He was right: Engineer who warned Stockton Rush about OceanGate talks to Nexus

it is a tragedy steeped in irony when the tourist vessel suffered a cat explosion there's never been an implosion of a deep sea submersible during a dive before ocean Gates shouldn't have been doing what it was doing I think that's pretty clear [Music] hello and welcome to the Nexus today we're taking a closer look at what happened to the Titan the submersible that imploded killing all five people on board this week we found out that the passengers were listening to music in their final moments we'll be hearing from Bart Kemper an engineer who warned Ocean Gate about the Titan back in 2018 but first let's find out more about Stockton Rush the man at the center of this unprecedented and tragic scandal hi my name is Stockton rush I'm the CEO and founder of Ocean Gate let's take a look at Titan almost exactly a year ago Stockton Rush showed off his sub to Canadian reporters it had already made a handful of trips down to the Titanic and Rush was in confident mood and it's meant for a 16 year old to throw it around and super durable we keep a couple of spares on board just in case this is the Titan now nothing more than debris recovered from the ocean floor among the wreckage the remains of the five people aboard its final voyage including two billionaires 58 year old Hamish Harding and 48 year old shazada dawood accompanied by his 19 year old son Suleiman whose mother had given him her place on the sub so it was supposed to be Shazad and I going down um and then I stepped back and gave this place to Suleiman because he really wanted to go also on board the 77 year old Explorer Paul Henry naguely and of course 61 year old Rush himself who was piloting the sub descended from two of America's founding fathers Richard Stockton and Benjamin Rush he had high ambitions his dream of becoming an astronaut perhaps even one of the first people on Mars was ended by his poor eyesight he turned his attention to the deep sea instead pioneering private ocean exploration a trip on board his Titan submersible would cost a quarter of a million dollars taking the super Ridge to the wreckage of the Titanic that was the supposedly unsinkable ship at the time the world's largest which hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage in 1912. the wreckage lies in a remote part of the North Atlantic around 700 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland Canada and about 2 000 kilometers from its ultimate destination New York clients take an eight-day trip setting sail from the Canadian Coast on a chartered support ship and from there depending on the weather four of the days would be used to dive to the Titanic the wreckage lies almost four kilometers below the surface well below the distance a person a military submarine or even a whale can dive to such a depth requires an incredibly well-designed machine to withstand the pressure a 380 times the pressure we experience on the surface equivalent to having the Eiffel Tower pressing down on it deep sea experts warned that Stockton Rush had avoided certifying the craft because of numerous flaws there are only 10 vehicles in the whole world that can go 4 000 meters or deeper and all of them are certified except the Titan the body was mostly made from carbon fiber Rush claimed he had bought it from Boeing at a big discount because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes something not recommended by experts including the Hollywood director James Cameron who is dived down to the Titanic wreckage 30 times in a self-designed sub so we always understood that this was the wrong material for submersible holes because with each pressure cycle you can have Progressive damage so it's it's quite Insidious because you may have a number of successful Dives which is what happened here and then have it fail later and the nose cone was made from titanium despite expert advice not to mix the two materials I'd like to be remembered as an innovator um I think it was General MacArthur said you remembered for the rules you break and you know I've broken some rules to make this I think I've broken them with with logic and good engineering behind me the carbon fiber and titanium there's a rule you don't do that well I did according to a former employee who sued the company the single window in the craft was only rated to 1 300 meters around a third of the depth necessary to reach the Shipwreck passengers were locked in by 18 bolts hand tightened by someone on the outside of the vehicle seems like a lot of the way you made this is by taking off-the-shelf parts and sort of macgyvering them together yeah pretty much does that not raise anybody's eyebrows in the industry oh yeah oh yeah yeah no I'm definitely an outlier there were a lot of rules out there that didn't make engineering sense to me there's certain things that you want to be uh buttoned down and that's the pressure vessels once the pressure vessel is you're certain it's not going to collapse on everybody everything else can fail Mr Rush had been warned his submarine was unsafe and could damage the reputation of the entire field of deep sea exploration five years ago in an email exchange with Rob McCallum a leading deep sea expert Mr Rush wrote that he had grown tired of Industry players who tried to use a safety argument to stop Innovation we have heard the baseless cries of you are going to kill someone way too often I take this as a serious personal insult Mr McCallum replied I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous Dynamic Ironically in your race to the Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry she is Unsinkable but Stockton Rush pressed on regardless ending in a tragedy we now know the story of all too well well earlier we spoke to John Copley an eminent marine biologist who 10 years ago descended 5 000 