Titan Submersible.

What the hell were they thinking?

I can't think of many more terrifying ways to die than sitting in cramped pitch black box waiting to suffocate.

In my opinion there was never any hope of rescue, it was a recovery mission from the moment they lost contact.

The best outcome for those onboard would've been a sudden loss of hull integrity because that offers the quickest death.

Obviously everyone onboard knew the risks but questions will need to be asked after this, the stress placed on rescuers, suffering of loved ones, not to mention the cost of the 'rescue' operation.

Surely this can't be allowed to happen again?

I'm willing to bed everyone on board that submersible (if they're still alive) would give up every penny of their fortunes to breathe fresh air again.

Unfortunately, they’ve probably all passed on. If not, they will be very shortly. RIP. Even if found I don’t know how they could effect a rescue at such depth. I wonder what happened.

But I don’t understand how the sub is not located. Doesn’t it have a tether to a mothership? Do these things operate independently? Or at least it’s in the immediate proximity of the Titanic? Why is the search area the size of CT? I’d think they’d know precisely where it is, or at least a very close approximation.

Yeah, not a pleasant way to go and an unfortunate situation all around. Hope they can at least find it and recover the bodies for closure, that is if it didn’t suffer a catastrophic failure and turned them into mist for the fishes.

Now they can make a sequel to Titanic.

@MirkoS77: From what I've learned safety concerns over the sub had been raised before but ignored, you have to sign a waiver that mentions risk of death 3 times just to get aboard, it's controlled with a laptop and PlayStation controller. Absolute insanity.

I think there was uncertainty as to whether or not it had actually surfaced and may have just been floating on the ocean in the currents vs. stuck on the seafloor. Since they had no communication either way they had to account for either scenario.

The whole thing is pretty bonkers. Even if the sub were bobbing around on the surface with no communication, the people could still suffocate since the door is bolted on from the outside.

Would have thought this goes without saying but maybe you shouldn't backyard build a sub to dive to 12,000+ feet underwater.

Wealthy adventures would have been better off paying for the spaceflight ticket. At least if something goes wrong you blow up in milliseconds rather than slowly suffocating / dehydrating in a freezing cold, pitch black tube for days. As mentioned, best to hope for implosion to crush you into jelly quickly.

They probably died rather quickly. The window was only rated for 4000feet, not the 12000feet dept they wanted to go to.

Maybe these billionaires will finally get it through their heads that maybe there's a reason why some things are regulated. Ignoring safety regulations kill people.

Scary. And very dumb, if what you guys write is correct.

The memes that have been circulating....everywhere and with the chance of survival diminishing every minute. I don't want them to die. I hope they're found alive. But at the same time it's hard to feel sorry for them. Also, no matter the outcome, we need to slap the bill to them for this search and rescue/recovery. Billionaires costing us money for their stupidity.

Once I saw it was controlled by a mad catz controller I feared the worse.

I've been feeling really gross and upset with people basically laughing at people who are currently dying. You're right, it is hard to feel sorry for them for a number of reasons, but I don't want them to die, and I don't want to be part of the group that laughs at the dying.

Edit, for the record, I'm quite sure they are dead at the time of typing this.

Titanic already had a sequel.

I'm not sure why anyone would board such an unsafe device in the first place. I doubt, wherever they are, that they're still alive though. Such a waste.

I am very conflicted on this whole ordeal.

One one hand, I feel the loss of life is pretty tragic. These people were all ocean and/or history enthusiasts, and the mission statement of the expeditions has been research, and not just tourism.

With that said, these tickets cost $250,000 each. These folks have too much money, and I tend to not get too sad when stuff like this happens. Or when they drive their grossly expensive sports car crashes and kills them. Or they get trampled while hunting elephants.

This is basically a really expensive version of "**** around and find out" and they found out, only it's so expensive and so publicized we can't see it as such, we just see it as a tragedy.

But if we did the blue collar version of this which would be, oh I don't know, diving 100 feet using an air compressor and a gardening hose as an air supply, we'd all get laughed at when we died.

US and Canadian coast guard has been out looking for them?

@horgen: Found some wreckage. They died when the pressure crushed the submersible.

