‘I Told Him I’m Not Getting in It’: Former Titan Submersible Engineer Testifies

The US Coast Guard’s Titan submersible proceeding kicked disconnected with a startling revelation.

“I told him I’m not getting successful it,” erstwhile OceanGate engineering manager Tony Nissen said to a sheet of Coast Guard investigators, referring to a 2018 speech successful which CEO Stockton Rush allegedly asked Nissen to enactment arsenic a aviator successful an upcoming expedition to the Titanic.

“It’s the operations crew, I don’t spot them,” Nissen told the investigators. “I didn’t spot Stockton either. You tin instrumentality a look astatine wherever we started erstwhile I was hired. Nothing I got was the truth.”

Nissen’s testimony, which focused connected the design, building, and investigating of OceanGate’s archetypal c fibre submersible, was a melodramatic commencement to astir 2 weeks of public testimony successful the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation’s hearings into the fatal 2023 implosion of the Titan. Its 5 occupants, including Rush, each apt died instantly.

Before Nissen took the stand, the Coast Guard presented a elaborate timeline of OceanGate arsenic a company, the improvement of the Titan submersible, and its trips to the wreck of the Titanic, resting astir 3800 meters down successful the northbound Atlantic. These slides revealed caller information, including implicit 100 instances of instrumentality failures and incidents connected the Titan’s trips successful 2021 and 2022. An animated timeline of the last fewer hours of the Titan besides included the last substance messages sent by radical connected the sub. One sent astatine astir 2400 meters extent work “all bully here.” The past message, sent arsenic the sub slowed its descent astatine astir 3400 meters, work “dropped 2 wts.”

The Coast Guard besides confirmed reports that the experimental c fibre sub had been stored successful an outdoor parking batch successful temperatures arsenic debased arsenic 1.4 F (-17 C) successful the run-up to past year’s Titanic missions. Some engineers disquieted that h2o freezing successful oregon adjacent the c fibre could grow and origin defects successful the material.

Nissen said that astir from erstwhile helium joined OceanGate successful 2016, Rush kept changing the company’s direction. A determination to certify the vas with an autarkic 3rd enactment fell by the wayside, arsenic did plans to trial much standard models of the Titan’s c fibre hull erstwhile 1 failed aboriginal nether pressure. Rush past downgraded titanium components to prevention wealth and time. “It was decease by a 1000 cuts,” Nissen recalls.

He faced pugnacious questioning astir OceanGate’s prime of c fibre for a hull, and its reliance connected an recently developed acoustic monitoring strategy to supply an aboriginal informing of failure. One researcher raised WIRED’s reporting that an extracurricular adept Nissen hired to measure the acoustic strategy later had misgivings astir Rush’s knowing of its limitations.

“Given the clip and constraints we had,” Nissen said, “we did each the testing, and brought successful each adept we could find. We built it similar an aircraft.”

Nissen walked the Coast Guard committee done heavy h2o investigating successful the Bahamas successful 2018, during which helium says the sub was struck by lightning. Measurements connected the Titan’s hull aboriginal showed that it was flexing beyond its calculated information factor. When a aviator subsequently recovered a ace successful the hull, Nissen said, helium wouldn’t motion disconnected connected different dive. “I killed it,” helium testified. “The hull is done.” Nissen was subsequently fired.