meters into the Caribbean Sea on a scientific Expedition that's considerably deeper than the Titanic we asked him how he would explain what happened to the Titan what happened to the Titan submersible is unprecedented and there's never before been a deep diving submersible that has included during a dive and these vehicles are not new okay the first vehicle that carried people into the deep ocean uh did so nearly a century ago in 1930 and over those many decades these kinds of vehicles have taken far more people into the depths of the Ocean than the number of people who've ever been into space and no vehicle has ever imploded before so it was a completely unprecedented incident the investigation that's being led by the coast guard will now have to establish or exactly what happened and there are certainly three areas that they will be investigating what was different about the Titan first of all is its shape so most of the vehicles that carry people into the deep ocean the part that carries the people is a sphere because that round shape means that the pressure is spread evenly around the hull which is the best shape for pressure but the Titan was different for the Titan they split the spear in half and inserted a tube in between the two halves to make more room for more people because most of these vehicles only carry two or three people and to remain as a spear and carry more people the sphere has to get bigger and bigger and that makes it too big and too heavy to get on and off of a ship so the Titan had a different shape but that said there is one vehicle in history that had that kind of tube shape that did go to these depths but its home was made out of aluminum so as well as shape they'll also be investigating the materials that the hole was made of and that middle two tube of the Titan's Hull was made out of carbon fiber which has never been used before for the whole of a deep diving submersible so there'll be a lot of Investigation around what happened to that material and whether that was what failed but also the joins how the the different parts of the hull were joined together so you've got the two hemispheres made of titanium on either end you've got the carbon fiber tube the joins between them are really crucial with standing pressure and again the Titan was different because one of those joins effectively had to be opened up on the front end every time just to get people in and out normally there's a separate hatch for people to go in and out of these vehicles so again the design was different so all those places where the design was different will be what the the teams will be investigating to understand why it imploded because that has never happened before well let's bring in our panel now and we have Bart Kemper with us he's a sub Marine engineer who warned Ocean Gate years ago that the design of the Titan was seriously flawed we also have the submarine recovery expert Frank Owen and finally we have the maritime geophysicist Rob lato welcome to all of you about Kemper if I may start with you you co-wrote a letter along with the Marine technology Society to Stockton Rush five years ago stating that you and the others were worried that ocean Gate's experimental approach could lead to catastrophic outcomes with serious consequences for the entire industry what was it at the time five years ago now that worried you and your your fellow experts from the Marine technology Society well the primary thing was that Ocean Gate decided not to go with codes and standards to not go with classification societies this is the due diligence that we expect the standard of care all these codes and standards that have been developed for submersibles has been done with decades and Decades of experience classification societies have trained Engineers that work with the client and get and get their designs validated even if there's novel items so that's when you don't do that then all you have is self-certification and self-certification in any engineering Endeavor is questionable at best and if you are putting people's lives at risk is unacceptable you have you have to do something beyond that and what happened to the letter well the issue with the letter was that the Marine technology Society is just that a technology Society much like American society mechanical engineers or any other things if they start getting into trying to regulate how businesses operate they run a file in the United States with antitrust laws you can't operate that way however the act of the will Conan who was the chairman bringing these people together and having these very pointed discussions when when the letter did not go forward resulted in will Conan and other individuals going to have a face-to-face with Ocean Gate and trying to resolve some issues some issues they they understood they agreed with okay and they changed how they're operating once they did not I'll get to that in a second but why wasn't the letter actually delivered to Stockton rush and Ocean Gate because it was on Marine technology Society letterhead and that organization cannot because of antitrust laws and other issues with that they cannot get in and try to regulate how businesses operate so it was outside their Charter and could have been a source of legal problems okay so they they changed their mind and they decided to have a face-to-face some members went to see Stockton Rush how did that meeting go down the way the meeting worked out is they agreed to some things they agreed to make the waiver much more explicit to make it very clear this is not a tourist sub there are tourist Subs this is not a tour of sub this is an experimental similar to the FAA experimental aircraft where you get into it you use it with with assuming full risk that it has uh that that is just exactly what it says experimental so that that part was changed and they made it more clean their