I'm relieved at least that they died quickly. That's still messed up, but it's definitely better than dying slowly over 3 days, scared, and thinking about your loved ones, not to mention father and son who would have been watching each other die. It still sickens me that people were laughing at them as they were believed to be dying. I really don't want to be part of a crowd that does that sort of thing.

It was a disaster waiting to happen after I saw a clip of the PlayStation controller being used to control parts of the submarine. Spending $250,000 on a trip to see the Titanic is more like a trip to hell.

These types of extravagant tourist trips should be banned. Best leaving the Titanic to rest. It's basically a graveyard and should never be a tourist spot undersea.

RIP to the 5 explorers.

Imagine if instead of paying for an expensive coffin trip they gave the money to those that needed it.

Oh well, their money, can do as they please. And they did.

Already exists. It wouldn't surprise me if a film was made about the Titan submarine story.

Pretty much a certainty gonna try milk this shit.

Yeah man. I think about the film Titanic and Apollo 13, and it make a shit ton of money

From looks of things they probably died very, very quickly. Perhaps so quick it happened before they knew anything was wrong. But they probably didn't suffer for long, one could only hope. Still tragic. I hope something is learned from this. Perhaps safety standards and regulations for commercial passenger deep sea vessels.

I fully expect a movie within a year.

Considering the debris is scattered it probably didn't have its catastrophic failure near the sea floor. Wonder if they think something happened on way down or up.

250k just to die, what a rip off.

Most people die for free

Coastguard was hearing clunking noises every 30 minutes. That could have been hull starting to fail under pressure.

Interesting video and insights from a 20 year Navy submarine veteran:

@SupraGT: I heard Navy monitoring heard the implosion of the ship where they found the debris, said it happened right near time they reported the Titan missing about 2 hours after it failed to come back in schedule

@lamprey263: They apparently lost contact on descent, they were at 3500 metres heading for the bottom at 3800 metres when the craft imploded. I think at that depth death would've been pretty much instantaneous.

Having money doesn't mean you have brains.

@eastland: I heard that's common even when things go right though, but I'd hate to think that's where things went bad, it might mean they'd of spent several hours frightening and suffering

Is joking about the deaths socially acceptable? Now that we know how they died, which was nearly instantaneous?

Although now that I open my mouth, these people did have families. Best not joke?

But then again do any of you get chuckles from the results of the Darwin awards?

@DEVILinIRON: I don't get involved in things like that, I deleted my Twitter account a long time ago but I'm guessing it's been pretty savage on there. I genuinely feel sorry for the young lad on board, he told his mum he was terrified of going down there but didn't want to let his dad down who'd bought it as a father/son experience.

Hmmm. Speaking about families, one must wonder if the dead considered their feelings before they went on some roughshod exploring tour.

And it was Father's Day.

I cannot fathom though how anyone would go in such an unsafe craft. Everything I've seen and read points to a company that didn't care about safety at all. And though releases were signed, they should still be accountable. There's a difference between, this a risky operation and we've done due diligence to minimize it and the customer assumes all the risk because.

Messed up yes.

You would think when you got money to do this kind of thing, you would either yourself or have someone else research if it is safe or not.

Don’t know if it is confirmed or not, but the window was apparently only rated for 1/3 of the dept they wanted to reach.

I see many joke about using a Logitech controller to control the mini sub. But hey if it works, no need to change it. US military changed to X360 controllers years ago for some the things they remote control. The userbase was much more familiar the X360 controller and so the whole remote control went smoother.

Don’t joke about it here. That’s all I’ll say about it.

Not really. What I found really odd is people on TikTok are making memes/joke clips about the Titan Submersible deaths.

I don't feel too sorry for Stockton whose immense arrogance and dismissive attitude about the dangers and flagrant flouting of safety considerations sealed his fate, but the kid, yeah it sucks. As others have said, he was terrified of getting in the thing, but did it due to a father's day wish for his dad (or so I've heard).

They knew the risks before the thing went down they signed wavers I feel sory for the 19 year old who was worried going down but went for his dad. Very sad story at least it wasn't a slow painful death.

Very sad outcome but at least it seems that they went quickly. Also good to know what happened instead of never knowing.

