Titanic tourist sub goes missing in Atlantic Ocean, June 2023 #3

[cuffem]

Ballard!:

Thank you for this!
My hero! A true life scientist, naval officer, explorer.
He is 80 y/o now and still a marine biologist.
I hope others learn about him and enjoy his discoveries as I have.

 

[Cool Cats]

Thank you for this!
My hero! A true life scientist, naval officer, explorer.
He is 80 y/o now and still a marine biologist.
I hope others learn about him and enjoy his discoveries as I have.

MSN

Professor Robert Ballard, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, points to his footage of the wreck of the Titanic. Ballard and his team discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. It took Ballard only eight days to find the Titanic's wreckage because he said he knew to follow debris. For more than 70 years, the location of the liner's wreckage had been a mystery.

 

[Cindizzi]

[…]

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

Lochridge’s concerns primarily focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring — cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure — to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick (12.7-centimeter-thick) carbon-fiber hull.

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” Lochridge’s counterclaim said.

Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet), where the Titanic rested. But, according to Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 meters.

[…]

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the company said the missing sub was completed in 2020-21, so it would not be the same as the vessel referenced in the lawsuit.

OceanGate also received another warning in 2018, this one from the Marine Technology Society, which describes itself as a professional group of ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers and educators.

In a letter to Rush, the society said it was critical that the company submit its prototype to tests overseen by an expert third party before launching in order to safeguard passengers.

Rush had refused to do so.

[…]

In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian magazine, Rush complained that the industry’s approach was stifling innovation.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years,” he said. “It’s obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”

Lawsuit: Submersible prototype could put Titanic sub passengers in extreme danger

 

[Cedars]

I never cease to be astounded by it, from a perspective of a study of decay. You have what was obviously a cabin, walls of steel swiss cheese, barely recognisable, and in the middle of the room, a wood and brass bed head, upright, gleaming as though it's just been polished, and opposite it, a small vanity with a smooth white marble or porcelain top and a perfectly intact front of wicker. After almost a hundred years.

One of the pictures that has remained in my brain for decades, though I can't find it online, was an unrecognisably twisted mess of metal from the debris field, and sat on top of it, upright, an intact teacup, as though someone had just placed it there and walked away.

It's the dissonance of intactness contrasted with terrible decay and destruction that I thinks makes the images so arresting. The randomness of what is still virtually the same and what is completely obliterated. The parallel between that and the randomness of who survived and who did not. It makes me hurt, deeply, for all those who never came home. Five more, now, who will be there, in some form, forever.

MOO

That's a very eloquent description, thanks.

I personally react to those images as being the truth about the nature of existence. Momento Mori, it used to be called: Remember, you must die. Everything around us appears to be permanent and solid, but that's an illusion that can burst in a moment, rather like the Titan, I guess.

JMO

 

[cenazoic]

I AM for ever walking upon these shores,
Betwixt the sand and the foam.
The high tide will erase my foot-prints,
And the wind will blow away the foam.
But the sea and the shore will remain
For ever.

…

When God threw me, a pebble, into this
wondrous lake
I disturbed its surface with
countless circles.
But when I reached the depths I became
very still.

…

There must be something strangely sacred in salt. It is in our tears and in the sea.


—- from Sand and Foam, Kahlil Gibran (1926)

 

[Cool Cats]

[…]

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s director of marine operations, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the craft under development needed more testing and that passengers might be endangered when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed that year in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of breaching a non-disclosure agreement, and he filed a counterclaim alleging that he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety. The case settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

Lochridge’s concerns primarily focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring — cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure — to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the company told him no equipment existed that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick (12.7-centimeter-thick) carbon-fiber hull.

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail — often milliseconds before an implosion — and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull,” Lochridge’s counterclaim said.

Further, the craft was designed to reach depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet), where the Titanic rested. But, according to Lochridge, the passenger viewport was only certified for depths of up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet), and OceanGate would not pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport certified for 4,000 meters.

[…]

In an emailed statement, a spokesman for the company said the missing sub was completed in 2020-21, so it would not be the same as the vessel referenced in the lawsuit.

