Oceangate Submarine Disaster - What REALLY Happened
on June 18 2023 Titan a submersible operated by Ocean Gate went missing the international waters in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland Canada the submersible was on a tourist expedition to view the wreckage of the RMS Titanic with five individuals on board including the founder and CEO of Ocean Gate Stockton Rush due to the estimated three days of oxygen supply there was a huge rescue effort by the U.S Coast Guard and Canada's Coast Guard which was unsuccessful until early on June 22nd when evidence of the wreckage of the vessel started to emerge leading to the tragic conclusion that the vessel imploded in the ocean depths and there were no survivors as an engineer I'm furious about what happened and the different shortcuts that were taken we'll go in through all of that today so let's try to figure out what exactly what happened and what we can learn from this I'm Ricky and this is stupid DaVinci let's start what we know about the company operating the Titan and submersible Ocean Gate Incorporated is a privately held U.S company operating out of Everett Washington that provides crude submersibles for tourism industry and research and exploration the company was founded in 2009 by Stockton rush and Guillermo Solen Stockton Rush wanted to be an astronaut so he got his commercial pilot license but because of bad eyesight he could never be a military pilot so instead he moved from San Francisco to Seattle to work at McDonald Douglas as a flight test engineer for the F-15 Eagle after attending the launch of spaceship 1 in the Mojave Desert in 2004 he decided he didn't want to go up to space as a tourist he wanted to be like Captain Kirk on the Enterprise he wanted to explore and pivoted his pursuit to undersea exploration he was married to Wendy Rush a descendant of Isidore and Ida Strauss two people who actually passed away on the sinking of the Titanic which ties into the story here today the tragic events happened during a deep sea tourism expedition to explore the wreckage of the Titanic which sunk in Northern Atlantic in 1912. before we get to the specifics of this particular tragedy let's put just how difficult deep sea exploration is into context it's easy to be an awe of Aviation and space exploration because Breaking Free of gravity and flying through the air seem like such a feat but in many ways deep sea craft are the much greater engineering challenge it all comes down to pressure we don't think about air pressure because at sea level it's just 14.7 pounds per square inch that pressure is the result of the column of air that reaches above us all the way into outer space all those very molecules above us pushing down result in that pressure but water is a much more dense fluid than air so for every 10 meters or 32.8 feet you dive the pressure increases by one atmosphere or 14.7 PSI the Titanic is sitting on the ocean floor at about 12 500 feet below sea level the two broken parts of the ship the bow and the stern are more than 2 600 feet apart and surrounded by debris after over 100 Years of being in the bottom of the ocean the wreckage is 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada you can stay here let's put this depth into perspective imagine laying on your back with a one foot by one foot board okay and how much weight you would feel on that board at 100 meters the size of a soccer or football field we have the pressure of 10 atmospheres or 145 PSI which means on that one by one foot board we would feel the weight of 20 880 pounds that is 4.7 Tesla
Model wise at 381 meters 1250 feet we have the height of the Empire State Building in New York City at this depth we would feel 37.4 atmospheres of pressure and that one by one footboard would feel the weight of 80 000 pounds at 490 meters we have the max dive depth of the C-Class of U.S Navy submarine here we'd feel 48.5 atmospheres of pressure that one by one foot board would feel the weight of 94 800 pounds at 828 meters we have the height of the Burj Khalifa here we'd feel 82 atmospheres that weight on the board would be 173 520 pounds now this is around the same depth as the deepest diving submarine in operation today the oscar-class submarine in the Russian Navy at 3 800 meters sets the wreckage of the Titanic here the pressures are 376 atmospheres that one by one footboard on our chest would have the weight of 797 000 pounds the Ocean Gate Titan was rated for a mass dive depth of about 4 000 meters now that might sound insane but actually it's not even the record for the deepest human beings have been that honor goes to James Cameron and the deep sea Challenger built in Australia in 2012 the deepsea Challenger reached the deepest part of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean the deepest point on Earth at a mind-boggling 11 000 meters or 36 000 feet here we'd feel 1090 atmospheres of pressure and that one by one foot board would have the weight of 2.3 million pounds on it compare that to the difference in pressure of an airplane at cruising altitude of 36 000 feet we're outside the pressure might be 3 PSI and on the inside between 10 and 12. and that hopefully puts in perspective why more people have been to space than have been into the deepest parts of our oceans now let's talk about the red flags that plagued Ocean Gate from the get-go by the way Ocean Gate just sounds like a walking Scandal ready to happen first the design limitations of the Titan required that the hatch be bolted down by 17 to 18 Bolts from the outside this means there's no way for the passengers inside to open the hatch