advertising they made it more clear in their agreements and they changed their their way of operating instead of saying passengers that they were going to have people who would come on as Mission Specialists and be trained to do specific tasks for that dive Mission ultimately they they didn't change the design of Titan enough to prevent the implosion that's Apparent at this time as it's been said by others there's ongoing investigations right now with multiple jurisdictions multiple nations are involved okay let's talk about the the likely cause of the implosion then which the investigation uh is looking into um David Lockridge ocean Gates former director of marine operations he warned that the Titan was not safe and he particularly looked at or rather pointed out the the window and and said that the window was not certified to go to those depths of four thousand meters perhaps it could only go to say you know half that or perhaps less um if I may ask Bart what is your suspicion what went wrong what was the weak point of the vessel there were multiple weak points one of which is the window the window is always an issue because they're made out of acrylic acrylic as a material is just what it sounds like acrylic it sounds like what we use every day it's much weaker than steel much weaker than titanium however it is used in submarines that go to the deepest parts of the ocean it's all about the design for that window so if they did not design it per the correct codes and they exist and they've been proven then they're doing something that that is has is is has too much risk has uncertainty the other one which has come up a lot is the interface between the titanium and the uh the cylinder the cylinder is made out of carbon fiber that interface which is glued is is one is is a way to do it but it's not considered the best way to do things like that um it doesn't mean it was wrong inherently as if things would have been fully tested and proven out and there's there are processes for this verification and validation is a very specific methodology where you same thing that's used in a space program same thing that's used in medical devices the verification and validation methodology is is a way to look at novel items and get them through class or some other jurisdiction none of that was used and that again goes back to Why without knowledge of the specifics of the design so many people including myself said there's this is wrong I mean just the fact that you are ignoring the wealth of work that's been done over over decades to develop codes and standards and you decide they're too conservative or this is not the right methodology that that raised the flags let's stay with certification and Franco and you you were actually involved in certifying another of ocean Gates uh submersibles the antipodes uh tell us about the process of certifying it and why they would allow you to certify that one but not not Titan uh well it wasn't owned by Ocean Gate at that stage it was owned by a small company in Southern New Zealand out of otago and the New Zealand Maritime Safety Authority and required that not only did it was it um materially certified and I wasn't involved in the material certification of it but I was involved in auditing the safety case um because it was going to take some uh fee paying tourists to the bottom it's worth noting that of course it was operating in within the jurisdiction of um of a a nation and uh Stockton Rush was very deliberately according to the article I've recently read about in The New York Times um deliberately operating in uh on the high seas or under the high seas outside of the jurisdiction of any country so why do you think that Stockton Rush was avoiding having the Titan certified he had a well he's quite publicly had said that uh Innovation was the key to this and he was taking an Innovative approach um and he didn't want to be bogged down by the time wasting and that it would take them so many years to get their heads around the material he was using and the concepts he was he was on he was implementing um to make so as to make this uh not worthwhile so time was an issue but also money is it an expensive business to have a vessel certified oh it is expensive there's no question of that it takes a lot of people a lot of time but um I I was involved also in the certification of Remora um uh it was a remotely operated rescue vehicle um going nowhere near the depths of this um activity but that vehicle was designed built and certified within 23 weeks and it had never been done before to have a remotely operated vehicle as a submarine rescue vehicle but we've talked about the typhoon but let's talk about Stockton rush you know the the owner co-founder of Ocean Gate you met him on a number of occasions um would you say he was egotistical or Cavalier and then I'm in a very social situation amongst the submarine Community uh at underwater intervention it's an annual conference and he was a Charming person it was I was I only had passing social contact with him I didn't get more involved with the situation with Ocean Gate until 2017-2018 and I wasn't talking I wasn't meeting with him at that time but I did meet him at other times he's a Charming entrepreneur type person not unlike other people in the business and in other businesses I mean we heard about David uh Lockridge earlier and we've just seen this email across our desks it says from from David Lockridge I'm so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego it's a small community as you say is there a lot of competition in the community not not there's no I mean there's no real competition to to to kill yourself and there's no real competition to to be the first to do things there is in the larger sense but everyone wants to go home everyone wants to do it safe it's worth noting there is nine or ten other submersibles that can reach