These Are the Incredible Cost-Cutting Measures That Caused the Titan Sub to Implode

There are occasions you can save money by cutting costs and times when you shouldn't even consider it. Titan falls in the latter category.

Titan is was the world's largest deep-dive submersible, and it imploded on June 18, 2023, during the first dive of the year to the Titanic wreck. Built and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, which has since shut down all operations and explorations, it was piloted at the time of the incident by the company's CEO, Stockton Rush, who also largely claimed credit for building it.

Titan was the only submersible that took tourists to the Titanic at a reported cost of $250,000 a pop. It offered a passenger capacity of five people, one of whom would always be the pilot in charge of the controls and communicating with the mothership guiding it from up above on the waterline.

On June 18, after repeated delays caused by the weather and malfunctions with the sub itself, Titan went down to the Titanic in the North Atlantic. One hour and 45 minutes after it started its descent, communication with the mothership was lost, which prompted a frantic international search. The search and rescue party had a 97-hour window for the search because that's how much oxygen was onboard the sub.

When that time expired, authorities announced that Titan had imploded, killing all five people inside. Debris was recovered near the bow of the Titanic, and the U.S. Navy confirmed they had picked up the acoustic signature of an implosion at the same time when communication was lost.

In the hours that followed the cutoff in communication, more details emerged on the way OceanGate operated, and none was favorable. This piece is even less so, offering the most shocking possible ways in which Rush and his company cut costs, which ultimately led to the implosion of the submersible.

1. The shape of the hull

Rush fancied himself an innovator of the most dangerous kind: he was the ultimate rule-breaker who often seemed motivated solely by his desire to "stick it up" to those warning him that maybe his methods weren't safe. This was obvious in the shape of Titan, which eschewed the industry-standard spherical shape.

Titan was based on an already existing submersible that Rush had acquired years prior but modified to offer a larger passenger capacity and the ability to dive deeper. Put in fewer words, the Titan was an old sub idea modified to suit Rush's goals to offer tourist expeditions to the Titanic.

By changing the shape of the hull, Rush changed the odds of being crushed by the pressure at that depth (the Titanic lies at 4,000 meters/ more than 13,100 feet under) for the worse. A spherical shape distributes pressure evenly, which is why the safety record for deep dives in this type of subs has stood for almost 100 years before the Titan implosion.

A pill-shaped hull, on the other hand, will be less resistant to pressure and more likely to be crushed like a can of soda. Industry experts who are now going on the record but are not part of the ongoing investigation believe that this is exactly what happened to Titan. Because Rush wanted to seat two more people than spherical subs.

2. Combining different materials

Another way in which Rush went against the industry standard, and did so with the utmost pride, is by combining titanium with carbon fiber in the construction of the sub. Class submersibles are built with titanium only, as it's been proven to withstand the kind of forces on the hull at those depths.

Titanium is very expensive, and carbon fiber is comparatively less so. Instead of using only titanium, Rush chose to build a central cylinder of carbon fiber with a titanium hemisphere on each end. Not only do these materials react differently when submerged at that depth, but they're bonded together, and these areas are also weak points.

Rush chose carbon fiber over titanium to cut costs and to have a lighter submersible, which also worked well for him in terms of saving money during transport to the dive spot.

3. Mothership and transport

Unlike submarines, submersibles are "blind" and operate tethered to a mothership, which guides the pilot through constant communication. When not out diving, the mothership offers accommodation for the crew and transports the sub to the dive spot. In the case of Titan, the mothership for its most recent missions wasn't the one used on previous expeditions but a smaller and cheaper vessel called Polar Prince.

Polar Prince doesn't have enough space onboard for a submersible of Titan's size. This, again, is standard practice in the industry: you haul the sub onboard, tied down and secured, and lower it to water by crane. For this particular expedition, Titan was towed behind the mothership on a platform, which meant increased exposure to the elements, which may have further damaged an already damaged hull.

"I thought the sub and platform were being tossed around pretty roughly," Arnie Weissmann, the editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, who traveled with Polar Prince in May but never got to go down with Titan, recalls.

4. Lack of proper monitoring and controls after each dive

Rush has often been described as a MacGyver kind of guy, even in the way he conducted business with OceanGate, a company that offered tickets to "mission specialists" at the bottom of the ocean for a quarter of a million dollars. The fact that Titan was operated with a videogame controller is perhaps the most illustrative example of that.

But the most egregious proof is that Rush wouldn't conduct proper monitoring of the hull after each dive. Things would malfunction during dives, and he'd just improvise a fix in a very anecdotal manner. According to the company's former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, he would also ignore warnings of what might go wrong if he didn't keep a close eye on the hull after each expedition for signs of fatigue.

Lochridge, in particular, tried to raise the alarm on that, even compiling a full report on the need to do a proper analysis of the carbon fiber cylinder after each dive because carbon fiber has a reputation for breaking up if you apply enough pressure to it repeatedly. Rush fired Lochridge and swept the issue under the rug because thorough controls would have meant stalling operations, more delays, and – you guessed it – bleeding money.

5. Lack of proper certification and proper testing

All four entries on this list culminate with this one: Rush's refusal to submit Titan for proper testing and certification. Maybe he knew what he was doing was dangerous, and maybe he only divined it. But he definitely took pride in the way OceanGate was able to skirt regulations and legislation, passing Titan as an innovative, experimental project to which tourists, the so-called "mission specialists," contributed voluntarily. They didn't even pay for their tickets; they donated to science.

Submitting Titan to certification would have killed the project, and Rush probably knew it. Even if he didn't, he wasn't willing to take the chance, and least of all, to suffer more delays before dives and lose more money.

Conclusion

Authorities are saying that the investigation might take 18 months before they can reach a conclusion about what went wrong with Titan. Given that only fragments of the sub were recovered and the lack of a more advanced monitoring and recording system, we might never know what happened exactly. But all of the above played a part, experts believe.

But we, the public and the industry at large, can still learn from Titan. Contrary to what some commenters will say online, far from lamenting the passing of five multi-millionaires who chose to risk their lives for the ultimate thrill, Titan can be a lesson in how to prevent operations like this one from being made commercially available to the public.