Inside the OceanGate Titan tragedy

catastrophic implosion the unthinkable became  all too real this past week as we learned of the   fate of undersea Explorer Stockton Rush's Titan  submersible on its way to the Atlantic grave of   the Titanic the questions the second guessing  David Pogue tells us are likely to continue   for a long time to come last summer a company  called OceanGate invited Sunday morning to join   an expedition to the Titanic at the time I was  thrilled next time I come out of this doorway   I'll either be a changed man forever or cursing  the bad weather as the whole world knows now   OceanGate's business was taking  Adventure Seekers on these Titanic Dives for $250 000 a ticket on a one-of-a-kind  carbon fiber submersible called the Titan   carbon fiber is a great material it's better  than titanium it's better than a lot of other   materials this is Stockton Rush the CEO of  OceanGate and the designer of the sub last   Sunday as he was piloting the sub to the Titanic  it imploded killing him and his four passengers   we spent nine days at Sea with Rush last  summer and in Wake of the tragic news we   thought you might like to see more of what we  saw and hear more of what Stockton Rush said   the Titan wasn't like any previous deep sea  submersible there was no dashboard just a   touchscreen computer and a single power  button we only have one button that's it   wait a minute I've seen submersibles and they are  banks of controls like like cockpit after exactly   this is to other submersibles what the iPhone  was to the Blackberry but many of its components   seemed surprisingly cheap for views outside the  sub he had installed store-bought security cameras   as for the ceiling lights I got  these from uh Camper World then   there was the steering unit we run the  whole thing with this game controller 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 everyone I know keeps  asking me the same question why would you get   on that dangerous sub well first of all Stockton  Rush had the credentials he majored in aerospace   engineering at Princeton he designed and flew his  own airplanes he designed previous submersibles   second he was emphatic that the important parts  of the Titan were Rock Solid like the carbon fiber   body for which NASA served as a consultant there  are certain things that you want to be 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  your thrusters can go your lights can go you're   still going to be safe third I was convinced by  an expert P.H. Nargeolet the veteran deep sea   explorer who also perished in the Titan over  the years he'd been to the Titanic more than   just about anyone how many times have you been  uh with the last dive 37th time you've been to   the Titanic 37 times yes I was in charge of one  two three four five five sub how different is the   Titan from those other subs completely different  most of them you have a sphere was there never   a point when you wondered about the safety of the  sub at that depth no two or three years ago I had   a phone call with uh Stockton and he explained to  me that he was doing a lot of tests he showed me   some of the ways they were building the stuff  I said okay that's fine that's fine no problem   diving this I was also impressed by the subs seven  redundant systems for returning to the surface   these are roll weights we can actually roll this  up and those come off that gains us some buoyancy   to come back to the surface okay these triple  weights we call them are hydraulically driven   Expedition manager Kyle Bingham underneath this  tray hang these bags we're around around 35 pounds   and those hang down there typical diet will have  eight of them we can also use our thrusters we   have enough power to thrust back up and  then under this last fairing here we have   our variable ballast tank our soft ballast  it's an air bladder that we use a big 10   000 psi air tank that's under the tail to fill  that up fill it with air and then it helps bring   us to the surface there were even sandbags  that detach automatically after about 16   hours even if everyone inside had passed out  their connectors would dissolve in seawater   so you have a backup of a backup of a backup  of a backup of a backup correct [Music] finally the crew seems to foster a culture  of safety there were checklists inspections   before and after every dive and a three strikes  rule if three things seemed out of the ordinary   no matter how minor they'd cancel the dive  I learned that the hard way on our own dive   we're in the water we're floating at this  point divers are supposed to detach the   sub from its launch platform so apparently  those floats there came off the platform   that wasn't supposed to happen so we're  scrubbing yeah yeah it up here copy that   I never did see the Titanic and I wasn't  unusual in OceanGate's first two summers   of Titanic operations it spent a total of 50 days  floating above the Shipwreck site but because of   waves bad weather and malfunctions the Titan  actually made it to the Titanic only 12 times   but through it all Stockton Rush defended his  unconventional approach I mean anything when   you're trying something outside the box people  inside the Box think you're nuts same thing   when Elon Musk was doing SpaceX Inside the Box  everything's scary but as early as 2018 there was   concern about the Titans design a former employee  says that when he raised safety concerns Rush   fired him that same year a group of submersible  Engineers urged rush to seek certification of the   Titan by a safety agency Rush declined saying that  regulation would stifle Innovation at some point   safety just is pure waste I mean if you just want  to be safe don't get out of bed don't get in your   car don't do anything at some point you're going  to take some risk and it really is a risk reward   question I said I think I can do this just as  safely by breaking the rules so Captain McLaren   um have you spent much time in submarines David  my total time under the water divorced from the   outside atmosphere is a little over five and  three quarters years no kidding fact retired   U.S Navy submarine Captain Alfred McLaren  is not impressed by ocean Gates Innovations   I mean would you fly in an airplane that somebody  excitedly tell you well it's going to be a lot   cheaper because we found a new way of attaching  the wings yeah right he theorizes that the Titan   failed not because it was made of carbon fiber but  because it was made of three dissimilar materials   carbon fiber titanium and plexiglass for the  porthole when you have different materials   different molecular structure they have different  coefficients of expansion and compression   and you then you make repeated Cycles in depth  of course you're going to work that seal loose   and that's why submarines don't run around with  any portholes at all come to think of it it's a   weak point I think there's a great almost  surreal irony here which is Titanic sank   because the captain took it full steam into  a an ice field at night on a moonless night   with very poor visibility uh after he had been  repeatedly worn by telegram by Marconi-gram in   an interview with Anderson Cooper filmmaker and  Veteran Titanic diver James Cameron pointed out   a sad parallel between Stockton rush and the  captain of the Titanic the arrogance and the   hubris that sent that ship to its Doom is exactly  the same thing that sent those people in that that   sub to their fate the world Mourns the loss of  Stockton Rush P.H. Nargeolet and their three   passengers British billionaire Hamish Harding  Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his   son Suleman already there's talk of restrictions  and regulations and lawsuits will the OceanGate   disaster mean fewer people going adventuring  well every year people do die skydiving and   scuba diving and climbing Mount Everest tragic  every time and yet people still keep coming some   people just have that itch for them danger is the  point the risk of dying gives meaning to living   I think Stockton Rush was among them I wanted to  be sort of the Captain Kirk um I didn't want to   be the passenger in the back and I realized that  the ocean is is the universe that's where life is