they'd have to rely on ground Crews to open it now this is understandable because of these deep sea vessels have to be incredibly tight they have to be very strong the water seals have to hold and that's all complicated but I think this shows you why it's really important to have backup systems and have some sort of an explosive detonation cord you can pull to blow the hatch in the event that the craft surfaced and no one found it and that was actually one of the fears early on is that the vessel could actually surface and be at the surface somewhere along the Atlantic unfound and still die from suffocating because they couldn't open the hatch and the air could run out the Titan also didn't have GPS or other navigational instruments on board and it didn't have a locator beak in either like a black box on an aircraft most Subs use GPS for near surface navigation which doesn't work in deeper waters in deeper waters they use dead reckoning course information obtained by the ship's gyro Compass measured speed and estimates of local ocean currents they also allowed inertial navigation systems which was an estimated position Source utilizing acceleration deceleration pitch and roll from the computers that transmit this data the Titan in contrast appeared to rely only on data provided by the surface support vessel in 2019 Ocean Gate published a blog post explaining why the Titan was not certified by any ship Authority which was a huge red flag Ocean Gate stated the vast majority of marine and Aviation accidents are actually the result of operator error not mechanical failure here and argue that classification focused solely on the physical state of the vessel and not the corporate actions which are characterized as a constant committed effort and a focused corporate culture of maintaining high level operational safety that sounds like absolute [ __ ] to me I'm sorry journalist David progue who rode on the Titan to view the Titanic in 2022 noted during his expedition the surface support vessel lost track of the Titan for about four to five hours and mentioned that adding a Locator Beacon was actually discussed during this event they could still send short texts to the sub but they had no idea where it was it was quiet and very tense he says and they shut off the ship's internet to keep us from tweeting oh my God that is terrifying and they've already known that this could happen the craft was also controlled by a video game controller which sounds like some cool Silicon Valley way of thinking beanbag chairs and break rooms but it's downright stupid military spec products go through incredible rigorous testing making them safe in all operating environments for example as expensive as Apple's Vision Pro headset is at 3 500 it is done right cheap compared to the four hundred thousand dollars that it costs to get a helmet for the F-35 fighter jet and the reason why well lower volumes of course but also because they have to go through unbelievable vibration testings to make sure the wells will all hold up make sure that the higher levels of radiation at 40 to 50 000 feet won't do any damage long term and to make your absolute reliability now let's talk about how we got to the Titan Ocean Gate started by purchasing antipodes which is a submersible back in 2012 which was their first test bed for testing and learning about this entire Endeavor next they built cyclops one which is in collaboration with University of Washington's Applied Physics laboratory and this was a deeper sea vessel capable of reaching a max depth of 500 meters still nowhere near deep enough for the Titanic but this was their next step and their next iteration in the early design the hole was made of carbon fiber and that's the whole submersible would dive vertically with pivoting seats to ensure the passengers remained upright now it was said that Boeing worked with Ocean Gate and the University of Washington on their initial design analysis but we'll get back to that in a second because there's a little bit more to that story finally they would arrive at the Titan their final product that would actually be rated for 4 000 meters one of the key takeaways about the Titan is that this is a carbon fiber and titanium hold submersible now this is really exotic in the world of materials we've been using high strength steel aluminum for a long time and we have data engineering data on how they fail and what to look for and test methodologies but carbon fiber is still quite exotic in fact any car you've ever driven probably doesn't have much carbon fiber in it the only exceptions are really really high-end supercars or even in the case of Aviation more recently with the Boeing Dreamliner but before that we've always used aluminum and titanium and other materials like that so just generally there's less known about it and it's also really difficult to make sure that you get it right Ocean Gate signed a contract with Spencer Composites in January 2017 for the carbon composite cylinder this was the same company that built the composite pressure hole for the single person deep flight Challenger for Steve Fawcett after Fawcett passed away d-flight Challenger was acquired by Richard Branson's virgin Oceanic which had announced plans to conduct a series of five Dives to the deepest points of the ocean but deep flight refused to endorse the plan as the craft had been designed to dive only once this is important we'll get back to this in a second in a statement they said the problem is the strength of the deep flight Challenger does decrease after each dive its strongest on the first dive said Adam Wright the firm's president it was designed to set the record dive to the deep and then be retired as an exhibit in the Smithsonian this is a really crucial part because sometimes in engineering what it comes down to is the operational Lifetime and understanding it and this might have been at play here and by the way I try to go to oceangate.com
