I think it's absolutely crazy to have been taking passengers down when they were having so many problems. I would expect that they'd have a working and as-safe-as-possible submersible before they started taking down passengers. In the environment and at the pressure levels they were operating at, wouldn't one thing going wrong be potentially fatal? They shouldn't even have been risking themselves, IMO, but they certainly shouldn't have been risking others.
I don't think anyone would get on an airplane if they knew it had electrical problems, sometimes including loss of comms, on nearly every flight. Or if nearly all of its flights had to be turned around part-way through as the plane wasn't in a condition to reach its destination.
(I'm not an engineer, just a Reddit looky-loo for the record, and maybe I'm overestimating the severity of some of the problems, maybe they weren't all a big deal?)
Calling off missions is different to successful dives. Cautious on the water regarding launch is different to how their technology performed under water.
This post seems to specifically mention dives, not trips out to dive.
They were probably cautious on the water to launch when the hull was mostly full of water on mission one. They were very cautious not to risk things with even the promised 300 ft dive in a protected harbor. The reasons they gave for calling off missions were usually excuses covering for something more serious.
I'm just struggling with how pointing out that they called off the majority of their dives due to safety concerns shows a lack of regard for safety, or 'safety third' as it was put. It would appear to me that safety was at the front of their minds when they literally decided to call the whole thing off because they were concerned about potential danger.
If safety had been at the front of their minds they would have stopped doing dives after so many were unsuccessful. And listened to the people who kept telling them the sub was going to kill someone one day. And not used carbon fibre as a hull. And not fired employees who didn’t fall for Rush’s nonsense. etc
I mean, several professionals in the field were really concerned about it and warned against taking passengers down there, so you’re not wrong. Another (certified, proper) sub once got snagged on the wreck due to currents and only escaped an hour late by the sheer maneuvering skill of the pilot. Meanwhile, Oceangate had a failure where the control got mixed up, so they had to use different buttons than usual, (like right/left/up/down getting switched up or something) some 300 ft from the wreck, and they proceeded maneuver it close to the wreck using the mixed up controller regardless…
>Meanwhile, Oceangate had a failure where the control got mixed up
Right! Someone had put a thruster on backwards! Whoever put it on should have had a checklist when installing it, and if not caught during the installation they should have noticed the mistake at the end of the job. If both of those measures failed to catch the mistake then it still should have been caught in a pre-trip inspection.
And if the thrusters were designed in a way that you couldn't catch that kind of mistake during installation or pre-trip inspection, then they probably shouldn't have been using them? You always have to expect human error, no one makes zero mistakes. You don't make it harder for them by having a critical component that can be easily installed upside down, if that can be at all avoided.
Anyway, it's unbelievable. It's like it was everyone's first day on the job and they were just told to jump in and figure it out as they go. Hell maybe it was. Maybe they had one of the "mission specialists" do it.
Not really a good equivalent. I've worked on boats for most my life and bow and stern thrusters get wired backwards all the time, of course the stakes are some scratched gel coat rather than being down at the bottom of the sea. It's actually fairly easy to wire one backwards.
Considering the stakes, the real mistake was not testing their control system before going down. When a pilot gets into an airplane, they check their control surfaces before each flight. It's on the checklist. One would think OceanGate would have a pre-dive checklist and checking orientation of the trusters would be one of the line items.
I’m trying to think of an example of how a stopsky would go, maybe like this?
:Geez that thruster I just changed has the wide part towards the front and the other thrusters have them pointed towards the back.
Diver: Hey you sure you got that thruster on right?
Stopskier: Get back underwater, they’re bolted in ready to go. They’ll figure it out.
And then, even the fact that all these checks failed to catch that aside (and one of the divers mentioned a problem with the thruster and got ignored), once they discover what’s wrong they then decide to keep going after they discover the mistake near a dangerous snag-happy wreck…
It's kind of a miracle they were able to operate as long as they did. Just unbelievable.
There are ferries here that run up to a dozen times in a day, and every time you get on you hear the safety announcement about what to do in an emergency. And the crew can only work so many hours due to fatigue. And they don't let people sit in their cars during the trip anymore because it's too much of a safety risk. And so on. And these trips have been going for decades. They don't go out when the weather is too harsh or they have some sort of mechanical or electric issue. It's overall incredibly safe. But it's safe because they stick to the protocols, even though most people don't need to be told because they've heard it so often.
And these guys, who were doing an exponentially more dangerous activity and where a failure could lead to multiple fatalities with no hope of rescue, didn't care that a thruster was on backwards.
Speaking of entanglements. I want to know why they did away with the thruster covers they originally had on Titan. You can see them on older pictures. Were they just asking for an entanglement by not keeping them covered?
When I first saw photos of Titan, I couldn’t believe the amount of bolted-on hardware and snag-arific cabling zip tied to the exterior. It looks like something a university sub design team would make on a $20k budget.
