The tourist submarine that is believed to have imploded while surveying the wreck of the Titanic could have only done so due to an engineering flaw, according to an expert deep-sea pilot.
Ofer Ketter, president of the submersible safety company SubMerge and an experienced deep-sea pilot, told Newsweek that the Titan most likely imploded due to the unconventional nature of the hull's material, which degraded over time after repeated trips to the ocean floor.
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"In this case of this extreme, catastrophic implosion, there is only one explanation — and that is an engineering fault," Ketter said.
"So that leaves us only with that option: that this specific submersible was just not designed to withstand the pressure that it went down to," Ketter said. "That's only conclusion there is for this scenario."
The Titan was unique in its design for not being made of the typical materials for a deep-sea submersible. Ketter criticized OceanGate's CEO Stockton Rush's experimental approach to the sub's design, saying that the laws of physics "are known" already.
"That means, from an engineering and operational point of view, we know how to do it; it's not something that needs to be discovered," he said.
Ketter implied that Rush's experimental approach failed to appreciate how certain materials can degrade over time in deep waters, saying "how the material reacts to repetitive cycles" is a "very, very important factor in designing a deep submersible."
"It's one thing to do it once, it's actually a whole other thing to have the same pressure structure and the same material go up and down through the pressures and withstand the extreme changes," Ketter said.
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The flaws of the submersible were well known prior to its implosion, and Stockton's experimental approach was a consistent target of criticism from experts. In 2018, the Marine Technology Society sent an open letter to OceanGate taking issue with the approach.
"Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry," it read.