Titanic

When I watched the first episode of Downton Abbey I recall that the date was supposedly April 15, 1913  I knw that date right away.

It was the date the Titanic sank with the loss f approximately 1,500 lives.  The rich, the important, the crew and the immigrants all died together.  It has been argued that the end of the 19th century wasn’t 1899 but was marked by the Titanic in 1912.

I learned about the disaster as a kid watching “A Night to Remember,” IMHO a much better film than “Titanic,” But hey, what do I know.  I’m no movie reviewer.

So here we are a hundred plus years later, ferrying tourists to the graveyard at a quarter million apiece.  I guess the CEO of Oceangate ad a vision of Everest where hudreds now show up each year to make the climb.  It’s gotten so bad that lines form near the summit while each individual gets his picture taken atop Everest while the next in line waits.

The above photo by Nepali mountaineer Nirmal Purja Magar showed a near continuous line of hundreds of climbers bottlenecked on the summit ridge of Everest—all trying to take advantage of a narrow window of good weather. The image went viral, sparking an instant debate about whether the mountain is too crowded.

So maybe that’s what the CEO of Oceangate, Stocton Rush was thinking.  Rich people fly into space, climb mountains, jump off of them with wings, jump out of planes.

I get it. You’re a thrill seeker. An adrenaline junkie. An adventurer. You’re fearless. You want to push the limits of your body or your mind. You want to be an elite part of the population that did the thing people told you NOT to do. You want to do it cause, “it’s there.”

And there will always be those ready to take your money.

The founder and CEO of OceanGate Expeditions complained that the US submarine industry’s “obscenely safe” regulations had been holding back his “innovations” years before his submersible went missing – with experts alleging that he skirted regulations by operating in international waters.

Stockton Rush, who is among the five who vanished aboard his company’s Titanic tourist sub Sunday, aired his grievances against the strict rules in 2019 — the same year his company began advertising trips to the bottom of the Atlantic.

“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations,” Rush told Smithsonian Magazine. “But it also hasn’t innovated or grown – because they have all these regulations.”

It happened to be the same thing Rush allegedly told Will Kohnen, chairman of the Marine Technology Society, in 2018, when members of the group collectively warned OceanGate that their experimental designs could lead to “catastrophic” results that could impact the entire industry.

Brian Kemper, one of the MTS members who signed the letter warning OceanGate, expressed that the private company was able to evade industry regulation by deploying in international waters, where US rules don’t apply.

The assessment was echoed by Stefan Williams, a professor at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics at the University of Sydney, who slammed the loopholes OceanGate allegedly took advantage of.

“I don’t know of any specific regulations associated with this sort of deep sea tourism that’s starting to emerge,” Williams told Insider. “I think it’s a relatively nascent industry.”

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, raised the alarms about the way the company was constructing its Titanic-bound submersible.

Along with the warnings from MTS, David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, warned the company in 2018 about the dangers allegedly present in the Titan sub.

Lochridge said he found a “lack of non-destructive testing performed on the hull of the Titan,” and when he raised the issues with OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush, he was terminated,

“OceanGate gave Lochridge approximately 10 minutes to immediately clear out his desk and exit the premises.”

“The paying passengers would not be aware, and would not be informed, of this experimental design, the lack of non-destructive testing of the hull, or that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible.”

Now I don’t know shit about submarines.  According to experts, not enough testing was done on the hull.  But ordinary guys like me wonder why there was no location beacon so that surface vessels knew where it was at all times?  Even if the sub surfaced, no one would know exactly where and the capsule could not be opened from the inside.  They still might have died from oxygen deprivation.

We communicate with Rovers on Mars but there was no location beacon on Titan.

Why would one advertise for tourists to go down 2 plus miles in that?  Sit in a 20 plus foot submersible, cross legged with no means to surface or navigate by itself, with limited oxygen and unable to open the door from the inside?

Money.

The Titanic wreck to me is a graveyard which should not be a tourist attraction in the first place.  It was nice that it was found.  Now leave it alone.

It’s bad karma to disturb it or the dead.

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