassano helped lead the team of pelagic search services people who used their remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to find the wreckage of the submersible last week.
Ariana Baio July 6, 2023 02:00
OceanGate employee feared CEO might ‘kill himself and others to boost ego’ with sub
“I am deeply concerned that he is killing himself and others in pursuit of his ego boost,” a former OceanGate employee wrote in a 2018 email obtained by The New Yorker.
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 01:00
Substances from the Titanic and human remains have been recovered. But we still don’t have answers to these 9 questions
The desperate search for the missing Titanic submersible came to a tragic end when wreckage was discovered in the depths of the ocean. But, we still don’t know many crucial aspects of the doomed journey.
That of the Independent Rachel Sharp, Io Dodds, Bevan Hurley i Andrea Blanco report:
Andrea BlancoJuly 6, 2023 00:00
Was it an explosion or an implosion and how would that have affected the passengers?
“Knowing where the accident happened, the assumption of an implosion makes sense,” Dr. Joerg Reinhold, a professor in the Department of Physics at Florida International University, told The Independent.
“Both an implosion and an explosion require some form of stored energy. In typical explosive materials, the stored energy is chemical and is released through a chemical reaction. In the case of a submerged pressure vessel, the energy stored is mechanical: it is released when the surrounding water fills the space in the container.”
“If there is a catastrophic failure of the hull, that energy is released first in an implosion,” he notes. “Eventually, this will be followed by an outgoing shock wave; otherwise, listening devices would not be able to pick up the sound of the event.”
He went on to say that “implosions or explosions in water should behave differently than those in air. Air is a compressible fluid while water is an incompressible fluid. I expect the energy stored mechanics is much greater than any other source of energy in the submersible.”
“Even if the ship’s breach had been caused by an internal energy source, the end result will be an implosion,” Dr. Reinhold said.
Jonas Mureika, professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” refers to the intensity and speed of what happened.
Dr. Mureika added that “an explosion occurs when there is a sudden release of energy that results in a powerful outward pressure wave. Implosions, on the other hand, are due to an inward pressure differential. Without doubt, it was an implosion”.
“That said, when the air inside the submarine was compressed rapidly, it probably ignited and created an explosion, like a piston in a car engine, but that wouldn’t compare in magnitude to the implosive force,” he says
“As for the passengers, because of the time interval in which this happens, as well as the magnitude of the pressure, it is very likely that they did not even know what hit them. It’s also doubtful that they had time to process what was happening unless the implosion was preceded by something like a leak,” adds Dr Mureika.
Andrea BlancoJuly 5, 2023 11:00 p.m
What the photos of the wreckage of the Titanic tell us about its implosion
Images of wreckage recovered from the submersible Titan at the bottom of the North Atlantic appear to confirm the theory that the vessel suffered a massive implosion under ocean pressure.
Earlier this week, the US Coast Guard brought the remains left by the diver on the ocean floor to dry land.
Jonas Mureika, professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” refers to the intensity and speed of what happened.
“The pressure at this depth (3.8 km) is incredibly high, about 400 times atmospheric pressure. That’s 6,000 pounds per square inch acting on the submarine; atmospheric pressure is about 15 pounds per square inch,” he noted in an email.
Andrea BlancoJuly 5, 2023 10:10 p.m