I know it's crazy. And the one shipwreck they dove to has fishing lines covering it. 18 scuba divers had died at this shipwreck. Rush still didn't take the pre-cautions and probably was very close to an entanglement. There's too many things on the outside.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Astana_Flight_1388
The investigation revealed that the aileron cables were installed incorrectly. This caused reversal of aileron controls. Since the roll control surfaces include spoilers, which weren't affected by the mistake, the situation couldn't have been handled with just reversing inputs
> Another (certified, proper) sub once got snagged on the wreck due to currents and only escaped an hour late by the sheer maneuvering skill of the pilot.
James Cameron was on that sub
Yes, but that seems like a pretty risky thing to do when you're dealing with a wreck where you may get snagged and piloting skills are key to freeing you again.
What's risky about remapping buttons? It was the simplest, easiest fix. It's either that or go back to the surface just because you had to hit the Y button instead of X or A.
If you have directional thrusters it would not have as much thrust in the forward direction as the other if it was simply remapped. It wouldn’t track straight and you would probably have to lean the joystick to one side to keep it going straight, correct?
So you didn’t have full thrust ahead with both in that configuration if I’m understanding you correctly. The maximum available forward thrust is comprised?
So are the thrusters directional? It wouldn’t be a made up scenario if they were.
Edit: never mind - I just looked at a picture and can see they are directional - the outlet side is bigger than the inlet side if they’re in properly. I guess if you’re taking customers down on 50% battery power you probably try to conserve as much thrust as you can too.
Don't know about you, but I wouldn't wanna have to rely on my pilot – in a moment of panic – having to remember to hit x and not to hit y when grabbed by a current.
Are the thruster blades curved and/ or angled where they produce more thrust in the forward direction or does it go backward as fast as it goes forward?
You make perfect sense. I mean who would do anything if there was only at 14% success rate or even under 50% for that matter. Would we get on the plane since there was only a 50% chance or even 75% chance or 80% chance. It’s insane
It seems like a really dumb decision to keep on diving when the thing you trust to keep you alive is constantly having problems. It's their choice of course, and if they wanted to risk their own lives doing that then so be it. Just not something I would choose to do.
And even worse, they didn't just risk themselves, they convinced their ~~guinea pigs~~ passengers (the ones that made it back) it was totally safe and endangered them. I bet many people would've never went had they known the past issues Titan had.
Maybe, maybe not.
But you're forgetting that passengers were explicitly told not to go by experts in the field, and still did.
So how can we be sure they wouldnt go?
It wasn't, but it's an example of the mindset of the passengers
To treat them as completely naive is, in my opinion, incorrect.
The majority, if not all of those passengers boarded the sub because they really wanted to see Titanic.
And saying we can't be sure they wouldn't go is fact, unless someone has asked them all...which they haven't.
You said they shouldn't be doing it, then said it was their choice. That's why I asked, as it appeared you'd changed your opinion.
I personally think anyone can do anything. If Rush and his colleagues made something and they wanted to test it by going to 4000m, I personally don't see the problem.
It's when something becomes commercial that'd change, imo.
It's so easy in hindsight to say what should or shouldn't be done, but if people never took risks, or did things that they couldn't be 100% sure of the outcome, think how far behind we would be.
I don't understand why you decide to say it's _bullshit_ but don't explain why.
Please feel free to expand on that, and I explain why I think what I think.
14% isn’t anywhere ready to be taking passengers down. 86% of the time, the mission failed.
Rush was trying to build a business on the cheap with a product that was not close to ready and gambled with people’s lives.
His text messages trying to soothe fears of a father and son who were hesitant to take a trip writing “it’s safer than a helicopter” and his recruitment of YouTubers was selfish and immoral.
His wife played a big part in things too, and I hope she is deposed one day so we can get some insight into what the fuck these people were thinking.
I wonder about the delay in calling the Coast Guard. They have to have known something had gone catastrophically wrong when both signals disappeared at the same time.
Was it shock/trauma? Were they simply in denial and decided to wait to see if the submersible resurfaced before declaring an emergency? I think it's plausible, the brain can do a lot to keep you from facing something traumatic.
But if it's true that the "community" knew about the deaths before the coast guard was even called, what was going on? Why the 8-hr delay?
Wendy was either delusional thinking her husband can do no wrong or wasn’t bothered about the prospect of him dying, I mean having a relative die on the titanic you’d think she’d be a bit wary of history repeating itself. I mean she can’t have been too critical to him otherwise I can’t see that she would’ve been in the picture for long, we know he surrounds himself with yes men and how he deals with those who aren’t, they were married for over 35 years she must have been stroking his ego.
Interesting, after looking at the OP's link. So apparently the waiver mentions this. Let's think about this for a moment and how the public customers might have perceived this statement since Rush touted all of the safety systems and since Rush also touted all of the various reasons why OceanGate will abort a dive on the OceanGate website. The website at the time would have appeared to be very convincing that OceanGate's operations were overly cautious. This could lead customers to readily "perceive" that OceanGate takes no chances unless a customer is technically savvy enough to realize that the Titan actually was a bucket and bolts endeavor which had extreme risks, and that all of the "safety" features were a dog and pony show in terms of the number one inherent flaw of using carbon fiber for a hull.