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 2,362,277

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, OceanGate, Titan, submersible, Titanic, deep sea, exploration, Stockton Rush, P.H. Nargeolet

Id: 1eObme9OUr8

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 25 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/BouncingThings]

People at work laugh and taunt cause I wear glasses going into pallet trailers, and gloves while working.

They stop laughing when they get a splinter or shit in their eyes from lack of safety.

Safety should never be taken for granted or ignored. Rules/regulations were written for a reason.

[u/ikoihiroe]

The risk/reward for him was billion dollar contract in the oil gas industry

[u/ProfessionalHandle84]

Rush continues to shock me with his approach to safety. He wasn’t just reckless or greedy but rather something even deeper…just personally offended by and hateful of any mentions of safety, it seems. As if the mere mention of the word was enough to clear him out of a room. It’s absurd.

[u/Haalandderstrong]

Of all the videos and interviews I've watched in the past few days, this has to be the most jaw-dropping one for me.

[u/jimbo2128]

PH didn’t approve of the sub’s design so much, he approved and trusted Stockton, that was his deadly mistaken. Stockton was a huckster and been for a very long time.

[u/TmacHizzy]

Rush murdered Nargeolet

[u/The_Spectacle]

you know who else decided safety was a waste? I won't spoil it for you, but ask East Palestine, Ohio how they feel about it, LOL.