Apparently this company took safety shortcuts to a staggeringly stupid degree.

Yep. I don't understand why any of them signed up for that. Other submersibles exist.

For those comfortable facing their own mortality and fragile place in a physical world, it may be worth reading up on what happens when that rapid compression occurs. It's simultaneously comforting (they didn't even have the chance to realize what was occurring, nevertheless suffer) and harrowing (at that point they ceased to become biology and were merely physics).

I feel terrible for the 19 year old who didn’t want to go, but wanted to spend time with his dad. Like those final moments had to have been terrible.

Parents always dragging their kids on the dumbest crap

The more I read about this, the worse it gets:

• Carbon fiber used for the hull was bought at a discount from Boeing for being past its expiration date. To be clear: this carbon fiber was found to be of poor quality and not suitable for aircraft that ferry passengers and freight.
• One of the consoles was screwed into the carbon fiber hull. This wasn't an interior manifold, this was the structural hull.
• Owner or CEO or whatever was quoted as saying (paraphrasing here) "General McArthur said 'you are known by the rules you break, not by the rules you follow'. I want to be known by the rules I break. The rules say don't build a submersible out of carbon fiber and titanium...".
• The 19-year old son of the rich dad didn't want to go but, as it was his dad's wish that his son go, he humored him. Such a tragedy.
• An engineer that voiced concern about the design early on was fired, and asked to "clean out his desk and leave within 10 minutes".
• US regulations (iirc) state that a craft has to be certified in order to take passengers. This guy claimed them as "mission specialists" to get around that so they could take their money (making them "professionals" removed their passenger status and made them "crew").
• As of right now, the company leadership is blaming the US government for not searching hard enough for them. Not doing enough. No Libertarians in foxholes, eh?!

This is what libertarian "entrepreneurship" gets you, folks; a guy who, for as smart as he might be, is not half as smart as he thinks he is, designing a sub-par submersible and risking the lives of people.

Can you be posthumously charged with murder? I think this guy should be.

Let this be a cautionary tale to any libertarians. Any time we think "sure, we can pave our own roads" or "hey, why have a fire department when we can just put out our own fires", recall this tragedy.

Also, as someone that works in a production environment, I am fond of the saying "OSHA regs are written in blood". These rules are not created to hamper productivity, stifle competition, and inhibit invention. They exist because people were injured or killed. Remember that.

Honestly I think they had "Titanic fever" or whatever you want to call it. I think at a certain point, if your lifelong obsession has been the Titanic, you do anything, risk anything, to see it. It's completely irrational.

If you asked this person what their favorite car in the world was, and told them it was 12,000 feet down into the ocean, all they had to do was hop in this submersible and go down there, they'd be like "Dude I'm not doing that".

But tell them they have to hop in and they get to go see the Titanic? No questions asked.

This needs to be on his gravestone. Arrogant ass.

Always amazes me that we have this kind of crazy environment on earth without the need to go to space. As for the sub, they dove on a welfare pos. No sure what were they expecting there.

The thing is the people who went down willingly went down and signed wavers.

Yes. Waivers because all things being equal, anything could happen. That doesn't mean the company is allowed to make an unsafe submersible and not be held accountable.

Correct me if I am mistaken, but from what I've read, those liability waivers have a "within reason" clause to prevent abuses.

They're not iron clad, you can't have someone sign it then send them down to their death if an investigation shows you made mistakes in construction or something.

It only prevents from genuine accidents, in other words, that studies have shown can happen with the occupation, event, etc that you are doing.

Watch this timestamp:

The degree of cavalier arrogance here is breathtaking. I've always tended to believe that to be a billionaire you need some semblance of smarts and common sense, but this flagrant disregard for safety, a nigh mockery to its face, just boggles the mind.

This arrogant ass was begging for it. Unfortunate that he took four others to the grave with him and his reckless stupidity. Though in fairness, if I were dropping 12k+ feet to the ocean floor, you'd best believe I'd be doing extensive research into the company and equipment taking me down there prior before I even humored it. There is some responsibility on those who agreed to get into this tin can in the first place, and considering one of them was an expert with numerous other dives to the site who was well aware of the risks, it baffles me further.