Information about the explosion some time after Sunday’s sinking was immediately passed to the US Coast Guard, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ). However, the decision was made to continue the search and rescue operation in order to “do everything possible to save lives on board”, the US Navy said. President Joe Biden was quickly briefed on the situation.
The military couldn’t be one hundred percent sure the explosion was Titan-related. Additionally, the US Navy, according to the WSJ, wanted to keep its submarine detection capabilities secret. This likely explains why nothing was initially said publicly and why there were few details about exactly what was discovered and how.
The operators of “Titan” circumvented the existing rules
According to experts quoted by The Guardian, the operators of the Titan partially circumvented existing rules by operating in international waters. The vessel was not registered with international bodies and was not certified by the Marine Industry Group, which sets basic engineering standards. OceanGate explained this by saying that the Titan’s design is so innovative that it will take inspectors years to figure it out.
Expert Bart Kemper said the company avoided complying with US regulations by deploying its operations in international waters, beyond the reach of national agencies such as the US Coast Guard. Salvatore Mercogliano, a history professor specializing in maritime history, noted that companies involved in deep-sea operations may not be well understood due to where they operate.
Recall that earlier Bob Ballard, an oceanographer who discovered the wreckage of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean in 1985, said that the main reason for the tragedy (i.e. the destruction of the Titan) is that the vessel was not properly certified.
OceanGate rejected industry standards that would have required a closer look at its operations and vessels. The company has also boasted of working with “reputable institutions” who now deny any partnership with OceanGate. Some industry experts have said OceanGate’s operations are risky. “It was a company that was already challenging much of what we already knew about submarine design,” Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer who has studied physiological demands, told CNN. underwater survival. She noted that some of the ship’s design materials “were already big red flags for people who have worked in this area.”
The “Titan” hull was not suitable for diving at great depths
Experts agree that any investigation is likely to raise questions about the design of the bathyscaphe, the materials used to build it and whether Rush and company should have done more to prevent such a fatality.
On ABC’s Good Morning America, famed Hollywood filmmaker and Titanic explorer James Cameron said he believes the submersible’s carbon fiber composite hull was a “critical error” that led to an explosion during a voyage on the high seas to the wreck of the Titanic. “Composites aren’t used for pressure vessels. They’re great for internal pressure vessels like scuba gear, but they’re terrible for external pressure,” said the director of the Oscar-winning film Titanic. “It was an attempt to apply aeronautical thinking to the engineering problem of deep diving. We all said it was a bad idea and they weren’t certified. I think it was a failure critical.”
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who also died during the Titan’s last dive, has previously defended the decision to build the craft from the material, saying he believes a carbon fiber submarine would have a better strength to buoyancy ratio than titanium. .
Rescuers were looking for a 6.7-meter-long submarine in an area of 21,000 square kilometers (almost the territory of the Netherlands). Traces of “Titan” could be found on the surface or at the bottom of the ocean – at a depth of 3800 meters. Although the research team had several ships and aircraft at their disposal, the area in which they operated and the number of possible variables they faced were enormous.
On Thursday, the US Coast Guard announced an explosion that instantly killed all of the Titan’s passengers as they traveled four thousand miles to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. An unmanned underwater probe found five large pieces of debris about 500 meters from the Titanic. It is still unclear what caused the explosion. And that’s the biggest mystery.
The investigation will focus on a few points
Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US Coast Guard First District said investigators would first try to figure out why the ship exploded. “I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when this happened. These are questions that we will now collect as much information about as possible,” Moger said, adding that he it was a “complex case”.
Ryan Ramsey, a former British Royal Navy submarine captain, told the Air Force (stranded in Russia) the investigation would be no different to a plane crash, at except for the lack of a flight recorder. It should be noted that there have been few such investigations, so it is unclear who will do what.
It’s also unclear if the dives will continue, although there have been hundreds of dives since the Titanic wreckage was discovered in 1985 – some commercial, some salvage. National Geographic reports that UK company Deep Ocean Expeditions was among the first to sell tickets in 1998. Blue Marble was selling tickets in 2019. The tragic dive undertaken by OceanGate was one of 18 planned by the company this year, with operations that took place during the previous two years. However, this year, due to bad weather conditions, a dive to the bottom of the ocean was performed for the first time.
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