OceanGate also received another warning in 2018, this one from the Marine Technology Society, which describes itself as a professional group of ocean engineers, technologists, policy-makers and educators.

In a letter to Rush, the society said it was critical that the company submit its prototype to tests overseen by an expert third party before launching in order to safeguard passengers.

Rush had refused to do so.

[…]

In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian magazine, Rush complained that the industry’s approach was stifling innovation.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years,” he said. “It’s obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”

Lawsuit: Submersible prototype could put Titanic sub passengers in extreme danger

BBM
Marine Technology Society Letter of Warning:
https://int.nyt.com/data/documentto...etter-to-ocean-gate/eddb63615a7b3764/full.pdf

 

[sds71]

Steve Lookner
@lookner


"The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion."


A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search say - WSJ

https://wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago

Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first heard the suspected implosion just hours after the submersible began its voyage.

www.wsj.com

 

[JDG]

The Titanic called them…..home to the sea. RIP

 

[cuffem]

MSN

Professor Robert Ballard, professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island, points to his footage of the wreck of the Titanic. Ballard and his team discovered the wreck of the Titanic in 1985. It took Ballard only eight days to find the Titanic's wreckage because he said he knew to follow debris. For more than 70 years, the location of the liner's wreckage had been a mystery.

View attachment 430547

Ballard is on the Nautilus in the Pacific and why it took so long for him to come out and comment on the Titan.
And the reason he was not able to help search for Titan.

 

[fred&edna]

Thank you for this!
My hero! A true life scientist, naval officer, explorer.
He is 80 y/o now and still a marine biologist.
I hope others learn about him and enjoy his discoveries as I have.

So glad I stumbled across it... at first I thought it was an older video.

Also, it appears he's known Rushton for 20 years and he didn't say a bad word about the submersible.

Who knew it's possible that what I called traveling in a sardine can with zip ties just might be safer than traveling by car.

 

[Cool Cats]

The Titanic called them…..home to the sea. RIP

Eerie.

Someone posted yesterday that one of the 5 people in the Titan was a descendent of a person who was on the actual Titanic in 1912.

 

[wnk]

Steve Lookner
@lookner


"The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion."


A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search say - WSJ

https://wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12

Interesting, considering it was 8 hours later that OceanGate contacted the Coast Guard. So did the Navy know about the submersible's lost communications before the Coast Guard? Or does the Navy make regular recordings, which they were then able to go back and listen to afterward (starting around the time of the sub's last communication)?

Maybe it says in the article, but it's behind a paywall.

 

[10ofRods]

Really? Why? Air travel is a necessity in modern life. Travelling to the depths of the ocean is a luxury that taxpayers need not fund IMO.

Apparently, there's a centuries old international law that says those lost at sea must be rescued by the nearest nation.

It may be time to change it, but I doubt that other nations will agree. Our duty to people lost at sea is a well-established legal and historic precedent.

We deal with the costs by having regulation. Allowing US Citizens to evade regulations in a commercial endeavor (including calling it a non-profit research trip) is a problem. Allowing self-built vessels to be registered with international sea/ship monitoring services is a problem, too.

I am pretty sure that each nation could add some provisos to the age-old "must rescue" rubric. Official reports of missing vessels could be required to have some kind of bona fides. It's a much bigger world now, in terms of total number of people gallivanting about.

Sea travel is also necessary, btw. Much of our stuff in the US comes through a port.

No taxpayers funded this mission - but we are following rules for international cooperation in a rescue. We could send someone a bill, I guess. But IME, military and LE agencies appreciate the real time, real emergency situation, as it's so much more valuable as training than a practice run. Our military personnel are paid and their ships are maintained/sailed about anyway.

My hope is that none of the rescuers is harmed in any way, as it is a dangerous environment. But our own CG and Navy will use this as a way of improving their services - to other ships at sea, which are crucial global survival.

imo

 

[CrimeDawg123]

What about space travel?

We know so little about the Earth's oceans, especially at great depths. Scientists studying marine ecology, plate tectonics, geothermal energy, earthquakes, and so much more would benefit greatly from being able to regularly travel all the way down to the seabed.

Aside from scientific enquiry, there are many other benefits to DSV's for both military and civilian uses. But really, all that is outside the scope of this thread. So I suggest we agree to disagree and not derail the discussion.

