Free Republic

Ron DeSantis has replaced his campaign manager Generra Peck, in what is the third major reshuffling of his operations, a campaign spokesperson and a person familiar with the move confirmed to POLITICO. Peck will be shifted to a role of chief strategist as part of the new order. Taking her place atop the campaign will be James Uthmeier, who has served as chief of staff in DeSantis’ governor’s office.

OceanGate Expeditions, the embattled tourism company behind the Titan submersible tragedy, is suspending all exploratory and commercial operations — two weeks after its signature diving vessel fatally malfunctioned with five people on board. The announcement was made quietly through a small banner header on OceanGate’s website. Founded in 2009, the company offered well-heeled daredevils the opportunity to travel on submersibles to underwater shipwrecks and canyons. The Washington state-based group, however, made headlines last month when its Titan submersible vanished June 18 in the North Atlantic Ocean en route to the wreck of the Titanic, sparking a massive, multi-day search effort...

In a 2017 video posted to his company’s YouTube channel, OceanGate Expeditions’ CEO Stockton Rush, who perished along with four passengers on the ill-fated Titan submersible in mid-June, described the glue holding the vessel together by comparing it to a popular food. The 2017 video showed the submersible being put together as Rush asserted, “It’s pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery,” Then he added, “The glue’s very thick, so it’s not like Elmer’s Glue; it’s like peanut butter.” Rush had been warned years before the tragedy that his vessel was...

A man who was once a passenger on the doomed Titan submersible has claimed that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush suggested the crew sleep on the vessel overnight while they were stuck at the bottom of the Atlantic. Jaden Pan's 2021 expedition took a terrifying turn when the Titan's battery died just over two hours into its descent to the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor. Speaking to the BBC last year, the videographer recalled the moment Rush told the passengers that the battery had gone 'kaput.' Rush reportedly told passengers they needed to go back to the surface when they...

Screenshots of what purports to be the Titan submersible’s final communications before its tragic destruction have gone viral online. The unconfirmed script alleges to reveal the final words shared between someone on board the sub – presumably OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush – and the team on board its mothership the Polar Prince. The document has raised a number of concerns, most notably by suggesting that passengers were aware of issues with the vessel some 18 minutes before its devastating implosion.

David Lochridge, a submersible pilot and engineer who had served in Great Britain’s Royal Navy and worked all over the world, had expressed reservations about the design and build of OceanGate’s submersible, but his concerns were reportedly dismissed. He found numerous problems with the vessel, including the carbon-fiber hull having “very visible signs of delamination and porosity,” the glue for ballast bags coming off, sealing faces with errant plunge holes, and O-ring grooves whose design was not standard, among many others, The New Yorker reported. When Lochridge brought up his concerns at a company meeting, he was fired.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush said in an old interview that he preferred not to hire veteran submarine pilots or technicians to keep his team "younger" and "inspirational." Rush, who died in June on board his submersible, the Titan, was speaking with executives from Teledyne Marine, a marine-equipment manufacturer. While the interview was undated, a recording of the video meeting was published by Teledyne in August 2020, according to metadata seen by Insider. The recording has been deleted, but Insider reviewed an archived version. In the video, the Teledyne executive Matt Burdyny told Rush that he accompanied OceanGate on a submersible...

Human remains have been found in the wreckage of the Titan submersible on Wednesday, the Coast Guard announced. This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

Debris from the Titan submersible that imploded on the bottom of the Atlantic as it tried to reach the wreckage of the Titanic has been hauled ashore. The huge chunks of metal were unloaded from the Horizon Arctic ship at the Canadian Coast Guard pier in St John's, Newfoundland, Canada, this morning. They were quickly covered in large tarpaulins before being lifted by cranes on to trucks that took them away for assessment. It comes exactly ten days after the doomed Titan submersible vanished during a tourist trip run by OceanGate Expeditions. Last Thursday it was revealed that the sub...

A ship carrying pieces of debris from the submersible that officials say imploded while carrying five people to the wreckage of the Titanic last week arrived in Newfoundland, Canada, on Wednesday.

Jewish billionaire Jay Bloom says he and his son Sean were offered two seats on the ill-fated Titan submersible but declined to join over safety concerns and scheduling issues. The American real estate developer, who is based in Las Vegas, said Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman ended up taking their available seats. Dawood and his son were among the five people who died instantly when the submersible imploded on a mission to explore the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic. “Every time I see a picture of that Pakistani businessman and his 19-year-old son, I...

