Photo: OCEANGATE EXPEDITIONS / Courtesy
An unfortunate tragedy that leaves many questions.
The authorities of the United States informed this Thursday about the possible Titan implosionthe ship with five passengers that was heading to the remains of the Titanic liner, located about 4,000 meters deep in the waters of the North Atlantic.
The US Coast Guard reported that they were found debris suggesting the submersible was crushed due to oceanic pressure “catastrophic” and offered his condolences for the presumed death of the crew members.
Now the experts are preparing to investigate what happened and what should have been done to avoid it, through the study of the pieces they found in the waters near the historic ship.
Authorities will collect all debris they can to build a complete picture of the sequence of events that led to the tragedy, according to Ryan Ramsey, a former submarine captain in the British Royal Navy.
“This is not going to be any different than a plane crashing. There’s no black box, so you won’t be able to trace the last movements of the ship itself, but they’ll gather as many parts as they can and from those they should be able to analyze the structural break, any fractures that have occurred, and maybe piece together what’s left. it really happened in those last moments,” he said.
The five fragments found include “the rear deck of the submersible” and a cone from the front of the ship.
They were found about 500 meters from the bow of the Titanic.
Rear Admiral John Mauger of the Coast Guard said that it is too early to determine the moment of the implosion.
However, hours after finding the debris, the US Navy said it detected “an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion” just after Titan lost contact with the surface.
The ship lost all communication with the outside on Sunday.
In it were Stockton Rush, 61, founder of the company that owns the submersible, OceanGate Expeditions; Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19; British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, and French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77.
The implosion theory
The key to the investigation will be the pieces of carbon fiber with which part of the boat was made.
The big question is whether it suffered a structural failure that caused a hull rupture that in turn caused the possible implosion.
Each piece will be closely examined under a microscope to analyze the direction of the carbon fiber filaments, looking for tears that suggest the exact location where the break occurred.
The teacher Blair Thornton from the University of Southampton gave his opinion in an interview with the BBC about what could have happened.
“In the event of a catastrophic failure of the main casing, the submersible would have been subjected to incredibly high pressures, equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Towertens of thousands of tons, compressing the vessel,” he said.
“We are talking about a very powerful implosion in the main part.”
The investigators must also analyze whether the accident occurred due to a lack of the necessary prior tests.
Professor Roderick A. Smith, from Imperial College London, said that one of the most important pieces of debris in answering this question would be the carbon fiber section of the rupture site.
“Carbon fiber fails due to internal defects in its construction. The joints between carbon fiber and titanium need very careful inspection,” the expert commented.
The violence of the implosion means that it can be very difficult to determine the sequence of events. “Hence the need for a thorough recovery and examination if possible,” he added.
Another potential source of information on exactly what happened to the Titan could be hydrophones, underwater microphones used to listen for evidence of illicit atomic weapons.
These helped establish that the Argentine submarine San Juan had imploded after disappearing off the country’s coast in 2017.
It is possible that the hydrophones have detected the end of the submersible owned by the OceanGate company and could give us an exact moment of when the tragedy occurred.
It is not clear at this stage which agency will lead the investigation, as there is no protocol for this type of event with a submersible.
Rear Admiral Mauger said this is particularly complex because the incident took place in a remote part of the ocean and involved people of different nationalities.
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See original article on BBC