Agree about not derailing the discussion. But let me just simply say that this venture was amateurish. Were it a navy sub or some such vessel, by all means, let's pull out all the stops and investigate. This does not warrant research into their failure IMO because knowledgeable criticism of their vessel has already been widely published. I don't think we should waste the time or money. I'm all in for space exploration (and have family members at NASA). This is wildly different.

Agree to disagree. Cheers.

 

[PrairieWind]

Interesting, considering it was 8 hours later that OceanGate contacted the Coast Guard. So did the Navy know about the submersible's lost communications before the Coast Guard? Or does the Navy make regular recordings, which they were then able to go back and listen to afterward (starting around the time of the sub's last communication)?

Maybe it says in the article, but it's behind a paywall.

The Navy records these. There are several instances when they later heard of an incident and then went back to listen to tapes and could hear what happened.

 

[Cool Cats]

Interesting, considering it was 8 hours later that OceanGate contacted the Coast Guard. So did the Navy know about the submersible's lost communications before the Coast Guard? Or does the Navy make regular recordings, which they were then able to go back and listen to afterward (starting around the time of the sub's last communication)?

Maybe it says in the article, but it's behind a paywall.

• Jun. 22, 2023, 2:40 p.m

Why did it take 8 hours to report Titan’s disappearance to the Coast Guard?

Sean Leet, head of the company that co-owns the Titan’s support ship, refused to discuss the timeline during a news conference Wednesday.

www.al.com

 

[Mama-dukes]

Agree about not derailing the discussion. But let me just simply say that this venture was amateurish. Were it a navy sub or some such vessel, by all means, let's pull out all the stops and investigate. This does not warrant research into their failure IMO because knowledgeable criticism of their vessel has already been widely published. I don't think we should waste the time or money. I'm all in for space exploration (and have family members at NASA). This is wildly different.

Agree to disagree. Cheers.

I agree with you I would rather have people go 2 space we know we would b saved if anything was 2 happen but doing this going 2 the titanic is nothing we know about leave it up 2 the scientist at this point and time

 

[I'm Nobody]

Ballard!:

In 1990 I met Robert Ballard at a BBQ when he was trying to get support and rights to the Titanic artifacts to preserve for future generations, like a museum. Not my thing, but at the time I wanted whatever Ballard was on; his fire and love for the Titanic filled his whole being. It was exciting just listening to him.
These guys are a special breed.

IMO Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Stockton Rush, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Sulaiman Dawood,
fit into the category of Different Thinkers Steve Jobs talked about:
"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes ... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. ... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things. ... They push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."

As I understand it, the tourist-trips CEO Stockton Rush was doing helped fund his continuing research.

My deepest condolences to the families and this community of explorers.

JMO

 

[citizen_sleuth]

Steve Lookner
@lookner


"The Navy began listening for the Titan almost as soon as the sub lost communications, according to a U.S. defense official. Shortly after its disappearance, the U.S. system detected what it suspected was the sound of an implosion."


A top secret U.S. Navy acoustic detection system first heard the Titan sub implosion hours after the submersible began its mission, officials involved in the search say - WSJ

https://wsj.com/articles/u-s-navy-detected-titan-sub-implosion-days-ago-6844cb12

WSJ News Exclusive | U.S. Navy Heard What It Believed Was Titan Implosion Days Ago

Underwater microphones designed to detect enemy submarines first heard the suspected implosion just hours after the submersible began its voyage.

www.wsj.com

I wonder whether the Navy shared this information with OceanGate at the time -- I'm assuming they would, I can't imagine the Navy would not communicate this (privately) to OceanGate given that it was their vessel which was believed to be the source of that implosion. But if that is the case, why did OceanGate in their initial statement say that they were "exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely" (unless they were not aware at that an implosion was heard?)

 

[iamshadow21]

Eerie.

Someone posted yesterday that one of the 5 people in the Titan was a descendent of a person who was on the actual Titanic in 1912.

If it's who I think it is, it's the CEO and the decendent is actually his wife, who has been down to the wreck before, but fortunately not this time. Wendy, his wife, is the great great grandchild of Isidor and Ida Straus.

MOO