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NASA Downplays Role in Development of Titan Submersible that Imploded

(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
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NASA Downplays Role in Development of Titan Submersible that Imploded

(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)
(FILES) This undated image courtesy of OceanGate Expeditions, shows their Titan submersible beginning a descent. (Photo by Handout / OceanGate Expeditions / AFP)

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush said the carbon fiber hull used in an experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic was developed with help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers, but a NASA official testified Thursday that the space agency actually had little involvement at all.
OceanGate and NASA partnered in 2020 with NASA planning to play a role in building and testing the carbon fiber hull. But the COVID-19 pandemic prevented NASA from fulfilling its role, other than providing some consulting on an early mockup, not the ultimate carbon fiber hull that was used for people, said Justin Jackson, a materials engineer for NASA.
“We provided remote consultations throughout the build of their one third scale article, but we did not do any manufacturing or testing of their cylinders,” The Associated Press quoted Jackson as saying.
At one point, Jackson said NASA declined to allow its name to be invoked in a news release by OceanGate. “The language they were using was getting too close to us endorsing, so our folks had some heartburn with the endorsement level of it,” he told a Coast Guard panel that’s investigating the tragedy.
Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023. The design of the company's Titan submersible has been the source of scrutiny since the disaster.
The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion. Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.
In addition to Jackson, Thursday's testimony was to include Mark Negley of Boeing Co.; John Winters of Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound; and Lt. Cmdr. Jonathan Duffett of the Coast Guard Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance.
Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money. “The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water. The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.
The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include more witnesses.
The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans. Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration. This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” Sohnlein said.
Coast Guard officials noted at the start of the hearing that the submersible had not been independently reviewed, as is standard practice. That and Titan’s unusual design subjected it to scrutiny in the undersea exploration community.
OceanGate, based in Washington state, suspended its operations after the implosion. The company has no full-time employees currently, but has been represented by an attorney during the hearing.
During the submersible’s final dive on June 18, 2023, the crew lost contact after an exchange of texts about Titan’s depth and weight as it descended. The support ship Polar Prince then sent repeated messages asking if Titan could still see the ship on its onboard display.
One of the last messages from Titan’s crew to Polar Prince before the submersible imploded stated, “all good here,” according to a visual re-creation presented earlier in the hearing.
When the submersible was reported overdue, rescuers rushed ships, planes and other equipment to an area about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south of St. John’s, Newfoundland. Wreckage of the Titan was subsequently found on the ocean floor about 330 yards (300 meters) off the bow of the Titanic, Coast Guard officials said. No one on board survived.
OceanGate said it has been fully cooperating with the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations since they began. Titan had been making voyages to the Titanic wreckage site going back to 2021.

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Varieties

King Charles III Set to Visit Australia, Samoa on Trip Spanning a Dozen Time Zones

Britain's King Charles III (R) meets British actor Idris Elba and young people during an event for The King's Trust to discuss youth opportunities, at St James's Palace in central London on July 12, 2024. (AFP)
Britain's King Charles III (R) meets British actor Idris Elba and young people during an event for The King's Trust to discuss youth opportunities, at St James's Palace in central London on July 12, 2024. (AFP)
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King Charles III Set to Visit Australia, Samoa on Trip Spanning a Dozen Time Zones

Britain's King Charles III (R) meets British actor Idris Elba and young people during an event for The King's Trust to discuss youth opportunities, at St James's Palace in central London on July 12, 2024. (AFP)
Britain's King Charles III (R) meets British actor Idris Elba and young people during an event for The King's Trust to discuss youth opportunities, at St James's Palace in central London on July 12, 2024. (AFP)

King Charles III, who is 75 and battling cancer, will travel halfway around the world to Samoa this month to take his seat as the head of the Commonwealth and highlight the existential threat that climate change poses for Pacific island nations.

