Posted on 06/21/2023 7:36:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The saga of the Titan submersible, missing since Monday shortly after it launched to take tourists to see the wreck of the Titanic, is a story that may prove to be as tragic — and maddening — as the tale of the doomed ocean liner itself.
In 2018, experts inside and outside the company sounded alarms about the Titan submersible — most notably, that the craft wasn’t properly certified to dive to the depths necessary to reach the Titanic. OceanGate’s director of marine operations, David Lochridge, wrote a report saying the craft needed more testing, stressing “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths.”
Two months later, two dozen experts in the submersibles industry — deep sea explorers and oceanographers — sent a letter to OceanGate Expeditions chief executive Stockton Rush saying that the company’s refusal to get a “traditional assessment” could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission.
It should be noted that Mr. Rush is currently onboard the Titan — wherever it may be. A Canadian search plane picked up underwater noises in the search area.
Canadian P-3 aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area. As a result, ROV operations were relocated in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises. Those ROV searches have yielded negative results but continue. 1/2
— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 21, 2023
The report from Mr. Lochbridge was clear and specific in its warnings.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
Some widows are going to be even richer than they were before very soon.
L
You wouldn’t get me on a submersible that sounds like a political scandal.
FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/oceangate-titanic-missing-submersible.html
Mr. Lochridge reported in court records that he had urged the company to do so, but that he had been told that OceanGate was “unwilling to pay” for such an assessment. After getting Mr. Lochridge’s report, the company’s leaders held a tense meeting to discuss the situation, according to court documents filed by both sides. The documents came in a lawsuit that OceanGate filed against Mr. Lochridge in 2018, accusing him of sharing confidential information outside the company.
In the documents, Mr. Lochridge reported learning that the viewport that lets passengers see outside the craft was only certified to work in depths of up to 1,300 meters.
The debris field of the Titanic is sitting nearly 4,000 meters below the surface.
“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design,” lawyers for Mr. Lochridge wrote in a court filing.
“They’re dead Jim”..
If there is any good news in this, the implosion would have happened so fast no one would have felt a thing..
“Mr. Lochridge reported in court records that he had urged the company to do so, but that he had been told that OceanGate was “unwilling to pay” for such an assessment.”
They’re going to be paying for this assessment.
James Cameron is already working on a screenplay.
Yeah I see that all the ‘I told you so’ people have arrived just in time.
At this point it looks like the USN will get some real world training on picking up bodies from the ocean floor.
Hunter Biden probably owns a 20% share.
LOL! - does anyone see the hubris and self-jinxing here? Seriously, find a name, any name, for your submarine except one eerily similar to Titanic
Why should we waste taxpayer time and money collecting bodies off the ocean floor? Let the fools lie where they chose to be.
Throw the wreath and depart.
When I visit cemeteries I don’t walk on graves.
They better act fast. The scavengers are already at them.
“At this point it looks like the USN will get some real world training on picking up bodies from the ocean floor”.
I doubt if there would be much intact to pick up.
Do you have any idea what happens under the pressure of 12,000+ feet of water?
Unlikely unless their spouses had a lot of life insurance.
The participants signed releases out of their wazoo. Plus, the tour company very likely doesn't have any money. It has had no reliable source of revenue and will certainly have no source of revenue after this. It has likely heavily leveraged itself to support its research and development.
Furthermore, I'm guessing the company couldn't get liability insurance due to the significant risks involved. Even if it was able to get insurance, (i) the insurance company will argue, likely successfully, that it's not obligated to pay due to the releases signed by the participants, and (ii) the amount of coverage will likely be insignificant in the scheme of things.
Isn’t this a rescue mission, the idea being that the people are still alive????
I don't know. The passengers all had to sign a waiver that stated pretty clearly that the submersible was experimental, was not certified by any agency for safety, that there was potential risk of injury, including death, etc.
They went to see the Titanic, mission accomplished, they are probably sitting in their coffin/sub on the deck as we speak.
Those waivers are unlikely to protect OceanGate if negligence or gross negligence is established. Ignoring legitimate warnings about the safety of the vessels and/or withholding pertinent information about the submersible would seem to be at least negligent behavior on OceanGate's part.
OceanGate is likely in some sense judgement-proof because they probably have very few assets of their own for the plaintiffs to claim.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.