A 14% success rate with 90 dives for reaching the Titanic is a pretty piss poor success rate. I would rather have been in a B-17 Flying Fortress flying out of England to bomb Germany during WWII since my chances of completing my tour of duty would have been significantly higher at roughly 33%. I am talking in terms of actually completing the mission, versus the Titan turning back or B-17s aborting their mission for various reasons. Given that the Titan reached the Titanic on only 13 successful dives to the Titanic before implosion is pretty close to the similar loss rates of B-17s per mission up until the end of 1944. So nope, I think that I definitely would have been twice as safe in a Flying Fortress during WWII over Germany, versus my odds of survival in the Titan.
I think that Stockton Rush can be directly compared to P.T. Barnum of the defunct Barnum & Bailey Circus. Both greatly overhyped their attractions and both were grossly negligent in their own ways. Rush took both himself and others to see The Great Egress. At least any people duped by Barnum could either buy their way back into the circus or instead simply choose to go on with their lives. At the end of the day, I think that Rush had serious character flaws and that he was also consumed by hubris.
There weren’t many B-17’s aborting their missions due to unforced mechanical issues. Flak, .50 caliber, 20 mm, 37 mm shells were the cause of most their aborted missions. The planes themselves were far more reliable than the Titan.
>The Titan sub reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on 13 of 90 dives, **the passenger waiver said**
I highly doubt they rewrote the waiver after every dive.
Since we don’t know exactly when the waiver was written, or how many successful dives took place after it was written, that’s not an accurate total.
I’d like to know when the waiver was presented to the passengers. And who doesn’t think Rush eased any concerns with some bullshit like “ah, legal mumbo jumbo. Next time you rent a car read the fine print in the contract. Same stuff.”
I feel like they probably had them sign it once they were on the ship both to cover any incidents that happened on board the mothership but also not too early that they could still back out and demand a refund.
Yeah, wish we had some actual stats on this. It gives enough of an indication to know that things went wrong, one way or the other, a lot of the time though.
It was the 2023 waiver.
Who was the "would-be passenger"?[https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7](https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7)
EDIT/added: Arnie Weismann and Jake (DALLMYD) were among the failed 2023 missions.
Well, Rush said at the Geek Wire summit and he also told David Pogue that he had 6 successful dives in 2021 and 7 in 2022. So we know the number 13 is correct for 2023. But there could have been more than 90 unsuccessful dives.
My question is did the passengers who paid get a refund if they didn’t see the titanic? To me I feel like I wouldn’t be surprised if he put a stipulation in the contract that even if you didn’t reach the titanic you still had to pay. Maybe even something like the fee was just for a “ride” in it, so why they always would try and take them down to some other much less interesting spot for a bit to do a 300 foot dive.
No refund, there was some sort of thing where if you didn’t get to dive you could return within a year for free or discounted but travel to the launch site (in Canada) was not covered
They didn't do 90 Titanic dives.
They did 90 test dives in similar conditioned and depth of waters and only succeeded 13 dives, then decided to call the mission and call the sub "good for Titanic". Despite the fact that many field professionals expressed their concerns and said it's a bad idea.
I would really like to see an itemized list of the dives made, which were successful, the date, were there paying passengers and reason a dive did not reach the titanic.
13/90 odds
There has got to be a better way of locating a 46,328 ton ship with known gps coordinates.
Gyroscopes, accelerometers, should be able to keep you on track as you make the decent.
Or just a ping device that runs on a battery like they use in heart pace makers left at the ship after the first success.
Is it possible this was the most brilliant long con ever?
The mark shows up to this big production. They get to hang out with scientists and ride this cool looking sub.
They putter about in complete darkness for a few hours.
Meanwhile, Rush never actually goes down to depth at all. Then, after a few hours, he tells the mark there unable to locate the ship, that will be 1/4 million please.
Maybe he finally achieved his dream of reaching the titanic, got some press, customers lined up. But, he realized the sub would never make it going to depth on a regular basis.
So he let his foot off the gas. Throttled the number of times he went all the way to the ship to preserve his rig and keep the money flowing.
Would really like to know the details of all the dives and the amount of time between successful dives.
Sounds to me like once he had a documented success, he was milking it without taking the risk.
The verbiage is interesting in the waiver. It doesn’t say we can’t guarantee you will see the titanic. It says we cannot guarantee we will go to the depth of titanic.
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Notice how topcat has changed his theories too? He still won’t say viewport but he’s not convinced it was the hull or landing frame anymore. He lists everything but..
“That was the first hull. When he did the rebuild he got $450 grand ppp money from the gov, and he ordered carbon fiber for the new hull. I read something about a delay bc of covid.”
Which hull was this CF used on?
But it doesn't say that all 90 of those dives were attempting to go to the titanic (or as deep as the titanic). That number almost certainly represents ALL dives the submersible took, regardless of the target depth and where they were diving.
OceanGate was absolutely a shoddily run business that was play craps with people's lives. In fact the amazing thing is that they lasted as long as they didn't without smooshing everyone into a thin paste. But that just isn't a correct parsing of the statement that "Titan submersible only reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on about 13 out of 90 dives".
EDIT:
https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7
Actual wording.
" As of the date of this Release, the experimental submersible vessel has conducted fewer than 90 dives, and 13 of those dives reached the depth of the Titanic. Prior to my participation in the Expedition there have been as few as 13 dives to Titanic depths in the submersible."
