On 18th june, 2023; at 9:30, 5 people sat in a submarine called TITAN and dove into the sea.
- British billionaire- Hamish Harding.
- Titanic Wreck explorer- Paul Henri Nargeolet;
- British pakistani businessman- Shahzada Dawood
- Shahzada Dawood’s 19 years old son- Suleman.
- Submarine inventor- Stockton Rush
They were going to grasp the wreckage of the Titanic. That historical ship that had sunk about 100 years ago.This was an utmost incarnation of escapade tourism. Each person placed in the submarine had depleted more than 20 million for the lean hours of this trip. It was costly because of Titanic’s wreck which was 3810 meters below sea. It takes 2 hours to arrive at the bottom of 3810 meters. Every 15 minutes it sends a sign to the support ship, its name is polar prince.
After 1 hour and 45 min of this submarine’s dive,in a sudden moment it lost connection with the support ship on the ocean. By the time of 4:30, the submarine should have come back after the trip but it didn’t. At 7:10 pm, the support ship decided to inform the US coast guard. A 4 days long search and rescue operation was carried out to find the submarine.
Everyone had one question, What Happened to Those Passengers?
The name of the place where the submarine disappeared is the Atlantic Ocean near Canada. The TITAN submersible was not that big. It had the capacity to seat only 5 people. This submersible was controlled by a video game controller. Only 4 days of oxygen supply was available in TITAN. So there were only 4 days to find the passengers alive. After searching for 3 days, a Canadian aircraft heard some banging noises.
Finally on 22nd june, an ROV searching on the ocean floor, encountered some debris around 490 meters away from TITANIC’s bow. It was confirmed upon seeing the debris that the submersible had broken apart. The people who were seated inside it had lost their lives. After searching 5 pieces of debris were found in total. On the same day, the US coast guard confirmed in a press conference that the bangign noises they heard had nothing to do with the Titan submersible. Actually, the conclusion that was derived was that TITAN was imploded due to high pressure.
Normally in an explosion, force moves outwards but in Implosion the force moves inwards. Breaking apart due to being squeezed in is its meaning. And catastrophic implosion means that the implosion happened so fast that the entire structure was destroyed but it didn’t even take a millisecond. This means that the people sitting in it were killed immediately in the blink of an eye but they didn’t feel it.
Now the question is, What Was The Reason Behind This Implosion?
Actually the main body of the TITAN was made of carbon fiber. But usually submarines and submersibles are made of steel, titanium or aluminum. This carbon fiber design of TITAN was an experimental design. No one had ever tested the properties of carbon fiber in such depths of the ocean before. And looking at this disaster, we can say that carbon fiber is not a suitable material for this. As said by an ocean explorer , Robert Ballard. The man who discovered the wreck of the TITANIC in 1985. He said that, “They have done thousands of dives in different vehicles to get to the bottom of the ocean, but they never lost a vehicle. This was the first time that a submarine or a submersible imploded in this way”
The caps of titanium were still intact on the ocean floor unharmed. But the main body of carbon fiber is now scattered in pieces. Safety regulations were not followed there.
In the pages of history, the name of Stockton Rush has now been included in this list.
“List of inventors who were killed by their own inventions”.
From this we can learn that, “you shouldn’t neglect the safety standards rules and regulation”, just like how Stockton Rush did while making this Submarine.
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Writer,
Ayesha Siddika Hamim
Intern, Content Writing Department,
YSSE