Titan sub may have been dragged through waters by mothership for 3 days before fatal accidentBy Isabel Keane
July 16, 2023
OceanGate’s cost-saving measures while building the Titan tourist submersible — including being dragged by its mothership, risky design choices and overlooking proper testing and certifications — may have led to the experimental vessel’s catastrophic implosion last month.
The flawed design choices on the janky sub were likely made with the intention of keeping costs low and making the vessel carrying wealthy tourists down to view the Titanic’s wreckage as profitable as possible, several engineers told the New York Times Friday.
One cost cutting measure included renting a mothership called the Polar Prince that was too small to carry the Titan on deck, meaning it had to drag the Titan through the ocean waters for three days from Newfoundland to the crash site, the report said.
The hack resulted in the sub being “tossed around pretty roughly,” Arnie Weissmann, the editor in chief of Travel Weekly, wrote about his May expedition to the site. His planned Titan dive to the floor of the ocean was ultimately canned due to “wind, swells and fog.”
Typically, a large crane lowers a submersible into the ocean from a custom built mothership outfitted with custom winches, hangars and a machine shop, Weissman said.
* * *
Source:
https://nypost.com/2023/07/16/cost-saving-design-choices-may-have-doomed-titan-sub/
