2024-09-16
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titanic submarine, taking passengers to the bottom of the sea to see the wreckage of the titanic
tencent technology news according to foreign media reports, a public hearing was held on september 16 to investigate the cause of the titan submarine explosion that caused the deaths of five wealthy people more than a year ago.
last year, the titan submarine operated by oceanate promised passengers that the trip to the depth of 3,800 meters in the atlantic ocean to see the wreckage of the titanic on the seabed would be an unforgettable one for the passengers! but in the end it turned into a tragedy. as the submarine approached the seabed, a malfunction caused a disaster and all five people on board died.
the hearing was organized by the u.s. coast guard. over the course of two weeks, questions included why the submarine did not adopt a conventional design, why the operator turned a deaf ear to safety warnings from industry insiders, and why there was a lack of supervision.
on the morning of june 18, 2023, titan began its descent. on board were oceangate ceo stockton rush, british explorer hamish harding, veteran french diver paul henri nargeolet, pakistani businessman shahzada dawood and his 19-year-old son suleman.
later that day, when the submarine still had not surfaced, the u.s. coast guard was notified and a massive search and rescue operation was launched.
after the incident, the whole world was watching and waiting for news of the missing submarine. it was not until june 22 that the wreckage of the submarine was found about 500 meters from the bow of the titanic. professionals believed that it imploded only 1 hour and 45 minutes after it began to dive.
more than a year has passed, and there are still five mysteries about the disaster that have not been solved.
clockwise from top left: stockton rush, hamish harding, shahzada dawood and son suleiman, and paul-henri nagyole
did the passengers know when the breakdown occurred?
those on the submarine can stay in touch with the support ship, the polar prince, by sending text messages through the ship's communications system. these messages can reveal if there are any signs that the submarine is having problems.
the submarine also has an acoustic monitoring device, which is equivalent to a microphone fixed to the submarine, which can detect signs of bending or breaking of the submarine.
"rush made sure that if the submarine was about to malfunction, they could hear the alarm through this acoustic monitoring device," said deep-sea explorer victor vescovo.
but vescovo doubted that even if the warning was heard, the submarine would have enough time to return to the surface.
if there were no obvious problems during the descent and the alarm did not sound, those on board might not have realized they were about to encounter a disaster.
the implosion happened in a split second, leaving the passengers no time to register what was happening.
what went wrong with the submarine?
industry experts have been examining the wreckage of the titan to find the source of the failure.
there were several problems with the submarine's design.
titan's manufacturers rated the viewing port's diving depth at 1,300 meters, but titan has dived to nearly three times that depth.
titan's shape is also unusual, it is cylindrical. most deep-sea submarines are spherical, so the effects of the deep ocean's pressure are evenly distributed across a spherical submarine.
titan's hull is made of carbon fiber, which is not a conventional material for deep-sea submarines.
metals such as titanium are the most common submarine materials because they remain reliable under enormous pressure.
“carbon fiber doesn’t perform reliably in the deep ocean,” said patrick lahey, ceo of triton submarines, a prominent submarine maker.
the titan has been submerged many times, and each time the carbon fiber is crushed and damaged.
“as the fibers break, it becomes more and more fragile,” he said.
the connection between the different materials was also a problem. the connection between the carbon fiber and the two titanium rings was the weak point of the submarine.
patrick leahy said the commercial submarine industry has long had a perfect safety record. "oceangate's submarines are an anomaly."
search and rescue teams search for missing submarine
is the noise in the ocean distracting the search?
search and rescue ships, aircraft and remote-controlled submarines were urgently dispatched into the atlantic ocean to try to find the missing titan.
a few days into the search, a search aircraft's sonar detected underwater noises that may have come from titan.
the search and rescue team sent out a remote-controlled submarine to find the source of the noise, but found nothing.
it is not clear what the noises are. the ocean is not silent, but rather quite noisy, which may have interfered with search and rescue operations.
at the time of the disappearance, the u.s. navy's sonar system detected a more significant underwater sound, an acoustic signature consistent with an implosion, but this information was not made public until the wreckage of titan was discovered.
it was not clear when the coast guard learned of the incident or whether anyone informed the worried family and friends who were waiting on the support ship for four days of false hope.
eventually, the deep-sea robot returned to the place where the titan disappeared and found its wreckage.
why did oceangate ignore security issues?
many people have expressed concerns about oceangate's submarines.
victor vescovo said he was so worried that he dissuaded several passengers from boarding the titan, including his friend hamish harding, one of the five people who died.
he said: "i told harding plainly not to go."
david lochridge, oceangate's former director of marine operations, evaluated the titan submarine during its development.
u.s. court documents from 2018 show lockridge found a number of "serious safety issues" and said the submarine had not been tested and could "expose passengers to potentially extreme danger in an experimental submarine."
engineers from the marine technology association also said in a letter that oceanate's experimental approach could lead to adverse consequences, which could range from minor to catastrophic.
deep-sea expert rob mccallum wrote to oceangate ceo rush in an email saying the titan submarine should not be used for commercial deep-sea diving operations because it would put passengers in "dangerous situations."
rush said he was "tired of industry people trying to use security as an excuse to stop innovation," and he dismissed the warnings that "you're going to kill people" as unfounded.
rush is dead, so we will never be able to ask him why he didn't listen. but a public hearing could reveal who else at the company knew about these things and why they didn't act.
did management give titan the green light?
deep-sea submarines can undergo extensive safety assessments by independent professional marine organizations, including abs in the u.s. and dnv, a global certification organization based in norway. they can certify the safety of a submarine by assessing whether certain standards are met from design to construction, testing and operation.
oceangate decided not to certify titan as a safety product.
most operators have their deep-sea subs certified by these organizations, but it is not mandatory.
rush called the titan submarine "experimental." in a 2019 blog post, he argued that certification would "slow down innovation."
in response to an email from deep-sea expert rob mccarron, rush said he did not need a piece of paper to prove that titan was safe, and his own methods of ensuring safety and the "informed consent" of the passengers were enough.
passengers on the titan paid up to $250,000 (about 1.77 million yuan) for the ride and were required to sign a waiver.
in 2022, oisin fanning (right) took the submarine to see the titanic under the sea at stockton rush (left).
irish businessman oisin fanning was a passenger on titan twice in 2022, which were also the last two dives of titan before the disaster.
he said the oceanate team takes safety seriously and provides extensive documentation before each dive, but he was unaware that the titan was not certified.
"we all knew titan was experimental. we were pretty confident because it had been down there a few times before and seemed to be performing pretty well."
the public hearing will last for two weeks. hopefully, the clues it provides can prevent such a disaster from happening again. (compiled by yun kai)
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