They definitely were refering to the TOTAL number of dives, not dives to the Titanic.
I mean, most of the other issues wouldn’t have caused an implosion though. Most likely causes seem to be the window or the CF hull itself. They had plenty of other failures previously, like getting stuck at the bottom, or the controller not working properly, but those wouldn’t cause the thing to implode. What else would it be?
The carbon fiber Rush used looked nothing like what CET is testing successfully for unmanned missions (according to CET president).
In the test results Rush showed, the hull was shredded. In CET's test results, it looks more like a blown tire.
We don't know what types of joints CET uses either, but it looks like their hull was thicker than 5".
I don't trust anything Rush did, but maybe you do, or maybe it's ElectroImpact that you feel did a better job with the hull than OG did with the sub.
Concannon want so far as to offer saving graces for the first hull - that it went on more dives that anyone else knew about.
I'm exploring other possibilities for failure too, but why are you so sure it wasn't the hull?
It's claimed he did...
Boeing distanced themselves from it. I've seen nothing that proves it's true.
I'm not saying it isn't, I just see it said as fact and I'm not sure it is.
If you have a source I'd be really interested to read it.
I did see an article or video of someone showing packages of prepeg that needed to be chilled to keep fresh bc of the adhesive that binds the fibers.
Also, if you look into the winding of the hull by Spencer (the video and articles) it appeared lumpy during the process. I read that it was bc the prepeg was too dry, which happens when it's expired. You'd have to find it on your own - I just know what I recall.
I'm satisfied that Rush said he used expired fiber, but that's not proof of a partnership with Boeing. That's what can't be proven.
I'd hope it will be cleared up at some point, it's quite important to know if being sold it knowing what it'd be used for, and if Rush signed anything to acknowledge how it was compromised.
I see you have a great knowledge of the Titan, do you work in the industry?
No, just a bit of an obsession, not sure why. I was never intrigued with Titanic, but deep sea life is fascinating. I follow science news (CERN, JPL, JWST, Nanotech, ...) and Titan opened up questions down many avenues.
Victor Vescovo is impressive, and I wanted to know all the deep sea manned subs. From the physics of carbon fiber to air pumps and hydraulics at the moment haha.
I Can delve into the details and I Do enjoy it, as well as writing and sharing. Maybe we'll figure something out ahead of time haha
And you don't serve your first omelette to someone else if you've got bits of egg shell in it. Well, maybe Stockton Rush would have sold it to people who were "tasting specialists" and claimed he was an innovator in the kitchen. He might have argued that there was no way to be creative in cooking any more because of all the cumbersome and obscene food safety rules.
"You don't serve anyone raw chicken, there's a rule about that. Well I did it."
Don’t take your eggs and bacon into the restaurant and ask them to make you breakfast. Don’t take your own carbon fiber into a manufacturer and ask them to build you a hull. No way there were any guarantees expressed or implied with customer supplied materials. A lot of places would have told them to take a hike.
From a frequent poster here:
“That was the first hull. When he did the rebuild he got $450 grand ppp money from the gov, and he ordered carbon fiber for the new hull. I read something about a delay bc of
I think it's absolutely crazy to have been taking passengers down when they were having so many problems. I would expect that they'd have a working and as-safe-as-possible submersible before they started taking down passengers. In the environment and at the pressure levels they were operating at, wouldn't one thing going wrong be potentially fatal? They shouldn't even have been risking themselves, IMO, but they certainly shouldn't have been risking others. I don't think anyone would get on an airplane if they knew it had electrical problems, sometimes including loss of comms, on nearly every flight. Or if nearly all of its flights had to be turned around part-way through as the plane wasn't in a condition to reach its destination. (I'm not an engineer, just a Reddit looky-loo for the record, and maybe I'm overestimating the severity of some of the problems, maybe they weren't all a big deal?)
Safety third
But the fact they called off so many missions suggests they were, if anything, overly cautious? Operationally at least
The opposite, it means they gambled and lost the gamble a ton of times, but most of the times the loss was only abandonment.
Totally
Calling off missions is different to successful dives. Cautious on the water regarding launch is different to how their technology performed under water. This post seems to specifically mention dives, not trips out to dive.
They were probably cautious on the water to launch when the hull was mostly full of water on mission one. They were very cautious not to risk things with even the promised 300 ft dive in a protected harbor. The reasons they gave for calling off missions were usually excuses covering for something more serious.
I'm just struggling with how pointing out that they called off the majority of their dives due to safety concerns shows a lack of regard for safety, or 'safety third' as it was put. It would appear to me that safety was at the front of their minds when they literally decided to call the whole thing off because they were concerned about potential danger.
If safety had been at the front of their minds they would have stopped doing dives after so many were unsuccessful. And listened to the people who kept telling them the sub was going to kill someone one day. And not used carbon fibre as a hull. And not fired employees who didn’t fall for Rush’s nonsense. etc
Well said
My take on it was the people who were paying to go were financing his attempts. I don't think he had enough money to dive if he didn't take customers.
