After a submarine accident that killed five: Coast Guard rescued debris from Titan

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The wreckage of the Titan was recovered after ten days. The US Coast Guard and Canadian ship Horizon Arctic brought the debris to the Port of St. Johns in Newfoundland.

The US Coast Guard has already announced that it will start an investigation. “The focus of the investigation is on recovering artifacts from the seafloor,” said Coast Guard lead investigator Jason Neubauer at a news conference on Sunday. The parts were recovered on Wednesday – and the evidence was secured.

The submarine imploded

On June 18, the submarine began its descent to the wreck. It was accompanied by the ship “Polar Prince”, which was in constant contact with the submarine. The descent actually takes about two hours, but after an hour and forty-five minutes the escort ship lost the signal. The passengers on board could no longer be reached.

There was a sad certainty on Thursday: the Titan had “imploded”. In an implosion, an object suddenly collapses because the external pressure is greater than the internal pressure. It’s kind of the opposite of an explosion. The five prisoners did not survive.

The five fatalities did not notice the implosion. “The passengers don’t even know what happened. If there was a leak, the implosion was instant,” researcher Steve Somlyody told Fox News.

“I broke rules”

Since the tragic incident, Ocean Gate has been heavily criticized. Apparently there were several warnings that it was not safe for the Titan to dive to 12,000 feet. For example, there would have been no safety certificates for the Titan. And that while the price per head cost $ 250,000.

Ocean Gate CEO Stockton Rush said in a video, “I broke some rules doing this.” He was one of the passengers who died. “I broke them with logic and good technique. There’s a rule that you don’t use carbon fiber and titanium together – and I did.” That may have been a big mistake.

Titanium construction problematic

The construction of the submarine was anything but ordinary. The Titan was operated with a game controller and had a porthole that was only certified to a depth of 1300 meters. And the material is also problematic. The pressure vessel was made of a mixture of titanium and carbon fibers. The expert explains that both materials have completely different properties. The carbon fiber is stiffer and less elastic than titanium.

According to Fusli, the combination of the different materials could have led to a so-called delamination, in which the individual reinforcement layers separate from each other. The result: an implosion of the entire container.

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Source: Blick