OceanGate: the final report

real_aurgathor · 2025-08-06T01:04:49+00:00

The final report is now out, and it has some answers for most everything. Titan submersible disaster that killed 5 people was ‘preventable,’ according to Coast Guard report Stuff we sort of knew and/or suspected: Multiple contributing factors — including OceanGate’s toxic workplace environment and profit-over-safety ethos — led to the entirely “preventable” implosion of a submersible that killed five people off the coast of Newfoundland two years ago, Coast Guard investigators said Tuesday. In summary, OceanGate repeatedly prioritized operational goals and financial considerations over safety, ignoring warnings from both industry experts and internal staff," the Coast Guard said. “OceanGate’s consistent pattern of neglect — evident in its disregard for proper storage, operational shortcuts, and failure to conduct rigorous safety assessments — underscores their troubling prioritization of cost and time-saving measures over safety.” Stuff I didn’t hear before: By 2023, “OceanGate resorted to asking employees to temporarily forgo their salaries in exchange for future repayment,” the report said. News: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/loss-five-lives-was-preventable-according-report-titan-submersible-rcna223096 Report: https://media.defense.gov/2025/Aug/05/2003773004/-1/-1/0/SUBMERSIBLE%20TITAN%20MBI%20REPORT%20(04AUG2025).PDF

HELLFIRE

I would’ve sworn Boeing disavowed any involvement and/or partnership with Ocean Gate, no? Or am I remembering wrong?

Regards

real_aurgathor

OceanGate *paid* Boeing for some engineering study and analysis. There were no partnership and Boeing wasn’t involved in any way, shape or form with the design or building of the Titan.

HELLFIRE

I think this may have been what I was recollecting : https://abcnews.go.com/US/company-lost-titanic-overstated-details-partnerships-boeing/story?id=100256217

… “The state-of-the-art vessel, designed and engineered by OceanGate Inc. in collaboration [with] experts from NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington, made its subsea debut in 2018,” OceanGate Expeditions – the Bahamas-based company that operates U.S.-based OceanGate Inc. submersibles – said about the Titan submersible on its now inaccessible website. OceanGate’s founder and CEO Stockton Rush – who was aboard the missing vessel – made similar statements about his company’s partnerships during an interview with CBS News correspondent David Pogue in 2022 …

By that logic, I can claim to have collaborations and/or partnerships with my local gaschain and/or grocery store by virtue of shopping there every other week… but common sense would dictate otherwise…

/cynical

Regards

real_aurgathor

HELLFIRE

HELLFIRE By that logic, I can claim to have collaborations and/or partnerships with my local gaschain and/or grocery store by virtue of shopping there every other week… but common sense would dictate otherwise…

Exactly. OceanGate’s marketing material implied that the Titan was designed and built as a result of a collaboration involving some well recognized entities, but that is simply not the case. As a matter of fact, it was the UW who terminated the collaboration between the two – I don’t remember the exact wording and won’t bother to look it up, but in essence they stated that: “they are idiots who don’t listen to reason, and we don’t want to get involved in their nonsense”

px_eliezer_

HELLFIRE TL;DR : head of Oceangate thought he knew better than everyone else.

Sounds so familiar…

dave

If you’ve got a netflix subscription, the Oceagate documentary is worth a watch.

GrumpyCanadian

real_aurgathor This just occurred to me: their analysis and feedback to the submersible operator may have been correct, but we should not be too quick to absolve Boeing. Remember that MCAS was definitely an “engineering/R&D” abomination, so they have had their OceanGate moments lately, too. If they don’t learn from their mistakes and adapt, they could be in as much trouble as the submersible.

Somewhat-Reticent

CEO was aboard - Darwin Award competition at work?
How often is a Boeing CEO aboard an MCAS mess?

real_aurgathor

GrumpyCanadian

Boeing only did a feasibility study (lots of calculations) and most of their recommendations were ignored.

GrumpyCanadian

real_aurgathor Right; I was disagreeing with your apparent defence of Boeing “engineering/R&D”, as if “production” is the sole source of their problems (with MCAS as counter-example). Both have problems, and the source of those problems is the upstream management with an uncompromising maximum-profit-at-all-costs mentality.

real_aurgathor

The MCAS issue was probably not an engineering/R&D fiasco; instead, it stemmed from the lack of insufficient failure analysis, system design and system test.

real_aurgathor

Bonus round:

According to US officials, poor engineering was the main reason for the disaster.

OceanGate’s Titan submersible imploded on its journey to the wreck of the Titantic because of poor engineering and multiple failures to test the vessel, according to an official report.

Titan imploded in June 2023, killing all five passengers on board including OceanGate’s chief executive.

The US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) found the engineering process behind the vehicle was “inadequate”, resulting in faults which meant it failed to meet strength and durability requirements.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/titan-imploded-due-poor-engineering-064925901.html

One interesting piece of info is the chatlog:

they dropped two [weights] shortly before the disaster, and it would be interesting to know if they did it because they wanted to slow down descent, or they wanted to get back up as quickly as possible. My guess that it’s former, and they probably didn’t have much, if any, warning of the impending doom.

They also recovered the intact SD card from a badly damaged underwater camera, but no useful images on it since the camera was set to save into an external device.

https://petapixel.com/2025/10/16/sd-card-recovered-from-camera-that-was-onboard-oceangate-titan-sub/

The hard to understand part here is the redaction request by the manufacturer….

Manley shared official documents from the National Transportation Safety Board, which contain photos of the underwater camera and SD card. However, part of the images are bizarrely redacted at the manufacturer’s request.

Heat84

real_aurgathor …part of the images are bizarrely redacted at the manufacturer’s request.

😂

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