Hollywood director James Cameron, who directed the 1997 film Titanic, told the sources that the team that built the submersible that blew up, killing five people, had “taken a short cut“.
OceanGate, the parent company of the Titan submarine, “didn’t get certified because they knew they wouldn’t.”
“I’m very skeptical of the technology they’re using. I’m not going to go into that submarine,” he said. 33 dives was completed by Cameron to the wreck of the Titanic. Titanium is made from carbon fiber and titanium.
In 2012, Cameron used a different technology for his Deepsea Challenger submersible expedition to the Pacific Ocean, taking him to a depth of 10,912m (35,800ft), the deepest known ocean trench. The wreck of the Titanic was 3,810 m (12,500 ft) deep.
Cameron said when he learned that the submarine had lost both navigation and communication capabilities, he immediately suspected it was a disaster. “I felt in my bones what had happened. As for the submarine’s electronics failing, its communication system failing, and its tracking transponder failing simultaneously, the submarine is gone.”
He said that on Monday, when he learned of the submarine’s disappearance, “I immediately called some of my contacts in the deep-diving community. “In about an hour, I had the following. They were going downhill. They were at 3,500 meters (11,483 feet), heading for the bottom at 3,800 meters.
“Their communication is lost and lost navigation – and I said immediately, you can’t lose contact and navigation together without an extreme catastrophic event or a high-energy cataclysmic event. . And the first thing I thought of was an explosion.”
On Thursday, a US Navy official told BBC partner CBS News that the Navy detected “acoustic anomalies consistent with an explosion” shortly after Titan lost contact with the surface.
The official said the information was passed on to the US Coast Guard team, who used it to narrow the radius of the search area. Cameron suggested there was a “terrible irony” in the loss of Titan and its crew, likening it to the loss of the Titanic itself in 1912.
“We now have another wreck that unfortunately operates on the same principle of disregarding warnings,” he said. “OceanGate has been notified.”
Cameron said several members of the deep-water community, not directly including him, wrote a letter to OceanGate saying they believe, in his words, “you are headed for disaster.” A letter sent by the Marine Technology Association (MTS) to OceanGate in March 2018 and obtained by The New York Times states that OceanGate’s “current ‘experimental’ approach can direct to negative result (from small to catastrophic )”.
Separately, US court documents show that a former OceanGate employee warned of potential safety problems with the ship in early 2018. The documents show that David Lochridge, the company’s chief maritime officer, raised the concerns in an inspection report.
However, the OceanGate co-founder still insists that Titan has undergone rigorous testing. Guillermo Sohnlein, who left the company 10 years ago, told the sources that the 14-year-old development program was “very strong”.
“Any expert who talks about this, including Mr Cameron, will admit that they are not there for submarine design, submarine engineering, submarine construction and certainly not for the test program. strictness that the submarine passed through.”
The Titan Submarine is not certified, but it is not required. In an article about it in 2019, the company said the way the Titan was designed wasn’t part of the accepted system – but that “doesn’t mean OceanGate doesn’t meet the standards when it comes to adoption.” use”.
He added that the rating agencies “have slowed down innovation… letting an external entity know about every innovation before it has been tested in the real world is counterintuitive to rapid innovation.”
Cameron told sources that the past week “was like a long, nightmarish charade where people ran around talking about bangs and talking about oxygen and all that stuff”. “I know this submarine lies exactly below its depth and last known location. That’s exactly where they found it,” he continued.
He said anyone venturing onto the wreck of the Titanic should be fully aware of the risks, as “this is a very dangerous location”.
“Accept these risks, but don’t be in a situation where you haven’t been informed of the risks of the actual platform you’re diving on. “In the 21st century, there should be no risk. We’ve managed to go 60 years, from 1960 to now, 63 years without a death… So, you know, one of the saddest things about it all is that it was actually preventable “
