What we still don’t know about the Titanic submarine

The five-day search and rescue mission for a submarine carrying five people to the wreckage of the Titanic came to a tragic end on Thursday, when officials announced that everyone on board had died after a “catastrophic implosion.”

While an investigation is already underway, authorities are looking for answers to exactly what happened to the ship, known as the Titan and owned by OceanGate Expeditions.

“I know there are also a lot of questions about how, why and when this happened. Those are questions on which we will now gather as much information as possible,” said U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral John Mauger.

What caused the implosion?

After the Titan sank underwater Sunday morning, the U.S. Coast Guard said the support ship lost contact with it about an hour and 45 minutes later.

It is not clear exactly where and when the implosion occurred, nor what caused it. But a senior military official said Thursday that a US Navy acoustic system detected an “anomaly” on Sunday that was likely the Titan’s fatal implosion.

The Navy passed the information on to the Coast Guard, which continued its search because the Navy did not consider the data to be definitive.

However, the debris, discovered by a deep-sea robot, “corresponds to the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber,” Mauger said.

What were those popping noises reported earlier in the week?

From Tuesday evening to Wednesday morning, Canadian surveillance aircraft picked up popping noises at 30-minute intervals, offering hope that the Titan’s occupants are still alive.

If the submarine imploded on Sunday, those sounds wouldn’t be coming from the ship.

It is still unclear what caused those noises. That’s what an expert told Insider the sounds can only be caused by marine life.

Will these expeditions be better organized in the future?

Titan’s journey to the North Atlantic highlights the turbid regulated waters from deep-sea exploration.

It’s a space on the high seas where laws and conventions can be circumvented by risky entrepreneurs and the wealthy tourists who help fund their dreams. At least for now.

The Titan’s fatal implosion has drawn attention to how these expeditions are regulated.

The Titan operated in international waters, well beyond the scope of many laws of the United States or other countries. It was not registered as a U.S. ship or with international safety-regulating agencies, nor was it classified by any marine industry group that sets standards for things like hull construction.

Will the bodies of the victims ever be found and recovered?

The Titan’s five occupants – a pilot and four passengers – were identified in the days after the submarine disappeared.

The dead included Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, the company that owned and operated the submarine; two members of a prominent Pakistani family, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood; British adventurer Hamish Harding; and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.

As the U.S. Coast Guard continues to search near the Titanic for more clues about what happened to the Titan, Mauger said the prospect of finding or recovering remains was unknown.

How long will the search and recovery mission last?

Officials say there is no time frame for when they will call off the massive international search, which has involved several countries, including the US and Canada.

Now that the ship has been located, about 1,500 feet from the Titanic, investigators will likely hope to examine or recover the debris, which may provide clues to the cause of the incident.

How much did the rescue mission cost?

Critics on social media quickly questioned the amount of resources spent to save the lives of people who paid $250,000 to take part in a high-risk expedition.

“The rescue operation must cost millions of dollars,” said an online commenter responding to a Tweet comparing the rescue attempt to the many failed attempts to save migrants from flimsy ships that continue to sink in the Mediterranean.

Christopher Boyer, executive director of the US-based National Association for Search and Rescue, said the debate over who should pay for the risky operation is complicated by the fact that there is a simple “social contract” or moral obligation, saying that essentially: If someone is in need, we want to help.

“People have done stupid things over time and yet we’ve come to their rescue,” said Boyer, whose nonprofit oversees advocacy, training, testing and certification for those involved in search and rescue.

“As humans, we can’t just look away from things like this.”

Still, Boyer said the issue is worthy of debate.

For example, those trying to climb Mount Everest understand that if their bodies fail near the summit, no one will come to save them, Boyer said. “And we have a similar situation here (in the North Atlantic), where this is such an extreme environment and limited resources.”

Therefore, according to Boyer, a discussion should arise as to whether different rules should apply when people participate in extreme expeditions, such as commercial spaceflight.

In Ottawa, the minister responsible for the Canadian Coast Guard, Joyce Murray, said rising bills for the United States-led mission were “irrelevant” as long as there was a chance to run it on the 6.4-meter Titan submarine. to rescue.

Canada’s Royal Canadian Navy had dispatched HMCS Glace Bay, a maritime coastal defense vessel, to assist in the search, as well as a CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft that assisted in the search below the water’s surface by dropping sonar-equipped buoys that send signals back to the aeroplane.

The Canadian Coast Guard, the offshore science vessel CCGS John Cabot, the heavy icebreaker CCGS Terry Fox and the multi-task vessel CCGS Ann Harvey were also part of the rescue team.

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