'Titan' Netflix Documentary Examines Events Leading To OceanGate's Doomed Expedition (netflix.com) 62
Longtime Slashdot reader UnknowingFool writes: A new documentary released last week on Netflix goes into detail about events leading up to the destruction of OceanGate's submersible, Titan that imploded on June 18, 2023 while attempting to visit the wreckage of the RMS Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland. The Titan used a carbon-fiber hull instead of more traditional materials like steel or titanium. "Through exclusive access to whistleblower testimony, pivotal audio recordings, and footage from the company's early days, the film provides an unprecedented look at the technical challenges, moral dilemmas, and shockingly poor decisions that culminated in the catastrophic expedition," explains Netflix in an article.
Some highlights:
- Titan's original carbon-fiber hull had been replaced with a second carbon-fiber one after the first one developed noticeable cracks.
- Three scale models of the second hull failed tests. OceanGate decided to manufacture the second hull regardless of these failures.
- Loud pops were heard in many dives; CEO Stockton Rush dismissed these as "seasoning".
- Many employees raised numerous safety concerns. They were fired like lead pilot and head of marine operations, David Lochridge. Or they quit.
- Some employees like Emily Hammermeister wanted to quit earlier, but external conditions like the COVID pandemic made it difficult. After the scale models failed, she refused to bolt anyone in the future submersible. She was given the two options of being fired or quit; she quit in the middle of the pandemic.
- Rush's blindness to inconvenient facts: After the crack was discovered, Rush questioned Director of Engineering, Tony Nissen, about why Nissen did not anticipate the possibility of a crack. Nissen: "I wrote you a report that showed you it was there." Nissen had warned repeatedly that the hull's fibers were breaking (the pops) with each dive. Rush: "Well, one of us has to go."
- Poor decisions by Rush extended beyond engineering decisions. After Rush fired Lochridge for raising safety concerns , Rush wanted Bonnie Carl, the company's accountant, to be his replacement pilot. While Carl was an experienced scuba diver, she quit as she was extremely uncomfortable being a pilot. Her explanation: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant."
Some highlights:
- Titan's original carbon-fiber hull had been replaced with a second carbon-fiber one after the first one developed noticeable cracks.
- Three scale models of the second hull failed tests. OceanGate decided to manufacture the second hull regardless of these failures.
- Loud pops were heard in many dives; CEO Stockton Rush dismissed these as "seasoning".
- Many employees raised numerous safety concerns. They were fired like lead pilot and head of marine operations, David Lochridge. Or they quit.
- Some employees like Emily Hammermeister wanted to quit earlier, but external conditions like the COVID pandemic made it difficult. After the scale models failed, she refused to bolt anyone in the future submersible. She was given the two options of being fired or quit; she quit in the middle of the pandemic.
- Rush's blindness to inconvenient facts: After the crack was discovered, Rush questioned Director of Engineering, Tony Nissen, about why Nissen did not anticipate the possibility of a crack. Nissen: "I wrote you a report that showed you it was there." Nissen had warned repeatedly that the hull's fibers were breaking (the pops) with each dive. Rush: "Well, one of us has to go."
- Poor decisions by Rush extended beyond engineering decisions. After Rush fired Lochridge for raising safety concerns , Rush wanted Bonnie Carl, the company's accountant, to be his replacement pilot. While Carl was an experienced scuba diver, she quit as she was extremely uncomfortable being a pilot. Her explanation: "Are you nuts? I'm an accountant."
Evenfs (Score:1)
Event 1: Dumbassds
Event 2: Dumbasses did!
Poor decisions? (Score:2)
Yes. But shocking? Not really. There were ample warnings and nobody that did any real research would have ever used that sub unless they were suicidal.
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There were ample warnings and nobody that did any real research would have ever used that sub unless they were suicidal.
The best thing that came out of it besides nano-chum was conclusive proof that billionaires aren't any smarter than the rest of us.
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Indeed. Not that this is a surprise.
Re:Poor decisions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Billionaires might not be smarter, but it would seem they're well up above average when it comes to arrogance.
Re: Poor decisions? (Score:2)
Why do you have such a hate-on for anybody who you believe might have a bigger dick than you?
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Rush was worse than a know-it-all. He appears to have genuinely believed that he could bend the universe to his will, through strength of belief and force of will.
Many of technological snake-oil salesmen know that they're peddling hot garbage, they haven't bought their own sales pitch. Rush truly believed.
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Rush was worse than a know-it-all. He appears to have genuinely believed that he could bend the universe to his will, through strength of belief and force of will.
Many of technological snake-oil salesmen know that they're peddling hot garbage, they haven't bought their own sales pitch. Rush truly believed.
It seems to be a sort of evolution for a lot of the tech elite. It starts with making money on something they know is bunk. They keep preaching the belief in the bunk, become surrounded, or enforce surrounding themselves with people who literally worship the bunk, and quite likely also worship the bunk peddler, until one day somewhere down the line, they begin to believe the bunk is actually gold, and that everything they touch, think, or believe is also gold. And that ultimately, they are in fact the gods
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Musk hasn't ever taken his own rockets into space.