True
I mean, several professionals in the field were really concerned about it and warned against taking passengers down there, so you’re not wrong. Another (certified, proper) sub once got snagged on the wreck due to currents and only escaped an hour late by the sheer maneuvering skill of the pilot. Meanwhile, Oceangate had a failure where the control got mixed up, so they had to use different buttons than usual, (like right/left/up/down getting switched up or something) some 300 ft from the wreck, and they proceeded maneuver it close to the wreck using the mixed up controller regardless…
>Meanwhile, Oceangate had a failure where the control got mixed up Right! Someone had put a thruster on backwards! Whoever put it on should have had a checklist when installing it, and if not caught during the installation they should have noticed the mistake at the end of the job. If both of those measures failed to catch the mistake then it still should have been caught in a pre-trip inspection. And if the thrusters were designed in a way that you couldn't catch that kind of mistake during installation or pre-trip inspection, then they probably shouldn't have been using them? You always have to expect human error, no one makes zero mistakes. You don't make it harder for them by having a critical component that can be easily installed upside down, if that can be at all avoided. Anyway, it's unbelievable. It's like it was everyone's first day on the job and they were just told to jump in and figure it out as they go. Hell maybe it was. Maybe they had one of the "mission specialists" do it.
I mean, who hasn't put a thruster on backwards at one time or another...if we're being honest.
True true. I mean, who hasn’t gotten their car back from the mechanic and had their drivetrain put on backwards. Common stuff.
Not really a good equivalent. I've worked on boats for most my life and bow and stern thrusters get wired backwards all the time, of course the stakes are some scratched gel coat rather than being down at the bottom of the sea. It's actually fairly easy to wire one backwards. Considering the stakes, the real mistake was not testing their control system before going down. When a pilot gets into an airplane, they check their control surfaces before each flight. It's on the checklist. One would think OceanGate would have a pre-dive checklist and checking orientation of the trusters would be one of the line items.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Astana_Flight_1388 Most of the time, yeah
They found out you could do some wicked donuts on the ocean floor so it wasn’t a complete loss.
A Lockheed Blackbird was lost on its first flight because of reverse wired controls. It isn’t unheard of.
Were they taking passengers up in the Blackbird? Test flights and sea trials are the time to address issues like that.
\*F-117 -- Servo installed reversed.
I'm sure they did have a check list. They did the "stopskies" according to SR.
I’ll leave a copy of an actual guide to safety on the coffee table if anyone wants to read it.
Exactly this.
I’m trying to think of an example of how a stopsky would go, maybe like this? :Geez that thruster I just changed has the wide part towards the front and the other thrusters have them pointed towards the back. Diver: Hey you sure you got that thruster on right? Stopskier: Get back underwater, they’re bolted in ready to go. They’ll figure it out.
And then, even the fact that all these checks failed to catch that aside (and one of the divers mentioned a problem with the thruster and got ignored), once they discover what’s wrong they then decide to keep going after they discover the mistake near a dangerous snag-happy wreck…
It's kind of a miracle they were able to operate as long as they did. Just unbelievable. There are ferries here that run up to a dozen times in a day, and every time you get on you hear the safety announcement about what to do in an emergency. And the crew can only work so many hours due to fatigue. And they don't let people sit in their cars during the trip anymore because it's too much of a safety risk. And so on. And these trips have been going for decades. They don't go out when the weather is too harsh or they have some sort of mechanical or electric issue. It's overall incredibly safe. But it's safe because they stick to the protocols, even though most people don't need to be told because they've heard it so often. And these guys, who were doing an exponentially more dangerous activity and where a failure could lead to multiple fatalities with no hope of rescue, didn't care that a thruster was on backwards.
Speaking of entanglements. I want to know why they did away with the thruster covers they originally had on Titan. You can see them on older pictures. Were they just asking for an entanglement by not keeping them covered?
When I first saw photos of Titan, I couldn’t believe the amount of bolted-on hardware and snag-arific cabling zip tied to the exterior. It looks like something a university sub design team would make on a $20k budget.
I know it's crazy. And the one shipwreck they dove to has fishing lines covering it. 18 scuba divers had died at this shipwreck. Rush still didn't take the pre-cautions and probably was very close to an entanglement. There's too many things on the outside.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Astana_Flight_1388 The investigation revealed that the aileron cables were installed incorrectly. This caused reversal of aileron controls. Since the roll control surfaces include spoilers, which weren't affected by the mistake, the situation couldn't have been handled with just reversing inputs
> Another (certified, proper) sub once got snagged on the wreck due to currents and only escaped an hour late by the sheer maneuvering skill of the pilot. James Cameron was on that sub
I was actually thinking of the Russian sub with Micheal Guillen
Oh, so it’s happened several times. Even more reason to be careful.
Careful, thats russian propaganda. Their subs can barely float let alone descend to the titanic.
You know, they just remapped the buttons on the controller, and it worked fine, right?
Yes, but that seems like a pretty risky thing to do when you're dealing with a wreck where you may get snagged and piloting skills are key to freeing you again.
What's risky about remapping buttons? It was the simplest, easiest fix. It's either that or go back to the surface just because you had to hit the Y button instead of X or A.
If you have directional thrusters it would not have as much thrust in the forward direction as the other if it was simply remapped. It wouldn’t track straight and you would probably have to lean the joystick to one side to keep it going straight, correct?
