Saving money from safety eventually costs lives. A story as old as humanity itself.

Re: the controller. An off the shelf gamepad is okay during the prototype stage and if you're running shallow submergence tests at less than 50ft. For a manned dive to the Titanic? It just reeks of ridiculous cost cutting priorities. I can think of some reasons immediately off the top of my head why you don't want a consumer off-the-shelf control method. E.g. a professional/commercial grade control system would be less likely to fail or experience issues, possibly at a crucial time... They're also built much tougher. E.g. Getting joystick drift at 4000 ft might cause you to lose control of the vessel, especially in a confined place. And a heavily built control box would probably not have many problems if one of the crew sit on it by accident.

Time distances us from the tragedy of the Titanic but I do not think the site of so much death should be a tourist attraction for the rich.

From an engineering point of view a safety factor of 2.5 is actually not that much for components that where failure will likely result in death. It's important to understand the safety factor has to account for a lot effects that can decrease the actual point of failure such as : Corrosion/ aging Stress related fatigue Manufacturing defects Thermal stress Misuse ..... The safety factor largely depends on things like maintenance and testing thats why airplanes were most components are build to a safety factor of 1.5 can be super safe while steel cables for lifts are designed with a safety factor of 15 because they are checked less often an experience more fatigue

The channel Sub Brief which is run by an ex submariner had an excellent evaluation on this whole scenario. He identified quite a few ways in which the sub was unsafe as well as the lack of consultations by subject experts. I believe he also said it had never been down past 3000 meters and had a calculated crush depth of 4000 meters which is really close to where Titanic lays. So many mistakes it's unreal.

What was the plan for rescue in the event of failure of the craft? Sounds like their was not one.

I know nothing about submarines or naval architecture but I’ve used carbon fiber extensively in high performance racing applications. The problem foremost on my mind is the fact that CF doesn’t bend or show any obvious signs of weakening. It just fails instantly and catastrophically in my experience. James Cameron did an interview with abc about CF pressure hulls and how they refused to use them for the Challenger Deep expedition. Interesting stuff. Chase it’s good to have you back man. You taught me how to aim in wows lol.

10:48 that rule only probably applies to ships not submersibles.

You kept mentioning that money may have been an issue, but each passenger paid 250,000 dollars for this trip, so with a future profit estimation, the company could have gone into the "red" for a while until paying back debts after using the submarine to make some profits. Money was not the issue. > Meaning getting certified was not the issue. > Meaning there was not enough work done to get things certified and guarantee the standards needed for the depths that the submarine would be going to. > Serious safety issues.

awesome to see you making videos again

If a company thay sued someone settles, 99.99999% of time it means they have something to hide and that the person was actually right at least to some extent, COST should NEVER be even though about in the same sentence as SAFETY

Lucky you not going there. 😱 After seeing one video showing how they were wrapping carbon fibers on the hull when making it, I started wondering if the hull can withstand the great pressure underwater. Because they built the hull in the same manor of winding steel wires to reinforce a high caliber gun (hence the term "wire-wound guns") prior to WWII. The fiber can hold a lot of pulling force, namely pressure from inside, but not necessarily much pressure from outside. If there's not enough ribs to reinforce the hull, it can implode.

I was very fortunate to go on a commercial submarine whilst in Barbados many moons ago and one thing that struck me on this venture was a TOTAL lack of safety protocols. The submarine i went on only went down to around 200-300feet it had a ship on the surface complete with a deep sea diving team and the ship had a crane which in the unlikely event something went wrong they had pretty much everything covered. Personally without deep sea diving knowledge I'd never have wanted to go down even beyond maximum deep diving depth as there was way too many variables to go wrong. Lets hope all get found safely. 🙏 Cheers

I went on a binge and watched some videos on this subject, and this has been the best, most informative and honest video yet! Bravo, you provided an order of magnitude more relevant information then all the others i watched, combined! I suggest doing more "general subject" informative videos.

Do you think that the cylindrical design of the pressure vessel of the sub was a possible flaw? As I recall most pressure vessels where the crew reside on the deeper diving subs are spherical, Trieste etc and even the deep diving Russian military submarines had spherical ones. The Russian one I’m thinking of had three joined by tubular sections. My understanding is a sphere distributes the pressure across the structure more evenly and in part actually cause the structure to reinforce itself. Looking at the Titan design all I can think of is the pressures like a giant hand trying to pop off the end caps. That the tail section was identifiable and intact, well, it seems to line up with that line of supposition. What do you think?

And the Darwin Award goes to...

They could be bobbing on the surface and haven't been found because of weather (waves). Being bolted in from the outside and can't get out, would they still die from lack of air?

Innovative vessel or not.. It is a deep sea vehicle just the same as any other submersible and so should meet that classification. Diving like this there should always be a second submersible on hand for emergencies, able to go down and assist in any potential trouble that may arise or for rescue. Main point about rescue is.. how? The hatch they enter from is bolted down from the outside, making it impossible to escape at all, without being on the surface. Same issue with a DSRV... there is not one.. not even a little bit of a flat edge anywhere on the hull of the sub.. so how is any rescue vehicle suppose to make a hard seal in order to get the occupants out? From what I have been able to see, there is NO emergency transponder or transmitter in order to signal distress or location.. Why not? No notification to anyone that they are doing a dive this deep in order to allow Coast guard and other authorities to be at least aware of the dive happening if something should go wrong and they are in need of specialist equipment. They could for instance have had it in a slightly higher state of readiness or at least on the same continent. Exposed thrusters, just asking to be knocked into something and fall off. Exposed wiring on the top.. just look at the picture.. even the one in this thumbnail.. you can clearly see the wiring running to the thrusters which could also run the risk of snagging No back up system for controlling the sub in case of master controller failing No emergency preparations.. no back up air.. no air 'scrubbers' to filter CO2.. even as a just in case measure - The pilot or CEO even said that they have no fear of an implosion since they wouldn't even know about it. Submersibles should be tested to just before crush depth. there are very deep parts of the ocean and the floor is not flat.. It is completely possible to lose power and fall further than design depth even near the Titanic there are very strong currents which can drag an unpowered object a long distance