to get a little bit more information and I noticed that their site was taken down on June 22nd so after The Disappearance of the Titan in 2023 the University of Washington stated that APL their Applied Physics laboratory had no involvement in design engineering or testing of the Titan submersible a Boeing spokesperson also said that Boeing was not a partner on the Titan and did not design or build it a NASA spokesperson said the NASA's Marshall space flight center had a space act agreement with Ocean Gate but did not conduct testing and Manufacturing via its Workforce or facilities basically all of these Partnerships that they had are now being revealed that they were not really Partnerships this is a classic example of a company trying to get credibility by partnering with NASA how good does that sound but what exactly they did with NASA isn't really well understood it could have just been as simple as hey can we run out a little bit of space over in this corner of your facility this is probably the most infuriating for me as an engineer David Lockridge the Ocean Gate director of marine operations filed a quality control report in January 2018 stating that no non-destructive testing or ndi of the carbon fiber Hull had taken place to check for voids or delaminations in the carbon fiber layup that could compromise the whole strength ndi non-destructive investigation NDT non-destructive testing is a way of checking something to make sure that it's safe without actually breaking it apart because the really the best way to check if something is safe is to cut it in half break it and go yep it's safe but of course you've destroyed the product so NDT is something that Engineers lean on all the time to make sure things are safe and in the world of carbon fiber it's that much more difficult because carbon fiber doesn't Bend or yield or get grooves and cracks the way other materials do it requires a lot of information and insight lockbridge was told told that Ocean Gate would rely on the real-time acoustic monitoring system which he felt would not warn the crew of potential failure with sufficient time to safely abort the mission and Evacuate the day after he filed his report he was summoned to a meeting in which he was told the acrylic window that you look out of was only rated for 1300 meters because Ocean Gate would not fund the design of a window rated for 4 000 meters in that meeting he reiterated his concerns and added it he would refuse to allow crude testing without a whole scan Lockridge was dismissed from his position as a result Ocean Gate filed a lawsuit against Lockridge that June accusing him of improperly sharing proprietary Trade Secrets and fraudulently manufacturing a reason to get rid of him the suit was settled in November 2018 I'm sure it was all sealed off and we'll never know exactly what was agreed upon but that is absolutely terrifying during a human piloted descent on December 10 2018 Stockton Rush used the vertical thrusters to overcome unexpected positive buoyancy when descending past ten thousand feet these submersibles are like a balloon with air inside right so it's hard for them to dive and so they have different ways and ballast systems to be able to accomplish that but for whatever reason around 10 000 feet he had to use vertical thrusters to continue his descent and when this happened it caused interference with the communication systems between spinning propellers the disturbance in the wake of the water coming off those propellers and everything else they lost contact for one hour now Rush was thrilled to call himself the second person to solo dive to 13 000 feet after James Cameron but if that was me I would be terrified I would come back and figure out what on Earth happened with the comms and what can we do we change the frequency can we have a backup system can we have a tether whatever has to happen to never let that happen again and we know what happened again because of that report from the reporter after these tests were completed in January 2020 the hall the Titan began showing signs of cyclical fatigue and the craft was derated to 3 000 meters now the hull was repaired and again rated again for 4 000 meters of diving depth but by who and was everything done properly it's impossible to know I decided to make this video because I think we're at the precipice of a new age of exotic tourism and exploration between going to the space to go to the Moon low earth orbit or deep sea diving we're at the edge of seeing more of this wealthier people the people that were involved in this particular incident always want to have that next thing and so if we're gonna do this it's important to realize just how unsafe this can be unlike commercial Aviation there are no regulatory boards involved here this is International Water the company did have to register the parent vessel that takes people from Canada right so that had to be registered but what happens out in open Waters is not very highly regulated this is a really tough story for me because as an engineer I do love ambition I mean building your own vessel carbon fiber five inches thick it sounds cool but as an engineer I also realize how important safety measures and Protocols are Aviation is a perfect example if you ever hop on an airplane you cannot