Titan sub may have been dragged through waters by mothership for 3 days before fatal accident
OceanGate’s cost-saving measures while building the Titan tourist submersible — including being dragged by its mothership, risky design choices and overlooking proper testing and certifications — may have led to the experimental vessel’s catastrophic implosion last month.
The flawed design choices on the janky sub were likely made with the intention of keeping costs low and making the vessel carrying wealthy tourists down to view the Titanic’s wreckage as profitable as possible, several engineers told the New York Times Friday.
One cost-cutting measure included renting a mothership called the Polar Prince that was too small to carry the Titan on deck, meaning it had to drag the submersible through the ocean for three days from Newfoundland to the crash site, the report said.
The hack resulted in the sub being “tossed around pretty roughly,” Arnie Weissmann, the editor in chief of Travel Weekly, wrote about his May expedition to the site. His planned Titan dive to the ocean floor was ultimately canned due to “wind, swells and fog.”
Typically, a large crane lowers a submersible into the ocean from a custom-built mothership outfitted with custom winches, hangars and a machine shop, Weissman said.
In contrast, Alvin — the first craft to carry humans to the Titanic site, in 1986 — travels to its dive sites aboard a dedicated mothership outfitted with custom winches, hangars and a machine shop. A large crane places the submersible into the ocean.
OceanGate did not provide an answer to the Times when asked if the sub could have been damaged by being repeatedly towed for thousands of miles.
At only 9 feet wide and 8 feet tall, the Titan strayed from industry standards in many ways.
Its hull, which was shaped like a pill — likely to squeeze more passengers inside at $250,000 a head — was a far cry from the standard sphere, which experts said was known to be better suited for such deep-sea voyages.
The Titan’s central cylinder was also constructed of carbon fiber instead of titanium like other submersibles.
The cylinder was attached to titanium hemispheres, creating several joints of dissimilar materials.
Two distinct materials joining together should have been a red flag, as different materials change shape at varying rates when under pressure — meaning a seal could be broken more easily as the ship was subjected to water pressures of 3 tons per square inch, experts reportedly said.
Tim Foecke, a retired forensic metallurgist, told the Times the changes made to the hull may have contributed to the submersible’s failure. A larger hull like the Titan’s would need to be thicker and stronger to withstand the same pressure as a smaller vessel, and the industry standard was a smaller cylinder shape.
“I was very surprised,” Foecke said of the vessel’s construction, noting that carbon fiber would compress more quickly than titanium.
Issues may have also arisen due to OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush skipping standard testing and inspections by reputable marine organizations, saying that obtaining a certification for the Titan would stifle innovation.
When interviewed for a documentary, Rush noted, “You are remembered for the rules you break, and I’ve broken some rules to make this. The carbon fiber and titanium — there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.”
Rush, who wanted to turn the vessel into a tool for deep-sea mining — a controversial practice of harvesting minerals from the ocean floor — said during a 2017 interview that using the sub to view the Titanic’s wreckage was a means to prove his vessel’s design.
“The long-term value is in the commercial side. Adventure tourism is a way to monetize the process of proving the technology,” he told Fast Company. “The Titanic is where we go from startup to ongoing business.”
Kedar Kirane, a mechanical engineer with expertise in damage, fracture and fatigue in fiber-reinforced composites, told the paper that if he were crafting a submersible, testing the vessel and obtaining certification would be his top priority.
“I would probably emphasize the actual testing itself because that’s very critical,” he said. “Safety is at stake, so before actually using it in a real-world application, I would make sure it passes all the certification required and a lot of experiments.”
On June 18, the Titan imploded during its dive to the famed ocean liner’s wreckage, killing Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, prominent Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman Dawood.
