Film director James Cameron has expertise in designing and testing these submersibles, and he has many criticisms of the design of the sub that imploded, and of the hubris of the CEO who ignored repeated safety warnings from the diving community. He also mentions that the sub seems to have been attempting to resurface when it imploded, suggesting that they were aware the hull was starting to fail.
Hubris is the word.
The CEO Stockton Rush, just off the top of my head:
- Fired his own director of marine operations for formally reporting “numerous issues that posed serious safety concerns". These included that the viewport was only rated to 1,300 meters, the carbon fiber hull had flaws which gave it the potential to fail, and that the hull integrity monitoring systems installed in response “might only provide ‘milliseconds’ of warning before a catastrophic implosion”.
- Refused to submit to an industry certification process for the sub, despite being warned in an open letter with dozens of signatories that failing to do so risked “negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic)”.
- Denounced the laws regulating submarine tourism as having “needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation”.
Denounced the laws regulating submarine tourism as having “needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation”.
He was a consistent Republican donor, apparently, so probably a devotee of the “regulations are holding back innovation” religion. In other words, “I want to cut costs and make more profit, so I’d rather risk people’s lives than spend money to protect them.”
He died like he lived, shirking safety in the name of commercialization.
he never thought the leopards would eat his own face.
or he never thought his sub would be his coffin.
This trend of companies firing the person responsible for giving safety warnings is really troubling, and I’m concerned that our whole planet is going to go down like that someday.
Don’t worry, the planet’s gonna be fine.
Humanity on the other hand…
“The planet,” in terms of a rock orbiting the Sun, sure, but we are killing an awful lot of flora and fauna that would be doing fine if we weren’t around to fuck things up.
Yes and the 6th mass extinction event is well underway. Still, the planet’s life forms bounced back before and will do so again, I guess.
He also mentions that the sub seems to have been attempting to resurface when it imploded, suggesting that they were aware the hull was starting to fail.
Shit, in all this time I hadn’t considered the middle of the road option between “dying immediately without knowing” and “slowly choking to death over several days”: dying but knowing that’s a big possibility right up until you’re crushed in the blink of an eye…
Yeah, if they were resurfacing it must have been bad and readily apparent. Based on the hubris of the COE, I imagine he would be quick to handwave away any signs of problems. Not only was he willfully against safety inspections and so forth, but he knew if he had to abandon a trip due to a concern that his brilliantly engineered sub was breaking, he’d be proving all the nay-sayers right. If it got to the point that the COE decided it was time to turn around, it had to be bad. There is also probably a decent chance that he was on notice and could have abandoned the dive earlier and maybe saved everyone on board, but was motivated to keep pushing lest he be met with a chorus of “I told you so” from the diving community. At any rate, if its true they were trying to resurface, they knew and likely spent their last moments terrified.
hasn’t this guy gone to the deep sea in a sub all by himself? wild
Cameron did it in a sub that was tested and certified. The Titan sub was not actually tested or certified, because that would have been expensive.
Hell, Titan’s view port was only rated for 1300 meters, not the 4000 meters of the Titanic wreck.
If it really happened the way he says it did (implosion at 3,500 ft when they were travelling down to 13,000 ft) this sub was in no shape or form suited for this dive.
It’s not confirmed at this point as I understand and Cameron also disclosed it as a rumor in a recent interview on Youtube.
Just read about Stockton Rush’s (CEO and “pilot” of the sub, presumed dead) views about security:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockton_Rush
It’s just amazing how an aircraft pilot, a guy with an ivy-league degree in aerospace engineering can have such twisted ideas about standards, regulations, and security in general.
No way in hell would I have signed up for this haphazard dive.
The reports I heard said communication was lost when the sub was at a depth of 3300 meters, not feet. But yeah, carbon fiber seems like a bad choice and the thing was an implosion waiting to happen.
aerospace engineering
While obviously he intellectually knew the requirements were different, and even managed to build something that survived a few trips, I almost wonder if there is a certain amount of mental inertia there, similar to the old saw, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” In aircraft, and even spacecraft, you do so much more to save weight than would be necessary or appropriate for designing a submarine, and your pressure vessel will never need to handle more than 1 atmosphere. Again, I’m not suggesting that he was literally stupid and didn’t understand that at some level, but I haven’t heard from anyone who’s been around subs who thinks he was on the right developmental track.
If you read the Wikipedia entry on the Titan submersible, it mentions somewhere that the original designer only intended it as a one time use vehicle. That doesn’t inspire confidence.
That is freaking insane! So they knew this wasn’t meant for repeated dives and did it anyway……
So I went back to the Wiki entry and I made a mistake - There was a footnote about a submersible built by Richard Fossett called the DeepSea Challenger that was first to use the carbon polymer design, which is what the Titan’s design was based on. Anyways, Fossett died before he could use his personal sub, Virgin Oceanic bought it and got it tested (because Richard Branson wanted to use it), but that testing determined that it could only be used once, so they never bothered to use it after that. So I guess the main lesson that Rush learned from all this is to not get the carbon polymer sub tested because that’ll just confirm it shouldn’t be used more than once.
Either way it’s nuts to think that was documented and ignored!