He will also return to Australia, a country that played a key role in Charles’ adolescence — giving him the chance to be an almost normal teenager during the six months he spent at Timbertop school outside Melbourne in the 1960s. The visit marks the first time since he assumed the throne that Charles will visit one of the 14 countries outside the United Kingdom where the monarch is head of state.

The tour, from Friday to Oct. 26, is a watershed moment for Charles, who is slowly returning to public duties after a hiatus following his cancer diagnosis in early February. The decision to undertake such a long journey is seen as a reflection of his workaholic tendencies and his wish to put his stamp on the monarchy after waiting some seven decades to become king, The AP reported.

“He doesn’t just want to be a sort of caretaker king, waiting in a sense for his own death and the accession of William,’’ said Anna Whitelock, a professor of the history of the monarchy at City University, London, referring to Prince William. “He wants to be active in the world.’’

Charles’ globetrotting itinerary comes as he works to shore up support for the monarchy at home and abroad two years after ascending the throne.

It’s a challenge the king will face in Australia, a country with a strong anti-monarchy movement.

Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Australia with a schedule that includes a visit to Parliament House in Canberra, the Australian War Memorial and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander memorial. The king will also meet with professors Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer to learn about their work on melanoma, one of Australia’s most common cancers, while the queen’s program will include joining a discussion on domestic violence.

Charles first visited Australia as a 17-year-old, when he spent two terms at Timbertop, chopping wood, going on long hikes and meeting boys who welcomed him, unlike his classmates at Gordonstoun in Scotland. The future king returned to the UK a more confident, disciplined young man, according to his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby.

“Part of this change was in the nature of adolescence, but some of it lay in the opportunity he had been given in Australia to find himself — free from Gordonstoun, away from his parents, away from the British press, away from the suffocating certainties of royal life,” Dimbleby wrote in 1994.

Charles later toured the country as a young prince and visited again soon after he married his first wife, the late Princess Diana.

But this time he returns as king not only of the United Kingdom, but also of Australia. That’s not an easy thing to be.

Around 45% of Australians voted to ditch the monarchy in 1999, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labour Party has long aimed to hold a second referendum on the issue. But those plans were put on hold after Australians overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum held last year.

While many Australians still favor becoming a republic, it isn’t central to the national debate these days, said Ian Kemish, a former Australian diplomat. People are more focused on the economy, the rising cost of living and the ascendance of China.

The king’s visit helps to bolster ties between Australia and the UK, which recently signed a tripartite security agreement with the United States. The pact, known as AUKUS, will equip the Australian navy with nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, while also increasing military cooperation and information sharing in other areas.

“In my view, we have bigger fish to fry here in Australia right now than the question of whether we should continue as part of a constitutional monarchy or become a republic,” Kemish said.

As important as Australia is to Charles, his lifelong passion is the environment, and climate change is at the top of the agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa. The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 independent nations, most of which have historic ties to the UK.

Charles has built a reputation as an outspoken environmental campaigner, calling on world leaders to work together to curb the carbon emissions that cause global warming. He will attend the summit for the first time as head of the Commonwealth, a role first championed by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Island nations like Samoa are on the front lines of the climate emergency, with the United Nations saying they are already feeling the effects of rising sea levels, ocean acidification and more intense tropical storms.

Charles is a “genuine eco-warrior” who has earned the respect of people around the world for his stance on climate change, Whitelock said.

“Focusing specifically around environmental issues, I think, will really play to his strengths and show that actually he has a really meaningful role he could play in the Commonwealth,” she said. “And I think he knows that and will absolutely relish that.”

Charles’ presence in Samoa may help focus international attention on the threat faced by Pacific island nations, said Kemish, who once served as Australia’s ambassador to Papua New Guinea.

“These are the countries that will go below the surface of the ocean first and where the impact can be seen most dramatically,’’ Kemish said. “And I think it’s important for global attention to be brought to this part of the world. So, yes, I think a bit more than a photo opportunity. We certainly hope so.”