Posted on 06/21/2023 6:41:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
A submersible carrying tourists to look at the remains of the Titanic went missing on Sunday, and the odds of anyone onboard surviving grow lower by the day. It’s also been reported that the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company behind the excursion, is onboard. And the more information that comes out, the less surprising it is that we’ve ended up in this situation.
Metro reports that last year, when asked about the safety of the Titan submersible, Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO, said, “You know, there’s a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. I mean if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.”
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According to the report, OceanGate fired David Lochridge when he questioned how safe the Titan was and later sued him after he filed a whistleblower complaint with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, claiming he violated the terms of his contract. Lochridge then countersued, claiming he was wrongfully terminated. In the suit, he said he pushed back against launching the Titan without doing “non-destructive testing to prove its integrity.”
“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible,” Lochridge said in his suit.
From the CBS story:
The Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters. Titan relied on carbon fiber for a hull that would carry passengers as deep as 4,000 meters, a depth that Lochridge claimed in the court filing had never been reached in a carbon fiber-constructed sub. According to his claim, he learned the vessel was built to withstand a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate planned to take passengers to 4,000 meters.
He also said that even though the Titan was made out of carbon fiber, no carbon fiber sub had ever gone that deep before.
If these claims are true, they paint a pretty clear picture of a CEO who didn’t care about safety and was happy to risk other people’s lives to make a little money.
I am glad he’s the pilot. I was not aware of that.
I hope they can get rescued so he can go to prison.
I think they should be looking for a giant squid with a propane tank shaped bulge in its belly.
Welp, he proved his point..if he’d stayed in bed he’d still be drawing breath.
#24
You and me both. Assuming the passengers don’t take care of it first.
The guy believed his own insane narrative.
Stupid is hurting big time.
You’re probably right 400x.
I just checked, it’s about 500 atmospheres.
https://www.ocregister.com/2023/06/20/how-deep-the-ocean-is-at-the-titanic-wreckage-might-surprise-you/
“If you’re so rich, why aren’t you so smart?” -Nassim Taleb
There absolutely are ways to make a trip down safer than sticking people in an improperly engineered carbon fiber tube with (apparently) no metal liner; they used the wrong lay-up techniques for sure and there was no cross-lay - only simple spooling over a metal form. That thing wasn’t even as safe as a commercial diving gas cylinder.
At least in the submersible, you can practice being calm as your life is being taken. You still have a bit of freedom to move about. It’s still terrible.
There is only one worse way to die and that’s in a cave from spelunking and you get stuck so you can’t move at all. That terrifies me out of my mind.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/weird-news/the-worst-death-imaginable-spelunker-22880796
Even if it was bobbing around on the surface, they’re screwed. It only had one access port bolted to the outside with seventeen bolts and no way to open it from the inside and no way to get more oxygen in.
“I just checked, it’s about 500 atmospheres.”
Per your link that is at 5000 meters. The Titanic is at 3800 meters.
Captain Nemo?
It does amaze me that they don’t have oxygen tubes that they can release to come to the surface in the event of an emergency. That should be standard equipment when the engines become inoperative.
At 500 atmospheres, the sub should be floating and not sinking. Releasing air into balloons would have allowed it to rise, at least to the point where somebody in an oxygen mask can swim the rest of the way.
“There absolutely are ways to make a trip down safer than sticking people in an improperly engineered carbon fiber tube “
The Titanic expert aboard had made 35 previous dives to the wreck starting in 1987.
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