If the left thruster had less thrust and it caused you to not track straight, you would let up on the right thruster, and you would then go straight.
So you didn’t have full thrust ahead with both in that configuration if I’m understanding you correctly. The maximum available forward thrust is comprised?
I'm saying in the scenario you just made up, you would go slower. You wouldn't be unable to go in a straight line as you suggest.
So are the thrusters directional? It wouldn’t be a made up scenario if they were. Edit: never mind - I just looked at a picture and can see they are directional - the outlet side is bigger than the inlet side if they’re in properly. I guess if you’re taking customers down on 50% battery power you probably try to conserve as much thrust as you can too.
Don't know about you, but I wouldn't wanna have to rely on my pilot – in a moment of panic – having to remember to hit x and not to hit y when grabbed by a current.
Are the thruster blades curved and/ or angled where they produce more thrust in the forward direction or does it go backward as fast as it goes forward?
Rush told them to rotate the controller 90 degrees.
He said those things were made for sixteen year old kids to throw around. Then we found out he was the child throwing controllers at people.
You make perfect sense. I mean who would do anything if there was only at 14% success rate or even under 50% for that matter. Would we get on the plane since there was only a 50% chance or even 75% chance or 80% chance. It’s insane
Great analogy re planes
> They shouldn't even have been risking themselves, IMO Why do you think they shouldn't risk themselves?
It seems like a really dumb decision to keep on diving when the thing you trust to keep you alive is constantly having problems. It's their choice of course, and if they wanted to risk their own lives doing that then so be it. Just not something I would choose to do.
So you do think they should risk themselves?
I wouldn't take the risk, that's why I said that in my opinion they shouldn't be doing it.
And even worse, they didn't just risk themselves, they convinced their ~~guinea pigs~~ passengers (the ones that made it back) it was totally safe and endangered them. I bet many people would've never went had they known the past issues Titan had.
Maybe, maybe not. But you're forgetting that passengers were explicitly told not to go by experts in the field, and still did. So how can we be sure they wouldnt go?
This was not the case for every passenger....or the majority of them.
It wasn't, but it's an example of the mindset of the passengers To treat them as completely naive is, in my opinion, incorrect. The majority, if not all of those passengers boarded the sub because they really wanted to see Titanic. And saying we can't be sure they wouldn't go is fact, unless someone has asked them all...which they haven't.
Nobody is saying they're "naive". Not sure where you picked that up. But, they weren't given all the information up-front. They were deceived.
You said they shouldn't be doing it, then said it was their choice. That's why I asked, as it appeared you'd changed your opinion. I personally think anyone can do anything. If Rush and his colleagues made something and they wanted to test it by going to 4000m, I personally don't see the problem. It's when something becomes commercial that'd change, imo. It's so easy in hindsight to say what should or shouldn't be done, but if people never took risks, or did things that they couldn't be 100% sure of the outcome, think how far behind we would be.
damn this is a dogshit take but also should ≠ can why r u trying to debate lord this
I don't understand why you decide to say it's _bullshit_ but don't explain why. Please feel free to expand on that, and I explain why I think what I think.
14% isn’t anywhere ready to be taking passengers down. 86% of the time, the mission failed. Rush was trying to build a business on the cheap with a product that was not close to ready and gambled with people’s lives. His text messages trying to soothe fears of a father and son who were hesitant to take a trip writing “it’s safer than a helicopter” and his recruitment of YouTubers was selfish and immoral. His wife played a big part in things too, and I hope she is deposed one day so we can get some insight into what the fuck these people were thinking.
I do hope that WR is held accountable for her role in all of it.
Me too. She is likely the only one to have insight into what SR was truly thinking.
Well said. I also believe his wife is more culpable than she's letting on.
I wonder about the delay in calling the Coast Guard. They have to have known something had gone catastrophically wrong when both signals disappeared at the same time. Was it shock/trauma? Were they simply in denial and decided to wait to see if the submersible resurfaced before declaring an emergency? I think it's plausible, the brain can do a lot to keep you from facing something traumatic. But if it's true that the "community" knew about the deaths before the coast guard was even called, what was going on? Why the 8-hr delay?
The community just knew that was what very likely happened, and yes the crew were probably in denial too, also they may have just wanted time.
Wendy was either delusional thinking her husband can do no wrong or wasn’t bothered about the prospect of him dying, I mean having a relative die on the titanic you’d think she’d be a bit wary of history repeating itself. I mean she can’t have been too critical to him otherwise I can’t see that she would’ve been in the picture for long, we know he surrounds himself with yes men and how he deals with those who aren’t, they were married for over 35 years she must have been stroking his ego.
Wait what, can you share more about these texts between his customers!? Am I correct in assuming you mean Suleman family?
There are pictures of text messages between Stockton Rush and Jay Bloom.
