Coast Guard Recovers Human Remains in Titan Submersible Wreckage
Several large sections of the submersible were hauled ashore from the recovery ship after it docked in Canada.
My Legal Insurrection colleague James R. Nault wrote an outstanding analysis of what may have led to the OceanGate submersible implosion that killed the five aboard, who were en route to visit the wreckage of the famous R.M.S. Titanic that sank in 1912 after being struck by the iceberg.
The US Coast Guard announced they recovered human remains as the retrieval operations continue in the Atlantic Ocean.
Several identifiable parts of the ship were lifted ashore on Wednesday afternoon, including the sub’s nose and a large panel which appears to be from its tail end.
Amid those recovered pieces, Coast Guard officials said they discovered human remains, which will now be transported aboard a ship to a port in the United States where they will undergo testing and analysis.
The discoveries surprised experts who suspected Titan was destroyed when it suffered a ‘catastrophic implosion’ with five people on board during a journey to the wreckage of the Titanic.
…Officials said Wednesday the remains were ‘carefully removed within the wreckage’ that was recovered earlier in the day.
‘I am grateful for the coordinated international and interagency support to recover and preserve this vital evidence at extreme offshore distances and depths,’ Marine Board of Investigation Capt. Jason Neubauer said in a statement.
‘The evidence will provide investigators from several international jurisdictions with critical insights into the cause of this tragedy,’ he added.
Additionally, several large sections of the submersible were hauled ashore from the recovery ship after it docked in Canada.
Despite attempts to keep it covered, photos appeared to show mangled electronics — as well as the nose cone with its distinctive circular window, Canada Press said.
The debris was recovered by US-based Pelagic Research Services, which said its crew on the Horizon Arctic has been “working around the clock now for ten days” through “physical and mental challenges.”
They used specialized remote-controlled vehicles to find the shattered sub about 12,500 feet underwater and several hundred feet away from the Titanic wreckage that it was on its way to explore.
“Bravo, and welcome back, team! You have made all of us extremely proud of the job you performed flawlessly,” the company said.
The debris will be examined as part of US and Canadian investigations into the tragedy.
In the wake of some truly tasteless comments about the victims, Professor Glenn Reynolds offered a reminder that high tech innovations often start out as “rich man’s toys“:
Most cutting edge technology starts out as a rich man’s toy. Automobiles, passenger airplanes, VCRs, etc. all started out that way. Letting rich people buy the tech drives the technology and pushes prices down over time so that ordinary people can afford it.
I don’t think ordinary people will ever be interested in doing miles-deep dives, but improved subsea technology is a very big deal. We often hear about how unexplored the deep ocean depths are, and there’s a reason for that – we aren’t very good at it yet. We get better at it by doing it. We can do it more if people are willing and able to pay for it.
The same is true with the various space tourism efforts. Sure, it’s mostly rich people buying a thrill. But by doing so they open up the technology for the rest of us. Unlike the test pilots, they aren’t doing it for a living; they’re doing it out of love, and even paying for the privilege. That seems commendable to me.
As China is now racing to develop deep-sea technology in a likely move to exploit the natural resources of that untapped environment, lets hope important lessons are learned from the catastrophic implosion of the Titan.
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Comments
There is a disease of arrogance that seems to infect virtually everything today. Everybody is an expert while true experts and experience are treated with disdain. People claim expertise based simply on their race or gender when, in reality, they know little. Rigor in education and training is longer valued lest we hurt people’s feelings.. In this case, people with this attitude were rewarded with death. This should be a wake up call. How much longer are we going to allow this disrespect for reality interfere with just about every aspect of our lives?
IMHO this mindset derives from the tech boom of the 1990s, when wonder kids like Gates and Jobs were changing the world.
But, they were white.
And they weren’t programming computer code miles under under the ocean. Nor did they distain help from their “50 year old white” fathers – who in Gates’ case was a very prominent business attorney who helped craft much of the new IT law that benefited Gates.
Recovery seems like a waste of money to me, but maybe some value as a training exercise.
Engineeringwise, who thought carbon fiber was good for compressive loads anyway, so nothing will be discovered there.
The sub would have fared better if it was made out of balsa wood.
Is this snark or engineering?
If the latter, I would be interested to hear the arguments for such.
I’m not the author of the “balsa wood” statement, but feel I have to weigh in on a closely related topic:
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
English desperately needs a “sarcasm mark” much like a question mark or an exclamation point to underscore that the previous (or on-coming) statement is to not be taken at face value or, at the very least with a grain of salt.
“English needs a sarcasm mark”?? That is simply nuts. /s
Who downvoted this? Was it because my comment was not snarky?
I asked because I know enough materials engineering to know there’s a bunch I don’t know, and someone could be making a point about different characteristics (say, resilience to compression) of balsa wood compared to composite.
I think the sarcastic point being made was that the wood can bend and not immediately snap like carbon fiber.
That’s what I took from the original comment anyways.
Balsa wood floats pretty hard!
Total waste of money. Fools and their money should not benefit from the public trough.
I don’t think the problem was a compressive load, as such. I think the problems were several:
The hull appears to have weave in only one direction, axially, with no cross weave, leaving it weak longitudinally. Weakness along one axis can be exploited (so to speak) to overstress the hull and bring it to failure faster. This is especially bad when the hull has basically zero ductility.
It appears no testing for interior lamination flaws was done after initial construction, either by x-ray or sonar.
This hull had done at least 2 dives before, so it was not catastrophically flawed, but I bet repeated compression/decompression cycles weakened it (as landing cycles do on aircraft), and it appears no testing was done after each dive to check for this. This sort of thing is a problem with carbon fiber, and you basically have to scrap a functional hull and build a new one.
