Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic
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My understanding is they only operated it in international waters so that there would be no regulatory authority.
I doubt they were insured, probably waivers with air-tight indemnification or at least the attempt.
Can’t imagine the company is worth much today, hard to imagine a billionaire’s family spending the time and emotional energy to sue them. But who knows.
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Another story - there's a British TV presenter who was going to make a show on the submersible last year, but they cancelled due to safety concerns after examining the set-up.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/24/ross-kemp-turned-down-titanic-trip-unsafe-oceangate-sub/
What happened is really disgusting.
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A submariner writes:
On Hyman Rickover:
Rickover was an absolute beast about safety, yet took military necessity into account when necessary, in ways that I can’t discuss but that are a major reason why the U.S. Navy’s submarine force is such a force to be reckoned with. As Wikipedia says about the Cold War, “U.S. submarines far outperformed the Soviet ones in the crucial area of stealth, and Rickover’s obsessive fixation on safety and quality control gave the U.S. nuclear Navy a vastly superior safety record to the Soviet one.” Of note: Rickover had seven rules that seem mostly applicable to OceanGate. They are:
- You must have a rising standard of quality over time, and well beyond what is required by any minimum standard.
- People running complex systems should be highly capable.
- Supervisors have to face bad news when it comes and take problems to a level high enough to fix those problems.
- You must have a healthy respect for the dangers and risks of your particular job.
- Training must be constant and rigorous.
- All the functions of repair, quality control, and technical support must fit together.
- The organization and members thereof must have the ability and willingness to learn from mistakes of the past.
During my time, which was mostly after Rickover’s passing, another feature that became embedded in submarine culture was the concept of “forceful backup,” meaning that junior members of a watch team were empowered, encouraged, and required to speak up when something didn’t seem right, even if they were the newest person on the ship and the action being taken was the Captain’s. There is a natural impediment to speaking up, usually for one of two reasons: the supervisor is a jerk and/or hates bad news (the usual case, frankly), or is so respected for his prowess and competency that he is almost revered, and the natural inclination is to think that such a person can do no wrong (the so-called “halo effect”). Both are deadly.
His analysis
First, and as we reported previously, Rush “Didn’t Hire ’50-Year-Old White Guys’ With Experience to Guide Titanic Sub Because They Aren’t ‘Inspirational.’” This decision shows that a woke mindset can be deadly:
Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller.
This decision violated Rickover’s Rule No. 2, and elevated virtue signaling over a rational acceptance of risk and excellence. Additionally, Rush’s comment about the video game controller irritates me, not because of the controller, but because he had to know that merely “driving the sub” is a minor part of the task – more important is having the experience and capability to survive when things go haywire, something “50-year-old white guys” who are “ex-military submariners” are probably pretty good at — a 25-year-old with no experience? Not so much.
Second, the fact that Rush refused to have his vessel inspected by a third party is important, not because of the refusal per se, but because it shows he didn’t want to know about his own ship. As Liz Taylor, President of DOER [Deep Ocean Exploration and Research] Marine explains:
“Stockton felt like he was pushing the edge, he wanted to push the envelope, use some new materials,” she said.
And that’s when Taylor specifically advised against the use of carbon fiber [to construct the pressure hull], as it’s still experimental and has not been tested over time in extreme depths of the ocean.
“With the carbon fiber, it’s been shown to not be very happy when it’s being immersed first of all and then being hollow on the inside or just one atmosphere on the inside and then having the tremendous pressure of the ocean trying to push in on it, it’s not the right material,” she said...
Taylor says Rush cut obvious corners, like not building his sub in a pair to have self-rescue capacity or with what’s called an ROV.That’s a remotely operated vehicle that can serve as a self-rescue tool.
“There was no capable ROV on board, there was no second submersible,” she said.
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The idea of the second ROV is important, and if you look at pictures of the Titan, you don’t see much redundancy built in: U.S. submarines have (at least) two of everything, in case one fails. U.S. submarines still use, to my knowledge, sound-powered phones to communicate between compartments. These devices, which are glorified tin cans-connected-by-wire arrangements work, even with no power, or light.There is evidence that Rush not only failed to listen to outsiders, as the Taylor report (above) shows, but Rush also fired his Director of Marine Operations and later sued him after the Officer filed a written report outlining dangers with the Titan: The missing Titanic sub would only detect hull failure ‘milliseconds before an implosion,’ company executive warned in 2018
A submarine pilot hired to assess the now-missing Titanic submersible warned in 2018 that its hull monitoring system would only detect failure “often milliseconds before an implosion.”
David Lochridge, a submarine pilot and inspector from Scotland, said in court filings that he was fired after expressing concerns about the safety of the Titan — a 22-foot submersible that disappeared on Sunday while carrying five people to see the wreck of the Titanic...
Lochridge warned that the system would “only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion,” and couldn’t detect if any existing flaws were already affecting the hull, the lawsuit said.
“Non-destructive testing was critical to detect such potentially existing flaws in order to ensure a solid and safe product for the safety of the passengers and crew,” Lochridge’s lawsuit said.
However, the submarine pilot said OceanGate told him that the Titan’s hull was too thick to scan for weak spots and adhesion issues.
Lochridge said that after he submitted his inspection report, OceanGate fired him and gave the pilot “approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises.”
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Picking up the pieces...
https://news.usni.org/2023/06/28/coast-guard-recovers-titan-debris-including-potential-human-remains
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Video, pieces are shown around the 1:00 mark:
Link to video -
Unborn babies lack internal air pockets, and can withstand greater pressures than born babies.
I suspect Mrs Jackson and her cohort on SCOTUS will use that biological fact in their logic based arguments to constitutionalize the right to abortion. If the sea can’t crush it, it ain’t human. Period.
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Sounds horrible, but wonder what those remains cost the American taxpayer?
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:
Sounds horrible, but wonder what those remains cost the American taxpayer?
Yeah, it was a big story and all, but they were on a private excursion, they were all (somewhat) rich.
If I were the king of the world, I would have let them RIP there in the ocean.
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It gives a real world opportunity for training and experience in deep sea salvage and rescue. The experience may save lives some day.
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The money would have been spent anyway. The equipment was already built, the boats and the labor already paid for. May as well use it.
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@Horace said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:
The question is the opportunity cost. I doubt any checks were written from a general fund. What would the coast guardians have been doing instead?
Saving lives?
Always remember, Operation Valkyrie was an act of sedition.
Warning: I post things that interest me. Read and comment at your own discretion. -
@Jolly said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:
@Horace said in Submersible tour boat joins the Titanic:
The question is the opportunity cost. I doubt any checks were written from a general fund. What would the coast guardians have been doing instead?
Saving lives?
I hope no lives were lost to the absence of coast guard resources during this salvage operation. For practical purposes, I guess the coast guard was happy for the free marketing about the cool stuff they do.