An old clip from the Discovery Channel show “MythBusters” demonstrating how a deep-sea explorer could implode in a depressurized diving suit has gone viral after the Titanic sub disaster. The 2009 clip has racked up more than three-quarters of a million views after being posted Thursday, when it was discovered that the five passengers had died aboard a Titanic wreckage-bound submersible that imploded. In the show’s science experiment, a human-shaped mannequin was recreated from pig parts including bones, muscle, fat, skin and guts. It was then sunk about 300 feet underwater — where pressure is roughly nine times greater than...

The OceanGate submersible disaster is over. The Titan seacraft that supposedly could submerge to depths to view the Titanic wreck imploded, killing all five members onboard. It disappeared on Sunday, June 18, leading to a days-long search by US Coast Guard and Canadian military units to find the craft. On June 20, there was some hope, as noises were heard in the vicinity where the submersible disappeared. It was false hope; the noises were natural in origin. On June 22, it was concluded that there were no survivors when a debris field 1,600 feet from the wreck's bow was discovered,...

The one-of-a-kind Titan submersible that imploded on its descent to the site of the Titanic this week, killing all five passengers, was made with experimental materials, including carbon fiber, which experts say has not been pressure-tested over time in such extreme depths. Since the fatal dive, the innovation behind the Titan and OceanGate Expeditions — the company that owned and operated the vessel for paid tours to the Titanic — has come under increased and intense scrutiny. Days after the Titan was reported missing, sparking a frantic search, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday that the 22-foot craft imploded, though...

The title of this article is rather broad and audacious, so let’s do what all good engineers would do and set the boundary conditions for the analysis. All calculations will be approximate given the time invested in this analysis and the purpose thereto. Some assumptions and engineering judgments will be made due to the lack of independently verified information and data. This analysis is meant to be brief and the intended audience is both engineers and non-engineers (for educational purposes). Why am I writing this – out of some sort of ghoulish focus on death? Well, engineers study the ghoulish...

They found a tragedy. They dragged it out as long as possible to keep people from focusing on their scandals. The Biden Crime Family and their regime are pure evil. Much of the world has been glued to their news sources for information about the submersible that went missing Sunday. It was confirmed Thursday that the tour vehicle that took the wealthy to see the sunken RMS Titanic imploded after debris was found. Did Joe Biden know the submersible had been lost hours after the tragedy? Did his regime withhold the information to cover up for various bombshells pertaining to...

WHO: Rear Adm. John Mauger, the First Coast Guard District commander, Capt. Jason Neubauer, chief investigator, U.S. Coast Guard. WHAT: The Coast Guard is scheduled to hold a press briefing to the conclusion of search and rescue aspects of the response, and information to how the marine board of investigation will be conducted. WHEN: Sunday at 4:00 p.m. WHERE: Coast Guard Base Boston at 427 Commercial St., Boston, MA 02109 Editor’s note: Media should be prepared to show media credentials and a government issued photo ID to gain access to the base. Base access will be allowed starting at 3:30...

Rather long video by Scott Manley, who normally blogs about things space related. This is a "rant," in which he streams his thoughts and responds to questions and comments from viewers. One interesting thing he did say that I made note of, concerning the energy released when the Titan submarine imploded. If we assume that it made it to a depth of 8000 feet, we can estimate the amount of energy that was focused on its occupants by just turning the situation around (in a sense) and calculating the amount of energy needed to clear one cubic meter of volume...

Officials investigating the doomed Titanic submersible will examine voice recordings and other data from its mothership to try to determine what happened and whether any criminality occurred, according to reports. Investigators with the Transportation Safety Board of Canada visited the Polar Prince, the OceanGate Titan sub’s lead ship, Saturday “to collect information from the vessel’s voyage data recorder and other vessel systems that contain useful information,” TSB Chairwoman Kathy Fox told CNN. Fox said agency wants to “find out what happened and why and to find out what needs to change to reduce the chance or the risk of such...

The media took a brief break from its political feeding frenzies to gorge on a generally apolitical tragedy. The story of the OceanGate sub all but took over the airwaves as the media whipped up suspense over the fate of the people on board. The people on board were however dead and had been all along. The Navy was aware of that. So were most experts. Even Titanic director James Cameron weighed in with the obvious. The idea, held up by the media to profit from eyeballs and clicks, that people were sitting somewhere in a stranded sub waiting to...