The Titan submersible that imploded en route to explore the Titanic was using an electrical system designed by college interns, according to a report.
The electrical system was one of a number of issues with the submersible's design outlined in a report from the New Yorker. The magazine uncovered an interview with a Washington State University student who touted the fact that he was in charge of the design of the Titan's entire electrical system.
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“The whole electrical system — that was our design, we implemented it and it works,” 2017 electrical engineering graduate Mark Walsh told WSU Insider in February 2018. “We are on the precipice of making history and all of our systems are going down to the Titanic. It is an awesome feeling!”
Walsh said that he was hired on the spot during a tour of OceanGate's facilities by WSU's Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers club. He said that the company immediately hired him after he and a friend offered some solutions for challenges the company faced.
Though he later accepted a full-time job with the company and didn't specify an exact timeline, the former student began working on the electrical system when he was only an intern.
“If electrons flow through it, I’m in charge of it,” he told the outlet with a laugh. He was responsible for such systems as monitors, keyboards, tablets, Wi-Fi, and sonar.
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The New Yorker report also pointed out the unreliability of several of OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush's public statements about the design of the Titan. He claimed to have had design and testing partnerships with Boeing and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, despite such partnerships never existing. He also falsely claimed that one iteration of the Titan's hull would be built at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.
The false claims and the company's disputes with experts in the field are notable in light of the catastrophe that struck the company recently. Perhaps OceanGate's most experienced expert, Scottish submariner and engineer David Lochridge, was fired and threatened with retaliation when he wrote a secret report warning of the severe design issues with the craft.