imagine how safe you are because of all the people involved from company members like Boeing and Airbus Personnel engineering test officials all the way to the FAA and other regulatory approval bodies that make sure every little thing is regulated and controlled there is none of that going on here one of the first things to realize about an implosion of the vessel is that there was probably not a lot of suffering the people probably just died instantly we mentioned how much weight you would feel at these depths and you would pretty much just get crushed so what probably what happened is they built a vessel which was in and of itself pretty impressive the carbon fiber layup the composite structure titanium this was an exotic craft and it had a viewing window to go see the Titanic these are things that human beings could not do before but the problem is every craft every vessel every engineering device has an operational lifetime now the way Engineers do this is by testing something and figuring out how many cycles can we hit this with before problems start to emerge and then they add a safety factor for example your car will work almost forever there's no pressure involved if just atmospheric pressures at sea level right now if it rusts and things that that could change the equation but your car is fine how about aircraft aircraft are pressurized and depressurized pressurized depressurized right and you can't really inspect every little nook and cranny it's what Engineers figured out because if we're going to build this out of aluminum if we're gonna build it from carbon fiber we have to do a test every thousand hours 500 hours whatever the case might be a complete overhaul where they tear down the wall panels and inspect and they'll actually get out and check for any cracks in other impurities and Imperfections because any crack or any little divot can be a stress concentration point where it'll start to impound and fail then finally they'll say at this many hours 20 000 flat hours whatever the number might be the aircraft is retired that doesn't mean it's going to fall apart but we know we we tested it for millions of hours and nothing bad will happen in this window and that is the operational window odds are a plane could probably fly for thousands of more flights after that but we don't want to do that that is the operational lifetime what was the operational lifetime of the Titan was it ever established they were not doing ndis or ndts non-destructive testing to see what was happening to the carbon fiber again carbon fiber is a mesh weave that is laid in alternating patterns and then glued up it is incredibly strong and Incredibly impressive as an engineering material but it's equally not as well studied we have a hundred years of history and experience with high strength steel and aluminum and other materials but this is a new frontier and that's why this is so important to cover New Frontiers are exciting they're sexy they're glamorous right heirs travel we're on the brink of space tourism where rich people can buy a ticket to go up and tour around the moon have a nice little catered lunch and come home whenever we have New Frontiers we have unknowns that's what makes it a frontier there's not a Playbook and when you have to build vessels able to withstand the pressures of the ocean's deep deep Waters there's a lot that is unknown and that's why we don't have commercial versions of this I think this vessel just had some sort of a crumple or some de Factor deformation something was happening over a couple of Cycles I mean they did successfully go down and come back three or you know three times and that fourth time they crumpled honestly I don't think any vessel that goes to the Mariana Trench or 12 000 feet in the Atlantic should have a life more than a couple of cycles and I think what they were trying to do I think Stockton Rush was trying to make these tickets affordable right now they started at 125 and dollars double that by the time these guys went on at 250 right 250 000 sounds like a ton of money the real price for this probably should have been a million dollars 1.5 that allows you to replace the vessel every so often or to Do complete disruptive testing to replace Parts there is a whole slew of things that have to happen but I think in the interest of trying to be affordable being on the ship yourself The Prestige of your reputation trying to build a brand trying to build a company they took all kinds of shortcuts and did things they do not understand and I'll be honest with you we know more about space than we do our deep oceans or the deep Earth these are just really really hard environments to get to this is tragic you know I was an optimist I was hoping that we would find them somewhere and that this would all kind of be a a Learning lesson without loss of life it didn't work out that way but in engineering we have to always learn from our mistakes if you're a believer in Freedom and you know these people took the risk they knew what they were doing I do agree with that I'm a believer of freedom and taking your own risk or taking your own choices but did they fully understand what this vessel was was it fully known were the risk really well known to them probably not so those are things that we can try to improve upon and maybe the next time somebody comes up with this idea to do deep ocean exploration there's better methodology in place and I would imagine it's going to get much more expensive all right that is a look if you thought this story was crazy check out this one next until next week I'm Ricky the stupid da Vinci
2023-06-26 11:28