My suspicion is a small flaw combined with repeated compression cycles triggered hull failure along the flaw.
I agree somewhat with the idea that rich people do create a lot of the things that we now think of as ordinary. I also think that once a rich person decides to make their product a publicly available item, then it should come under government regulations. As soon as he charged the first passenger it should have been inspected by the appropriate authorities and approved or disapproved for public use.
Who would the appropriate authorities be in this case? Government isn’t here to protect us. They exist to collect money and increase their power.
Why? Why can’t people make their own risk assessments?
(Hint: The main reason they can’t make them is because someone else has made them for far too long.)
Just what we need: more government!
Look up the word private and get back to us with a 100 word essay.
“…it should come under government regulations. As soon as he charged the first passenger it should have been inspected by the appropriate authorities and approved or disapproved for public use.”
Really? Why “Ban all the things!” vs. “This here is certified by precisely noone.” People will seek out evaluation that’s worth something; you only have to ban-first if your certification isn’t worth so much to the users. (See UL listing for consumer products.)
I’ve been riffing on the buzz around the sub and the FTX kerfuffle treating stuff as what it is not. Just because someone sells a ticket, doesn’t mean it acts like commercial, consumer travel. Just because you can write a “check” against your FTX account, doesn’t make it a bank.
You wanna stop people from buying risky trips, if they want to? Keeping demand accounts with organizations they choose?
In reality, I agree with you.
However, there are vulnerable populations that can and possibly should be protected in my opinion.
As I watch my parents age and I see their faculties decline, I think that it would be helpful if they weren’t preyed upon daily by exploitative and aggressive marketing, etc.
Likewise, the young should be protected, but their typical lack of access to wealth is a little self-limiting.
You have my empathy re: your parents — been there. Still there with some other folks. Kinda there with myself, with different processing post-TBI.
On point, I agree with you on the problem. It’s “The Problem of Children and Mad Men”, which I recall as the title of an essay in an anarchist collection. Can’t find the source, now, to credit it. I suppose we should add information asymmetry, and simple energy to identify the disadvantaged players.
I can’t come up with a solution that’s not worse than the problem when I play it out. In a world where cosmetology licensing has been used to shut down eyebrow threading, I like separating the notion of what we’d like a perfect ref to do, with how to get flawed humans in greedy systems to do something like what we want.
“As I watch my parents age and I see their faculties decline, I think that it would be helpful if they weren’t preyed upon daily by exploitative and aggressive marketing, etc.”
Yeah, me too. And I notice keenly that the government already has arrogated to itself the power to prevent that, and yet in practice still does fuck-all about it. So inviting them to run the same scam in another venue is not a big priority for me.
Yeah, this is what I was working toward, way better put:
“And I notice keenly that the government already has arrogated to itself the power to prevent that, and yet in practice still does fuck-all about it. So inviting them to run the same scam in another venue is not a big priority for me.”
It’s worse than that, even Would that they limited themselves to doing fuck-all. They just haven’t figured a way to work the regs for more graft than the cut they’re getting as it is.
All this debacle “proves” is that critical engineering tasks need to done in a solidly merit -based system rooted in reality.
“Everything woke turns to shit” is an apt predictor of outcomes, and being a billionaire does not allow you to ignore physics.
Several identifiable parts
Note that they do not use this phrase as refers to the human remains.
Correct… we are likely discussing a small mass of mush that got crammed into a corner of a crushed piece of hull. I earlier referenced the pressure test of a carbon fiber cylinder. It was impressive at a small scale, but scaling up is the problem.
As for reliance on technology, we are still suffering and will continue to suffer from the worship of The Church of mRNA. There is a bucket load of morbidity and mortality on that alter.
Unfortunately, abrupt implosion at that depth leaves very little that can be discussed in a family environment.
I suggest that they be laid to rest in carbon fiber caskets with burial services officiated by young, new-age clerics.
You forgot “inspiring”.
Their imploded lungs cannot accept inspiration.
Just put them in toilet paper tubes and bury them at sea.
Dark and mean, but funny AF.
Yes the “rich” do contribute to the development of new processes and products. Usually they are risking their own lives in the endeavor. In this tragic incident the owner/developer caused the deaths of himself and 4 others. He was warned of the risks of his choice of carbon fiber for the pressure hull. He ignored the warnings. The items recovered were the titanium nose cone, the rear portion with the other titanium cone and the rear that held the oxygen tanks. As well as the steel skids. The failure point may be pinpointed. The glue for the titanium ends? The carbon fiber? Doesn’t matter which one it is. The true failure point is Rush/Ocean Gate.
The true, TRUE failure point was the failure of common sense – something common to 50 year old white” engineers and rare among 25-year old beginners.
The memes on the Internet mocking these jerks are everywhere.
For your entertainment:
https://www.guide4moms.com/2023/06/collection-of-missing-titanic-submarine-memes.html
“Usually they are risking their own lives in the endeavor.”
But with one possible exception (and that only because his dad was still alive), all the lives risked here were “the rich” as well. And it’s on record that they were advised of the risks and chose to participate.
“He told CBS News: ‘You know, there’s a limit. 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 think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.'”
Buddy, I know Alec Baldwin, and you’re no Alec Baldwin.
“The famous R.M.S. Titanic sank in 1912 after being struck by the iceberg.”
I am sorry Leslie but the Titanic was not struck by an iceberg. The truth is exactly the opposite. The Titanic struck the iceberg.
Hey, I can’t help it if I am a pedant. My Mom was an English teacher.