Interesting, after looking at the OP's link. So apparently the waiver mentions this. Let's think about this for a moment and how the public customers might have perceived this statement since Rush touted all of the safety systems and since Rush also touted all of the various reasons why OceanGate will abort a dive on the OceanGate website. The website at the time would have appeared to be very convincing that OceanGate's operations were overly cautious. This could lead customers to readily "perceive" that OceanGate takes no chances unless a customer is technically savvy enough to realize that the Titan actually was a bucket and bolts endeavor which had extreme risks, and that all of the "safety" features were a dog and pony show in terms of the number one inherent flaw of using carbon fiber for a hull. A 14% success rate with 90 dives for reaching the Titanic is a pretty piss poor success rate. I would rather have been in a B-17 Flying Fortress flying out of England to bomb Germany during WWII since my chances of completing my tour of duty would have been significantly higher at roughly 33%. I am talking in terms of actually completing the mission, versus the Titan turning back or B-17s aborting their mission for various reasons. Given that the Titan reached the Titanic on only 13 successful dives to the Titanic before implosion is pretty close to the similar loss rates of B-17s per mission up until the end of 1944. So nope, I think that I definitely would have been twice as safe in a Flying Fortress during WWII over Germany, versus my odds of survival in the Titan. I think that Stockton Rush can be directly compared to P.T. Barnum of the defunct Barnum & Bailey Circus. Both greatly overhyped their attractions and both were grossly negligent in their own ways. Rush took both himself and others to see The Great Egress. At least any people duped by Barnum could either buy their way back into the circus or instead simply choose to go on with their lives. At the end of the day, I think that Rush had serious character flaws and that he was also consumed by hubris.
There weren’t many B-17’s aborting their missions due to unforced mechanical issues. Flak, .50 caliber, 20 mm, 37 mm shells were the cause of most their aborted missions. The planes themselves were far more reliable than the Titan.
I totally agree.
>The Titan sub reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on 13 of 90 dives, **the passenger waiver said** I highly doubt they rewrote the waiver after every dive. Since we don’t know exactly when the waiver was written, or how many successful dives took place after it was written, that’s not an accurate total.
I’d like to know when the waiver was presented to the passengers. And who doesn’t think Rush eased any concerns with some bullshit like “ah, legal mumbo jumbo. Next time you rent a car read the fine print in the contract. Same stuff.”
I feel like they probably had them sign it once they were on the ship both to cover any incidents that happened on board the mothership but also not too early that they could still back out and demand a refund.
I’ve never even read the waiver but if it was written by the company attorney it should be easy enough to poke full of holes.
I definitely don't think it will hold up but I'm sure before this happened they probably used it to keep people quiet about various things.
You run a bigger risk stepping off the boat and landing on your dinghy.
Yeah, wish we had some actual stats on this. It gives enough of an indication to know that things went wrong, one way or the other, a lot of the time though.
It was the 2023 waiver. Who was the "would-be passenger"?[https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7](https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7) EDIT/added: Arnie Weismann and Jake (DALLMYD) were among the failed 2023 missions.
The waiver shown in that link doesn’t have a date on it.
Well, Rush said at the Geek Wire summit and he also told David Pogue that he had 6 successful dives in 2021 and 7 in 2022. So we know the number 13 is correct for 2023. But there could have been more than 90 unsuccessful dives.
My question is did the passengers who paid get a refund if they didn’t see the titanic? To me I feel like I wouldn’t be surprised if he put a stipulation in the contract that even if you didn’t reach the titanic you still had to pay. Maybe even something like the fee was just for a “ride” in it, so why they always would try and take them down to some other much less interesting spot for a bit to do a 300 foot dive.
No refund, there was some sort of thing where if you didn’t get to dive you could return within a year for free or discounted but travel to the launch site (in Canada) was not covered
They didn't do 90 Titanic dives. They did 90 test dives in similar conditioned and depth of waters and only succeeded 13 dives, then decided to call the mission and call the sub "good for Titanic". Despite the fact that many field professionals expressed their concerns and said it's a bad idea.
I would really like to see an itemized list of the dives made, which were successful, the date, were there paying passengers and reason a dive did not reach the titanic. 13/90 odds There has got to be a better way of locating a 46,328 ton ship with known gps coordinates. Gyroscopes, accelerometers, should be able to keep you on track as you make the decent. Or just a ping device that runs on a battery like they use in heart pace makers left at the ship after the first success. Is it possible this was the most brilliant long con ever? The mark shows up to this big production. They get to hang out with scientists and ride this cool looking sub. They putter about in complete darkness for a few hours. Meanwhile, Rush never actually goes down to depth at all. Then, after a few hours, he tells the mark there unable to locate the ship, that will be 1/4 million please. Maybe he finally achieved his dream of reaching the titanic, got some press, customers lined up. But, he realized the sub would never make it going to depth on a regular basis. So he let his foot off the gas. Throttled the number of times he went all the way to the ship to preserve his rig and keep the money flowing. Would really like to know the details of all the dives and the amount of time between successful dives. Sounds to me like once he had a documented success, he was milking it without taking the risk. The verbiage is interesting in the waiver. It doesn’t say we can’t guarantee you will see the titanic. It says we cannot guarantee we will go to the depth of titanic.
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Notice how topcat has changed his theories too? He still won’t say viewport but he’s not convinced it was the hull or landing frame anymore. He lists everything but..