Don't get me wrong, this is not a defense of him, I'm only pointing out that if he had gone fully down the road that Rush did, he would have been getting into a capsule and blasting off.
Re:Poor decisions? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Poor decisions? (Score:2)
Carbon fiber is great at tension, but not great at compression.
Mix it with metal pieces that have different properties and behavior under pressure and you'll end up with problems.
Re: Poor decisions? (Score:2)
Not at all.
https://www.designnews.com/ind... [designnews.com]
The problem with the sub was neither the overall design (save for the 5" hull in a 3" channel) nor the materials, rather it was the construction and the handling that were both REALLY bad. And the lack of proper testing is why they went ahead with it anyways. Not to mention their early warning system, despite being unproven, showed obvious red flags that they ignored. The 80th dive is when the hull had been severely compromised, and the data proved it. It could ha
Re: Poor decisions? (Score:2)
There were ample warnings and nobody that did any real research would have ever used that sub unless they were suicidal.
I don't believe that's accurate. Oceangate withheld a lot of information from the public and blatantly lied to their customers repeatedly while misleading about the condition of the sub.
The main objections of the outside experts was that they refused to have the sub classed while using an unproven design. They didn't even know how poorly constructed it was, or that Stockton Rush blatantly ignored the recommendations of both his outside consultants (without their knowledge) and his inside engineers.
Farkin Billionarios (Score:3)
If only they kept their FAFO constrained to their person and not everyone else.
do logitech controllers now have discalmers? (Score:2)
do Logitech controllers now have discalmers?
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Why?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Why?!
I truly find this story uninteresting after learning enough regarding decision making on the project.
The decision making was so poor they used a wireless controller as the only real controls.
They not only picked questionable materials to build it from, they picked questionable sources for that material, skipped doing any real testing of the material while ignoring legitimate concerns.
Pushing the limits is one thing, but so many of these decisions were just simply daft.
Hardwired controls with wireless for convenience; override the wireless in an emergency.
Check the sub before and after each launch, looking for material issues and documenting any changes. Not a cursory glance at it, but using equipment to actually scan the surface for defects as is used in related industries. (Ultrasonic, radio isotopes/xray, etc)
These two things alone would have increased the safety factor of this project immensely.
But ignoring them all? Boring. You made a coffin with a randomization factor
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The interesting part is the human psychology behind it, i.e. what causes (allegedly) intelligent people to perform a necessary test, and then simply ignore the results of that test when the results aren't what they had hoped for? Were they imagining that the ocean would just give them a pass because they had made an effort?
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Narcissistic personality disorder
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That type of behavior (ignoring inconvenient facts that fail to fit your desires or opinions) is so common that it's practically the norm for humanity. Someone who can look at the facts and accept a conclusion that will cost them money or social standing is a very rare bird indeed.
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It's a story that is news because the news made it news.
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It's a story that is news because the news made it news.
Our culture seems obsessed with worshipping the uber-rich. When they do good, we should all pat them on the head or worship at their altar. When they fuck up, we should lift them on high as martyrs sacrificed on the altar of their ego. It's rather banal, but apparently that's the age we live in.
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The story is genuinely fascinating not just because of the off-the-charts level of hubris displayed by Rush, but because "death by implosion" is a really weird way to die. It's very rare. And it happened on the dive to the Titanic, a vessel on which many others lost their lives. It's morbidly fascinating. If it had happened to a regular scientist on a bathysphere trip to the Mariana trench, it would be just another tragedy, albeit an odd one.
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These two things alone would have increased the safety factor of this project immensely.
If you watched the documentary, those two things would not have mattered. The hull was audibly weakening with each dive. One hull already developed cracks. They just made another hull without changing any thing.
From what I have learned elsewhere, OceanGate was not the first company to make a carbon fiber hull. DeepFlight Challenger [wikipedia.org] was originally made for businessman Steve Fossett. After he died in a plane crash, the project was put on hold. Virgin Oceanic later bought the submersible in 2011 for five dive
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Also the real kicker here is that none of this was new or groundbreaking, we know how the ocean works, we know how submarines work it is not particularly new and novel to build a submarine so the failures here were purely ignorance and arrogance to ignore all that data and likely engineer's input.
For a counter example I follow this gentleman on Youtube who is building a small submarine in his workshop: Guernsey Submarine [youtube.com]
And if you were worried like me at first this is not the first sub this fella has built.
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And maybe he could have been right if he actually cared about doing materials science but that's boring shit and takes too long amirite boys?
Like either do the job of bleeding edge R+D or build a solid and reliable human submersible because you want to go puttering around on the ocean floor but combining them... big ooof, results plainly seen here.
The same thing... (Score:2)
Revolving Door (Score:2)
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Causes of OceanGate destruction (Score:2)
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And if you do some digging you’ll see the stuff he used was from Boeing and also expired.
