Hunt for the Titan Submersible

The implosion of the Titan Submersible was a defining moment in deep-sea exploration history. Designed to pioneer new depths and withstand immense underwater pressures, the Titan met its demise in an unexpected and dramatic fashion. A four day search ensued and took over the media coverage for its entirety.

📌 Don't forget to Like, Share, and Subscribe

👉 Follow Me on Social Media:

More Channels

About My Channel
I'm Jason Hassett, and I create full and feature-length documentaries on diverse topics every month. From history and culture to social issues and the environment, I explore a range of subjects with meticulous research and captivating storytelling. Subscribe for monthly documentaries that engage, inform, and inspire.

#TitanSubmersible #DeepSeaExploration #Documentary #Oceanography #MarineTech #ScienceAndTech #EngineeringDocumentary #UnderwaterMysteries #OceanAdventures #ExplorationTechnology

[thatjasonhassett]

You can sign up for free or two tiers of paid plans. All of them will give you early access to content, behind the scenes content, and your name will be in the credits of future documentaries.

[rizzorizzo]

No, we shouldn’t have applauded Stockton. There is a difference here considering good science told him his idea wouldn’t work. He was reckless, not innovative.

[sara.]

I wish you had included more of James Cameron’s interviews. Dude kept it REAL with his interviews during the first few days of the “search” and called out Stockton Rush HARD.

James said that all of the industry leaders got together and wrote a letter of warning to Rush about the danger of a sub with a carbon fiber hull, how it can’t hold up to repeated compressive stress, and Rush chose to ignore it. It also came out that Rush fired a director for raising safety concerns. He made sure that he was surrounded by “yes men”.

Rush was completely reckless and thought that he knew better than leaders of the industry. He has interviews where he speaks very condescendingly towards regulations. The man is a criminal as far as I am concerned.

[rsears]

Even James Cameron said the best design for a sub that can go that deep is a sphere, because pressure is distributed evenly.

[rizzorizzo]

I’m gonna be honest; I really didn’t give a fuck about the adults. The dudes son I felt for because he didn’t even want to go.

[FrtuneLT]

The most fascinating part about all of it was the families going on talk shows and the news talking about finding their bodies for "closure" and then the interviewers you can tell are really trying to figure out how to break it to them that their bodies no longer exist because they were detonated with the force of a hand grenade in a millisecond

[bills]

So, by the time the mother ship got around to reporting a problem, the 5 were already long since dead, and the military also knew this for most of the time that the search was going on.

[TaeSunWoo]

James Cameron was lowkey the g.o.a.t. for not having his “P.R. filter” during interviews about the situation

[freethepeople]

I think I learned more from James Cameron than anyone

[msmetacentre]

This is a very good documentary. But to be honest, I don't think we do need people like Stockton Rush. We need more people like James Cameron and all the people who really know and understand the risks, do everything they can to plan for them, who are not too proud or too cheap to take the advice of true experts.

I knew about Rush's misrepresentation of classification societies, and it already irked me. Classification societies do have a very standardised way of working for the vast majority of vessels they certify, but they are also happy to do first-principles assessment of novel designs. That's obviously more expensive, so I assumed the choice not to classify this vessel was down to penny-pinching.

NOW I find out, thanks to your doc, that that's not the case. That he approached a classification society and *they said no*. Trust me, that doesn't happen. They are usually happy to take your money and tell you what's wrong with your idea. If they said no, that means the basic concept was so flawed that no amount of calculations could prove it to be sound. My best guess is that that's because of the hull material, that they have a hard line that composites are not a suitable hull material for these depths. If I'm right, then all the other societies will probably take the same line, as they work hard to keep their rules as close to equivalence as possible.

Whether I'm right about the specific issue that put Lloyds off, or if it was something else, they said no. Rush was so arrogant that he pushed ahead anyway, badmouthed classification societies in general, and deceived his paying passengers about the level of risk by saying he had consulted NASA and Boeing. What would they know about this? The pressure differential at the Titanic is many, many times greater than you would ever encounter at altitude or in space, and as Cameron said, it acts inwards, not out.

NASA and Boeing are not the experts in this. The experts are Lloyds Register and their peers. They are our repository of human knowledge of how not to die at sea. Hopefully this incident will encourage others to recognise that expertise.

[sydneylynn]

Something not a ton of people are pointing out is that Stockton Rush got his engineering start in the world of aviation and aerospace engineering where a carbon fiber composite works extremely well. Unfortunately, he must have not done his research about external pressure on composite materials when switching his dreams to deep ocean exploration. He seemed to apply his knowledge from aerospace engineering to marine vehicle engineering which is flawed. Completely different variables…

[serwombles]

Billionaires are nice people too....Deep down

[screw_it_why_not]

In hindsight them claiming to be partnering with boeing was a very bad thing lmao

[GrumpyMunkyGameDesign]

'We're assembling, uh, the best robotic people' FUCKING KILLED ME! Yes my guy, assemble those robotic people!

[davidpawson]

The implosion happened quicker than your nerves send sensory information to your brain. Self tapping screws are for towel bars, patching a rust hole in your rocker panel but nowhere on the pressure vessel of anything. Titan's tragegy was firing the engineer and the son forced to go.

[troymitchell]

Ocean Gate had a less than 15% rate making trips down to the Titanic. That’s a big time fail yet Stockton thought he had something genius going on.

[xXCrimson_BoltXx]

Imagine just being a one of the Titanic ghost just chilling and they see a sub implode and 5 random rich ghost join their watery grave. Must be pretty awkward.

[MadeleinewithEs]

The one I'm actually sad for is Nargolet, he knew it was dangerous and was an experienced diver, but went anyway as the guide in case he could help if something was wrong. He was a widower and it seemed he didn't care about what happened to him as long as he might be needed in an emergency.

[historyish]

This is a masterpiece. It's better than the documentary on Hulu. I am truly blown away by how well done this is.

[taraswertelecki]

This submersible was a death trap from the start. I am not an engineer, but I am a ship builder who understands quite a lot about the construction of vessels of all kinds. The thing that frightened me the most about this submersible was the manner in which the pressure hull for the occupants was built. Regardless of the material, it should have been a single, homogeneous piece of material, preferably titanium alloy given it's immense strength and lighter weight than steel. The interface where the carbon fiber center section and the titanium end domes joined to me was very risky, the different mechanical properties of the titanium, carbon fiber and the adhesive used to join them should have been thoroughly tested. It should have been tested un-manned, and the certification should have been done by an outside agency or company. Carbon fiber CAN be used for applications where extreme pressure is involved, but it is far stronger in extension, not compression. Perhaps someone eventually will get the funding to do the required research and testing to build pressure hulls for a submersible that can safely operate at abyssal depths in the ocean, but as many critics of the Titan submersible noted, the implementation of the carbon fiber center section was fatally flawed. The view port was another aspect that frightened me. It was not rated for this depth, and I found it interesting that when the forward dome was recovered, it was missing. It could have caved under the pressure, which would have left the occupants just as dead, just as quickly as the carbon fiber center section caving in.