my top 5 possibilities inorder of likeliness: 1. Ghosts of the titanic 2. Swallowed by a whale 3. Atlantans protecting thier city 4. electrical failure 5. View port critical failure bonus: Aliens

Great Perspective from Chase. Maybe one day, the channel will be called iChase Marine.

I think it probably was a delamination-buckling failure of the composite hull. It imploded. The ends are intact and the composite has not been identified. Composite is known to fail under cyclic loads like this and the interlaminar stresses are likely to be very high.

9:27 - I think this is your weakest part. "Because he's not an engineer", which is a non-argument. A quick Google search would yielded the Bio of this fired person, and his expertise, which was - for the company - responsible for safety. I think it would have been best to not mention/create this chapter. 14:00 - Sub Brief has an excellent presentation on the USSR Alpha submarine, which was made out of Titatium. It should give you an idea of the capabilities of the material. 15:41 - Super experimental? Well... there ARE other submersibles that could and have gone deeper. There is an article of the BBC in 2019 on a submersible going 11km deep in the Marianas Trench. So... I feel this could have been explored a bit better. At the time when you made this, for the rest it is a cautious presentation, providing a good global viewpoint. And like you said, we'll have to wait until the final report. Fortunately, the saving grace was that it was practically instant for the crew when it happened...

Agreed the media is an ass. I've learned to wait for SMEs to put out any official report. I've had about 40 years plus to see bad and good engineers make mistakes. You are dealing with a pressure vessel here. Any hatch that requires you to remove 18 bolts from the outside is questionable at best. the more I hear, the more I shake my my head. Regardless, I'm glad you didn't go on this trip. Praying for the best is good, but buy some life insurance too.

I think This sounds more like a murder. They were making this unsafe mini sub To. Kill someone my question? Is. If the founder was in there or there was a way for him to get out and let the other people die.

What if Hamish wrote a check onboard for a "special trip" ? " Hey! Do you think we can go into the Titanic? I'll give you 5 million dollars." Rush said yes and does it. Game over. This was probably an implosion. No contact after initial silence is because there's nothing left to make contact with.

I wonder whether material fatigue is a potential cause, smaller cracks in the carbon fiber growing over time from dynamic stress. Some rumors mention body damage due to lifting activities, and the CEO I think mentioned cyclic fatigue signs, but I didn't read into it much. All I can say is that the carbon fiber material is certainly a rare choice for 4000m Subsea. I mean when compared to subsea applications in the oil and gas sector, where light weight equipment such as ROVs are probably pressure compensated. The acrylic glass should relatively easy and cheap to pressure test on shore, just some pressure cycles and static destructive testing. I find it hard to believe they could have messed that up. Interesting video.

I am curious to know how many of these trips down they have made, perhaps they have done this so many times someone got a bit complacent, like the sky diver that jumped without his chute because he was just so comfortable.. that's just more speculation on my part.

Thanks for the summary. A strange non-technical question: Is the submersible at this size ever at risk to be swallowed by whale or get distracted or damaged by hitting into another big piece in the ocean?

personally i must say, concerning is that it doesnt seem to have a droppable weight that could be detached in emergency to emerge the sub. Also a director of engineering fulfills a role in which he is responsible that everybody works as a team and is on the same page, so that position requires more of a management focus than deeper knowledge of a topic. There should be atleast one specialist for each topic on the team, so if there wasnt that would be worrying.

I can't help but feel the need to point this out. Even if the craft was, went through destructive testing, you're still only testing that hull. If there were five hulls, to really know how each hull would behave you would have to destructively test each hull. That's it, it doesn't tell you anything more or tell you a pattern of behaviour, predict things on a general basis. I have plenty of other concerns about the vehicle and to my knowledge appears to fundamentally lack some of the stuff I think would be minimum requirements. Especially related to the atmosphere and atmosphere management. High oxygen environments and electricity? Bad combo, bad combo. I'm not putting bets on anything until we find it. Waiting on the experts and listening really closely to those who work in the field. As has been said by others, safety regs and rules are written in blood.

At a high level, there's not much uncertainty - A failure in the system caused it to sink. All hands lost. UPDATE - maybe some hope as banging noises may have been heard by an Orion aircraft's sonobouys.

Prayers and condolences it doesn't look good.

I know there are many difference but I often think the level of technology required for diving deep sea is similar to going to space (like that blue origin sub orbital rocket). Google says ocean gate have less than 25 employees, I would never trust my life with a company that small doing this kind of adventure. And I bet less than half of their whole team are actual engineers.

Could a tainted oxygen system have been a possible factor?

THE HELL ichase, where have you been? >:O

Trieste was a way better built sub and that was made over 50 years ago

Their gonna find this thing in the coming weeks or months and by then they will be dead and they will just leave them there.