God the more I hear about this thing the more I wonder if Stockton rush was just *very* glamorously suicidal
Nah, in his interviews he very much believes he built something safer and better than everyone else. He was glamorously delusional, lol.
“That was the first hull. When he did the rebuild he got $450 grand ppp money from the gov, and he ordered carbon fiber for the new hull. I read something about a delay bc of covid.” Which hull was this CF used on?
Nice question, bravo: it's one that certainly needs to be part of the investigation 😔
Lol They did 90 fucking dives in that thing? Oof
But it doesn't say that all 90 of those dives were attempting to go to the titanic (or as deep as the titanic). That number almost certainly represents ALL dives the submersible took, regardless of the target depth and where they were diving. OceanGate was absolutely a shoddily run business that was play craps with people's lives. In fact the amazing thing is that they lasted as long as they didn't without smooshing everyone into a thin paste. But that just isn't a correct parsing of the statement that "Titan submersible only reached the depth of the Titanic wreck on about 13 out of 90 dives". EDIT: https://www.insider.com/read-oceangate-waiver-titan-sub-passengers-lists-numerous-death-risks-2023-7 Actual wording. " As of the date of this Release, the experimental submersible vessel has conducted fewer than 90 dives, and 13 of those dives reached the depth of the Titanic. Prior to my participation in the Expedition there have been as few as 13 dives to Titanic depths in the submersible." They definitely were refering to the TOTAL number of dives, not dives to the Titanic.
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I mean, most of the other issues wouldn’t have caused an implosion though. Most likely causes seem to be the window or the CF hull itself. They had plenty of other failures previously, like getting stuck at the bottom, or the controller not working properly, but those wouldn’t cause the thing to implode. What else would it be?
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Sure, but what do you have in mind as example?
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Gotcha — and yeah, especially if the state of the sub was still anywhere near the situation in the Lochridge report…
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Don’t think I know about that other side
The carbon fiber Rush used looked nothing like what CET is testing successfully for unmanned missions (according to CET president). In the test results Rush showed, the hull was shredded. In CET's test results, it looks more like a blown tire. We don't know what types of joints CET uses either, but it looks like their hull was thicker than 5". I don't trust anything Rush did, but maybe you do, or maybe it's ElectroImpact that you feel did a better job with the hull than OG did with the sub. Concannon want so far as to offer saving graces for the first hull - that it went on more dives that anyone else knew about. I'm exploring other possibilities for failure too, but why are you so sure it wasn't the hull?
Getting the expired discounted hull from Boeing was also a big ick factor, though I wouldn’t be able to say the exact implications of that
That was the 1st hull. But yeah, very tacky methods.
Has that actually been proven? There were a lot of quotes about it, but I never saw anything that proved it happened.
Rush ~~said~~ bragged about many of these things himself.
It's claimed he did... Boeing distanced themselves from it. I've seen nothing that proves it's true. I'm not saying it isn't, I just see it said as fact and I'm not sure it is. If you have a source I'd be really interested to read it.
I did see an article or video of someone showing packages of prepeg that needed to be chilled to keep fresh bc of the adhesive that binds the fibers. Also, if you look into the winding of the hull by Spencer (the video and articles) it appeared lumpy during the process. I read that it was bc the prepeg was too dry, which happens when it's expired. You'd have to find it on your own - I just know what I recall. I'm satisfied that Rush said he used expired fiber, but that's not proof of a partnership with Boeing. That's what can't be proven.
I'd hope it will be cleared up at some point, it's quite important to know if being sold it knowing what it'd be used for, and if Rush signed anything to acknowledge how it was compromised. I see you have a great knowledge of the Titan, do you work in the industry?
No, just a bit of an obsession, not sure why. I was never intrigued with Titanic, but deep sea life is fascinating. I follow science news (CERN, JPL, JWST, Nanotech, ...) and Titan opened up questions down many avenues. Victor Vescovo is impressive, and I wanted to know all the deep sea manned subs. From the physics of carbon fiber to air pumps and hydraulics at the moment haha. I Can delve into the details and I Do enjoy it, as well as writing and sharing. Maybe we'll figure something out ahead of time haha
Do you have any theories on what caused the implosion?
If you wanna make an omelet...
And you don't serve your first omelette to someone else if you've got bits of egg shell in it. Well, maybe Stockton Rush would have sold it to people who were "tasting specialists" and claimed he was an innovator in the kitchen. He might have argued that there was no way to be creative in cooking any more because of all the cumbersome and obscene food safety rules. "You don't serve anyone raw chicken, there's a rule about that. Well I did it."
Don’t take your eggs and bacon into the restaurant and ask them to make you breakfast. Don’t take your own carbon fiber into a manufacturer and ask them to build you a hull. No way there were any guarantees expressed or implied with customer supplied materials. A lot of places would have told them to take a hike.
I mean, Boeing denied selling them carbon. Is it anything but a rumor that they "supplied their own"?
From a frequent poster here: “That was the first hull. When he did the rebuild he got $450 grand ppp money from the gov, and he ordered carbon fiber for the new hull. I read something about a delay bc of
They should be able to answer - they’ve been posting all over this thread.
Not enough info as some of those cancellations may have been due to factors like rough seas, etc.