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OceanGate's submersible was made from multiple layers of carbon fibe. Unlike high-strength steel, this material develops microcracks through repeated compression-decompression cycles.
Also unlike steel, carbon fibre is typically only one-half to one-third as strong under compression as it is under tension.
This is just a guess, but I'd add that the extra layers needed to achieve the required thickness / strength also increase the likelihood of voids and other flaws which would be potential failure points.
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Exactly. It's not good for pressure vessels - especially negative pressure. I can see its use under pressure for limited-surface-area cases such as the hatches you mentioned, as well as for parts like brackets in which there are no voids.
I'm also wondering if it might be OK for a spherical submersible where the stresses are evenly distributed. But then, any hatches or windows would represent concentrated-stress points, so probably not. And come to think of it, making a carbon fibre sphere would probably nee
Move fast and break things (Score:2)
In software, a broken feature spawns an update. Under 400 bar, a broken hull kills you instantly.
Hubris (Score:4, Informative)
I watched the program and was struck at the hubris of Stockton Rush. His staff tried to warn him but he either fired them or they quit. Total denial, full speed ahead.
The footage of him in the submersible and listening to the sounds of the carbon fiber popping as it went deeper and deeper was wild to me. Stockton called it 'seasoning'. Granted this all in hind sight but the sound of carbon fiber failing should have been the audible clue to maybe step back and re-evaluate the design and implementation.
Anyways, at least the passengers didn't suffer when it finally failed. FWIU, death was instantaneous, so there is that upside.
Re:Hubris (Score:4, Funny)
Anyways, at least the passengers didn't suffer when it finally failed. FWIU, death was instantaneous, so there is that upside.
They didn't feel pain, which is good, but I would say that they almost certainly "suffered." They knew they were fucked for some period of time before they died, and they spent their last minutes sitting in their coffin in the dark two miles below the surface. I imagine the father/son duo had it particularly awful, with dad knowing that he killed his kid, and the kid knowing that his dad killed him. I wonder if they discussed that fact amongst themselves while waiting to die.
Feels like nothing new really? (Score:2)
Yes, I have to confess I let YouTube autoplay me in whatever echo chamber it wanted from clicking on two related videos. I eagerly watched the documentary as someone recommended it and couldn't find anything, ANYTHING new. I'm sure they might have this or that snippet or old picture or interview that was never presented before but nothing I could pinpoint, certainly nothing groundbreaking.
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Re: Poor decision making is so banal! Very boring (Score:1)
Is Stockton Rush's ghost in charge of Boeing safety? What caused the recent India crash, hubris?
We already knew (Score:2)
A suicidal man, who insisted to take others with him to Davy Jones' locker.
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A suicidal man, who insisted to take others with him to Davy Jones' locker.
I doubt if he was suicidal. Arrogant and stupid, certainly.
Who gets the documentary (Score:3)
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I feel sorry for the kid. Apparently he really, really didn't want any part of it, but didn't want to look like a wimp in front of his dad.
Criminal levels of stupidity and ignorance (Score:3)
The OceanGate disaster was a long time coming and the string of ignorant, stupid, neglectful and flat-out malicious decisions that lead there is a staggering and breathtaking example of dumbass dimwitts with way to powerful tools for their own (and others) good screwing up epic-style. And dying and taking others with them in the process.
The most absurd thing about this all is that mini-subs going to such depths is basically a solved problem a few times over. Even James Cameron who isn't even a sub engineer but has solid experience with this type of exploration stunt pitched in and noted that it might be a really dumb and dangerous idea to use composites for this sort of thing. As did many engineers and experts in the field. And just about any 10th-grader with some cursory interest in engineering could've told them too. Camerons bubble that he took down to the bottom of the mariana trench was thick solid acrylic glass, custom manufactured to handle the crushing pressure. Given, that depth was a completely different ballgame, but humanity has a solid fleet of subs that can go 4000m deep and building on that sort of know-how for a safe and solid tourist sub with room for rich people wanting some excitement would've been completely doable. And reasonably safe too.
This disaster was totally preventable. What a waste and what a shame.
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very short documentary then (Score:3)
From game controllers to spray-in truck bed liner (Score:2)
From game controllers to spray-in truck bed liner to hide the voids in the carbon fibre hull, it would be funny if it weren't so tragic.
Better watch out for too much 'seasoning' (Score:2)
It could kill you.
Management Ignores Experts, And... (Score:2)
Innovation by cutting corners and ignoring safety standards... isn't actually innovation at all. It's just greed and externalizing risk.
For once, management paid the price themselves instead of their employees.
Jacques Cousteau (Score:1)
For me, the point at which the documentary became unwatchable was at the filler, 40-year old TV doco footage of Jacques Cousteau. It's in a sub, it's undersea, but it felt lazy; I'd prefer to keep my memory of the iconic Jacques on TV a good one.