Sub-standard forward planning
RDODGY spec and no plan B. It became increasingly and horribly worrying this week that Titan, the mini-sub tragically lost with all hands during an ill-fated descent on the wreck of the Titanic, appeared unfit for purpose. What a horrible end to five shining lives, people who thought they were voyaging on a marvellous adventure in an incredible vessel.
But the image most of us had of a superbly-designed, wonderfully-engineered, futuristic diving machine has been comprehensively shattered. It’s claimed Titan was basically a knock-up job; a lashing together of bits and bobs in a make-do-and-mend design.
Take its ballast, intended to be jettisoned to allow the craft to rise back to the surface. Bits of old scaffolding, claimed previous passengers on the sub.And the steering controls? A cheap games console joystick. In other words, a child’s toy.
Unsurprisingly, a British man who initially signed up for a seat on Titan down to the wreck of Titanic, pulled out and demanded his deposit back. Chris Brown, 61, claims that when he learned about the steering mechanism – a modified Logitech gaming controller with twin thumbsticks and four brightlycoloured buttons – let alone the scaffolding-for-ballast, he had second thoughts and pulled out. A decision that may have saved his life.
He might never have signed up in the first place if he’d seen an online video of engineer Stockton Rush, whose OceanGate firm operates Titan’s dives two-and-a-half miles down to the Atlantic seabed. In the podcast, made last year, Rush can be seen airily talking about life essentially being a game of risk. “If you just wanna be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car... At some point, you just gotta take some risks,” he says, almost jauntily.
That philosophy may be true in a general sense, but when specifically applied to voyaging to a seabed fully two-and-a-half miles down, where water pressure is 400 times greater than on the surface? It sounds almost cavalier. Even nuclear submarines can’t descend to anything like those depths. Rush, of course, was one of the five men aboard his vessel’s last, fateful journey.
Then there’s the lack of any kind of plan B. No escape pod. No second mini-sub up on the mother ship that could come to its twin’s rescue if catastrophe struck. No cable and winch to lower into the depths and attach to the stricken craft, pulling it back up. This was a one-way trip. A warning of things to come may have been in the reported disclaimer Titan’s passengers were asked to sign, absolving the company of responsibility if they died on the expedition. Imagine being asked to sign that sort of contract when boarding a passenger jet. Would you fly with a carrier that demanded it?
This has been a ghastly week for all of us watching this horrific human drama unfold. But we must say our prayers for those who perished in the freezing blackness far, far below, amid the ghosts of the poor souls who went down on the Titanic over a century ago. Then, as now, it’s a fate almost beyond our comprehension.