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.
Like that flat earther that made a steam powered rocket (not that high) to try and prove the earth is flat via that (somehow?) Ended up going downwards very fast with nothing stopping him except the solid Earth.
As I recall, he literally said regulations were holding back innovation for submersibles.
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.
Life always finds a way. At least until the moon has drifted so far from our orbit that our atmosphere is no longer sustainable and the oceans boil off the surface of the planet.
Life always finds a way.
Are you sure? Even if it’s true, I like the life forms we’ve got right now an awful lot, and they don’t deserve what we’re doing to them.
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.
needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation
Gosh, I can’t imagine something as minor as passenger safety being important… Seriously, is this guy real or is it three psychopaths in a trenchcoat?
Currently neither, just some small squashed pieces on the ocean floor
Seriously, is this guy real or
He was real. Is he still real, as a mangled corps? Probably a matter of definition…
He is still real, in the hearts of many other CEOs.
Who knows with him.
"might only provide ‘milliseconds’
“Don’t give me your mumbo-jumbo Mister Scientist - will the alarm go off or not?!”
How do you know a granade is about to explode?
… it buckles and starts cracking at the shell…
At least he wasn’t a hypocrite about regulations.
Really interesting to hear an actual expert with experience at depth (and at this exact site) discuss this story. I’m glad the anchor didn’t cut in too often and let him speak at length. Thank you for sharing!
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.
That sounds tremendously right…
So, this
Probably less dramatic. You’re not going to get a spray of water; if water’s coming in, it’s coming in at over mach 3, and implosion would happen in milliseconds. Cracking like that would also be pretty unlikely. It’s more likely that they thought that it was just “an abundance of caution.”
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.
Apparently the viewport was rated for 1300m, and they were driving to 4000m. The fact it survived as long as it did is testament to the manufacturer’s standards. The fact that it failed is utterly unsurprising.
Also the inspector they hired to verify the sub’s safety was denied when he requested equipment to scan and test the hull integrity, was fired when he raised these concerns, and was sued for leaking company secrets when he tried to report it to OSHA.
Honestly the only surprising part is that it survived the previous thirteen dives before this one.
I thought it only dived three times total?
It surfaced three times total.
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!
There’s also that old adage about experts being particularly vulnerable to believing they are smart and capable in other fields. It seems this is particularly prevalent among engineers.
I’ve also run across it frequently from doctors, who have that same impulse, plus they had to start specializing basically their sophomore year of college, and then they get cultural feedback that they are the best and brightest. They seem especially prone to stupid business ideas that, if they weren’t stupid, would let them go from extremely comfortable and locally influential, to being the powerful magnates that their intellect and service clearly entitles them to be.
Anecdotally, I’ve met almost two dozen people with high level engineering degrees who were about as sharp as a bowling ball when it came to literally everything besides their coursework. Each one of them with whom I shared my perspective that “critical thinking skills are all that matter for measuring intelligence, not the ability to memorize data; chimpanzees can do that better than we can anyway” reacted very negatively, which I’ve always thought was interesting.
I don’t want to imply that everyone with an advanced STEM degree is a dullard and a weiner, a drone who can only produce results if he memorizes reams of other peoples’ work. It’s just an overrepresentation peculiar to that kind of field, just like how the humanities have an eternal plague of arrogant dicks who got philosophy all figured out at age 14.
As someone who is good at memorization (although not as much post COVID) but has been historically poor at critical thinking, I agree. People kept telling me I was “smart” and that there was no way I could fail X or should fail X, but life experience and slow but steady analysis showed me that no, everyone (including my parents and teachers) were wrong. I was dumb as bricks, I’m just good at memorizing things.
I’m aware that my critical thinking skills aren’t great. I’m also aware that I had no business going to college (and failing of course) studying what I did (computer science) and that it’s actually very good and liberating to admit how fallible you are, and how bad you are at things, because it gives you the freedom and insight to know what you can do instead of what you can’t.
I’ve lived long enough to see stupid people succeed at what “smart” people fail at, just because they’re honest enough and humble enough to admit when they can’t do something, and also when they’re wrong. I saw that doing something right imperfectly (but effectively) is more useful than doing something wrong with perfect execution. It’s the difference between going forward at a walk, and going backwards with a rocket thruster.
It’s pretty ironic* that you wrote multiple clear, detailed paragraphs explaining why you think you’re unintelligent, demonstrating analysis and critical thinking skills as you elucidate your point. You even followed one of the Socratic models. You also undermined your own argument. You’re not stupid, you have a low opinion of yourself and I’d bet cash money you’re neurodivergent and got fuck all help for it in your entire youth. Not that I’m qualified to armchair diagnose you, but I really think I can tell.
*I know this isn’t what irony means
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.
Just to clarify, I think the implosion was likely at 3500 meters, not 3500 feet. The total depth they were going down to was about 4000 meters.
His name’s James, James Cameron, the bravest pioneer, no budget too steep, no sea too deep, who’s that? It’s him! James Cameron!
James Cameron doesn’t do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is… James Cameron.
Are you getting the music up there?
Legendary director and king of the box office James Cameron?
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.
That’s justification for a negligence claim. Staying that your sub meets or exceeds a standard and knowing the view port wasn’t certified to those depths is the very definition of negligence. And then knowing the vessel was only a single use and using multiple times seems like a really good claim on manslaughter. Rush is lucky he’s dead.
oof, guess it shouldn’t be surprising that they went missing…
Hey - it’s only 1.7 miles short, it just sounds bad when you put it in meters
/s
He’s pretty involved in the deep sea submersible community by all accounts, supposedly he’s dived to the Titanic site 33 times and been involved in the design of some of the vessels used.
Yeah, that’s how he found all the Na’vi actors for Avatar!
Cameron made a documentary about his sub called “Deep Sea Challenge” that’s pretty enjoyable. It’s available for free on Pluto TV, for those able to VPN into the USA.
Cameron’s sub wasn’t officially certified, but it was extremely well tested and he’s been clear that he never would have let anyone else use it without certifying it first.
I know this is possibly a little insensitive, but I find it quite poetic for the folks to die similarly, and in proximity to the Titanic. They must have really liked the Titanic, and they died doing something that they’ve probably looked forward to a long time.
I feel bad for the 19 year old boy. He didn’t want to go and was very nervous, but it was Father’s Day and he wanted to please his dad.
yeah that’s the most tragic part of the story in my mind. I hope it was quick and painless for his sake.
Lol quite poetic indeed: Titanic was considered to be “unsinkable” and OceanGate’s CEO said “security is a waste”.
They both got a hard reality check from nature and physics.
Oh, way dumber than the Titanic. Titanic was one of the safest ships of its era. It could withstand 4 of its watertight compartments being completely flooded and stay afloat. The issue was that they grazed the iceberg in such a way that 6 compartments ended up being compromised. Despite that, it still stayed afloat for 2 hours. Look how much crap its sister ship the Olympic went through and stayed afloat.
This stupid thing was a disaster waiting to happen.
It also would’ve stayed up a lot longer if the watertight compartments had gone all the way up, so water couldn’t have continued filling ones further aft. It still had more compromised than it could withstand, but it may have been able to remain afloat long enough for the Carpathia to arrive for rescue
