All you need to know about the Titan submersible tragedy

On June 18, a submersible named Titan descended into the Atlantic Ocean to explore the ruins of the historic Titanic ship. Less than two hours into its proposed eight-day journey, the vessel lost touch with its mothership and went missing with all five passengers aboard.

After four days of frantic search with no success, all passengers were confirmed dead. The US coast guard says the cause of death is a “catastrophic implosion”.

This submersible was designed to carry up to five people — a pilot and four crew members

A submersible is slightly different from a submarine in that it has its own oxygen renewal system and does not depend on another vessel for its air and power

The five men involved were going to see the wreckage of the historic ship known globally as Titanic, which sank in Canada over 100 years ago.

Today, the Titanic sits on the ocean floor, about 12,500 feet — 3.81 kilometres — below sea level. The two broken parts of the ship – the bow and the stern — are over 2,600 feet apart and are surrounded by debris.

READ ALSO: Crew onboard Titanic submersible dead, OceanGate mourns

Suleman Dawood, the son of the Pakistani millionaire, was the youngest on this trip. He was 19.

The passengers included Shahzada Dawood, a prominent Pakistani man and his teenage son Suleman; Hamish Harding, a British businessman; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French diver, and Stockton Rush, OceanGate CEO.

Nargeolet, the French diver, had completed at least 35 trips to the Titanic wreckage.

OceanGate, the diving tour company, charged passengers $250,000 for the trip to the 1912 historic site.

Although the company says it made previous successful trips to the Titanic wreckage, court records show that OceanGate faced a series of mechanical problems that forced the cancellation or delays of trips in recent years.

Other expeditions have also been delayed after OceanGate was forced to rebuild the Titan’s hull because it showed “cyclic fatigue” and wouldn’t be able to travel deep enough to reach the Titanic’s wreckage, according to a 2020 report

David Lochridge, who worked as an independent contractor for OceanGate in 2015 and as its employee between 2016 and 2018, once brought up concerns about the Titan’s hull.

Lochridge said no non-destructive testing had been performed on the Titan’s hull to check for “delaminations, porosity and voids of sufficient adhesion of the glue being used”.

He was sued by OceanGate in 2018 for allegedly sharing confidential information.

Two former OceanGate employees separately raised similar safety concerns about the thickness of the submersible’s hull when they were employed by the company.

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Experts say traveling to space is easier than plunging to the bottom of the ocean. For context, while 12 astronauts have spent a collective total of 300 hours on the lunar surface, only three people have spent around three hours exploring Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of Earth’s seabed, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The reason is simple. Descending into the ocean’s depths means venturing into a realm of immense pressure that intensifies as you go deeper—a highly risky undertaking. Because sunlight does not penetrate this level of depth, the environment is completely shrouded in darkness and intensified by extreme levels of cold.

As a matter of fact, the deepest parts of earth’s oceans are known as the hadal zone – named after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld.

The same factors that made Titan so hard to find are also the reasons why there has been very limited exploration of the ocean floor – it is almost impossible.

When Titan began its descent, it was estimated to have 96 hours of oxygen. Two days after the vessel lost contact with its mothership, a Canadian P-3 aircraft, part of the rescue team, detected banging sounds in the search area. Efforts to trace the source of the sound were unsuccessful.

Soon, more vessels were deployed and authorities began a frantic race against time to find Titan.

On Thursday evening, rescue teams found debris believed to be from Titan near the Titanic. Although authorities still tried to hold out hope in the belief that it is not unusual for debris to be found around the Titanic, tests run on the debris showed that it was from the hull of the Titan.

A few hours later, OceanGate confirmed the death of all passengers.

John Mauger, a US coast guard, added that the submersible with five passengers suffered a “catastrophic implosion” killing everyone on board.