the depth of the of the Titanic and everyone except Stockton's is done to class and my whole idea that go ahead and why do you think that is because it's the right way of doing things the argument no no I mean why do you think why do you think Stockton was happy and comfortable with being this strange sort of Maverick outsider I I really cannot I didn't know him that well he was an entrepreneur I mean the thing is until until it imploded until it failed he on the surface he was doing he was he was succeeding he was moving out his dream he was he had multiple Dives in the submersible where people said it was unsafe and he says I've done multiple Dives what more do you want so until until it went bad it on the surface unless you had Insider knowledge or unless you can look at things as a technical person and have concerns just by eyeballing it it he he seemed like any other out um Charming entrepreneur and he believed in what he did bottom line he went down and he believed in it so this was not a case where he was well that's trying to sell something well that's true you have someone else take the risk yes other people have made the comment that he did believe so much in in his technology that he was willing to go down with it I mean in your letter it does say that his claims that Titan would meet or exceed safety standards were misleading to the public and breached the industry-wide professional code of conduct so you were certainly ringing the alarm Bell back in 2018. Rob Blaster if I can just turn to your expertise I understand you've been somewhat dragged into the media coverage of this story uh because you have very specific uh skills uh in seismic and acoustic work can you just explain how you were invited by various media organizations to participate in the analysis of this situation so I I initially responded to a call from the science Media Center in the UK when it was being reported that Sans had been heard from that might come from the submersible and they were simply asking how could these sounds be detected and would you be able to locate the source of them so I said yes absolutely you would if you could record them as enough enough locations and you if you had an object somewhere in the mid-water column you'd be able to locate its depth by a ghost echo which would be reflected off the seafloor or off the sea surface but it turned out that those sounds were either just rumors or certainly misleading they had nothing to do with the Titan absolutely it was it was a rumor uh that yeah with spurious and the mysterious thing to me now is that once the once the debris was found the U.S Coast Guard then said oh yes we are acoustic Network detected allowed bang at the at the time that communication was lost and uh I wonder why this information was not distributed more widely at an earlier stage well it's a very important point isn't it because the implosion happened one hour and 45 minutes into the dive which is when Communications was lost and had the U.S Coast Guard you know reported that it is detected a sound that was consistent with an implosion then countries and private companies may not have uh mobilized in the enormous way they did yes I'm sorry I think I said I said the US Coast Guard it was the U.S Navy that said they detected it but they say they passed that information to the Coast Guard but it clearly went no further and yes I think the the third parties who mobilize ships and very valuable assets will probably be asking why they weren't told this Frank Owen as a recovery expert yourself I can see you nodding along to that point it was a big exercise wasn't it it was um but if I was to put myself in the shoes of the US Navy um I would be saying yes we heard an anole we we did not we don't we can't be sure that it was actually the implosion sure that times were coincident with the loss of communication but until there's some physical um or visual confirmation of the um the wreck of this I um submersible then you need to keep searching because there's uh there's no one with thank you if at the end of 96 hours you suddenly discovered that the submersal was floating just below the surface and could have been found had um had the forces been looking for it um the other the other point is that it was going to take that time anyway to mobilize these deep deep diving rovs that could get down there they not only had to get to some John's but they then had to mobilize to the ship and then sail a day and a half or so to get out to the wreck of the Titanic about one last quick question for you in your letter uh you warned stopped and rushed that he could damage the entire industry which had a very enviable safety record until now has he done that it's too soon to tell however the narrative did change from the beginning where they were calling this a tourist sub and then changed it to an experimental sub that hopefully has educated the public that this was not the same as the tour of Subs that operate safely for decades in various parts of the world so that's one aspect and the other thing is there has been a proliferation on smaller Subs in the last two decades that has been used not just for tourism but also for research and that also has been part of the safety record uh again we're hoping that the the the broadcast which is this that it's going into details helps people see the difference between the designs and the process that gets them certified bot camper Franco in and Rob Lata thank you all very much for your contribution to the Nexus today and thank you at home on your phones for watching if you want to see this episode or any of our previous episodes to go to our Channel on YouTube just type in Nexus trt well until next week then goodbye foreign

Channel: Nexus

Views: 1,587,547

Keywords:

Id: SFUdeEvRIWg

Length: 26min 43sec (1603 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 07 2023