Further grim details linked to the doomed Titan vessel are emerging, with experts claiming that the materials used to build the submersible “simply didn’t work”.
The frantic search to recover the vessel was called off last week after four days when authorities were able to map the debris of the Titan about 1,600 feet from the Titanic wreck.
The submersible lost contact with the surface a short time after beginning its tourist expedition down to the wreck of the Titanic, prompting a rescue operation that involved the US Coast Guard and captured the attention of the world.
Sadly, that operation came to end last Thursday, after authorities came to the conclusion that the OceanGate vessel had imploded. Over the past few days, details have emerged focused around speculation as to what cause the catastrophe and what, if anything, could have been done to prevent it…
The world waited and prayed last week as the large-scale effort to recover the missing Titan submersible from the Atlantic Ocean stretched over the better part of four days.
Tragically, the outcome wasn’t the one anyone had hoped for. The five souls aboard the vessel were all killed when it reportedly imploded. An inquiry is now sure to be undertaken to get to the bottom of what caused the incident, but according to CNN, experts believe the design of the craft, the building materials involved, and CEO Stockton Rush and his company could all be to blame.
“This was a company that was already defying much of what we already know about submersible design,” Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer who has studied physiological requirements of survival underwater, told CNN.
She also noted that some of the vessel’s design materials “were already large red flags to people who have worked in this field.”
Meanwhile, filmmaker and Titanic expert James Cameron told ABC News that the Titan was probably attempting to resurface after realizing that there was a problem, and that the five passengers likely knew of an issue before the vessel imploded, killing them all.
Speaking on Thursday, Cameron said: “This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of the hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack.
“And I think, if that’s your idea of safety, then you’re doing it wrong.”
“They probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate and starting to crack,” Cameron went on.
“It’s our belief, we understand from inside the community, that they had dropped their ascent weights, and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.”
At the time of writing, it remains unclear whether the vessel made it to the Titanic wreck or not, and when exactly in its journey it imploded.
All of our thoughts are with the families of those who lost their lives on the Titan submersible. Rest in peace.
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