Titanic sub implosion: OceanGate CEO’s chilling words about Titan revealed as company shutters after disaster

Images of the wreckage recovered from the Titan submersible at the bottom of the North Atlantic appear to confirm the theory that the vessel suffered a massive implosion under the pressure of the ocean.

Earlier this week, the US Coast Guard brought the debris left by the sub on the ocean floor onto dry land.

Jonas Mureika, a professor of physics at Loyola Marymount University, tells The Independent that calling the implosion “catastrophic” is referring to the intensity and speed of what took place.

“The pressure at that depth (3.8 km) is incredibly high, about 400 times atmospheric pressure. That’s 6,000 pounds per square inch acting on the submarine – atmospheric pressure is roughly 15 pounds per square inch,” he noted in an email.

The Independent reports:

Sandwich chain Subway has come under fire after making mocking reference to the Titan submersible disaster in its advertising.

A billboard outside one Subway restaurant in Georgia featured the slogan: “Our subs don’t implode”.

But the pun didn’t go down well with customers, with one describing the move as “distasteful” and “sad”, and another adding: “talk about poor taste”.

The Independent reports:

Since the Titan submersible imploded, killing five people aboard, the subject of extreme tourism has been highly debated online and by professionals.

But when the CEO of Pelagic Research Services, the company that helped oversee the recovery mission of the submersible, was asked what his thoughts were on the trips OceanGate took to the Titanic, he claimed he did not have a strong opinion.

“I don’t necessarily have an opinion on that, it’s a strong investigation going on right now,” Edward Cassano said in a press conference on Friday.

Mr Cassano helped lead the team of people from Pelagic Research Services who used their remotely operated vehicle (ROV) to find the debris from the submersible last week.

During the press conference, he became visibly emotional when speaking about the five people who died while on a trip to view the Titanic wreckage and asked people to remain respectful about the tragedy.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush made “very strange” comments regarding the potential fate of passengers aboard the Titan submersible, according to a cameraman on a test dive with Rush.

Brian Weed, an adventure-documentary cameraman working on Discovery Channel’s “Expedition Unknown” show, told Insider that he joined Rush on a “precursor” to the Titanic mission.

After moments on board, Mr Weed asked Rush what would happen if the Titan experienced an emergency, and was far from the mothership.

Mr Weed told the publication about his conversation with the vessel’s creator: “‘Well, there’s four or five days of oxygen on board, and I said, ‘What if they don’t find you?’ And he said, ‘Well, you’re dead anyway.’”

“It felt like a very strange thing to think, and it seemed to almost be a nihilistic attitude toward life or death out in the middle of the ocean,” Mr Weed reflected.

In the days after OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush and his four-paying crew members went missing on their dive to the wreck of the Titanic, experts had several theories as to their fate.

At that depth, any object – including a human body – is subject to water pressure more than 300 times stronger than the pressure Earth’s atmosphere exerts on us every day. On the surface, we only need to withstand 14.7 lbs per square inch (Psi) of pressure, whereas the Titan had to withstand 5,500 Psi.

The Titan was designed to survive this level of pressure, with two strong titanium domes at either end of the hull linked by a five-inch-thick cylinder of carbon fibre. According to reports, it was subjected to rigorous safety checks before every dive to make sure there were no defects or faults in the hull.

Io Dodds reports: