OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet

A erstwhile OceanGate contractor, Antonella Wilby, testified earlier a U.S. Coast Guard sheet connected Friday that the company’s Titan submarine, which imploded past twelvemonth during a dive to the Titanic’s wreckage, relied connected an incredibly convoluted navigation system.

As Wilby described it during the US Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation hearing, the Titan’s GPS-like ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning strategy generated information connected a sub’s velocity, depth, and presumption utilizing dependable pings.

That accusation is typically automatically loaded into mapping bundle to support way of a sub’s position. But Wilby said that for the Titan, the coordinate information was transcribed into a notebook by manus and past entered into Excel earlier loading the spreadsheet into mapping bundle to way the sub’s presumption connected a hand-drawn representation of the wreckage.

The OceanGate squad tried to execute these updates astatine slightest each 5 minutes, but it was a slow, manual process done portion communicating with the gamepad-controlled sub via abbreviated substance messages. When Wilby recommended the institution usage modular bundle to process ping information and crippled the sub’s telemetry automatically, the effect was that the institution wanted to make an in-house system, but didn’t person capable time.

Wilby was aboriginal taken disconnected the squad and flew location aft telling supervisors, “This is an idiotic mode to bash navigation.” She besides testified that aft Dive 80 successful 2022, a large bang / detonation was heard during the Titan’s ascent and that it was large capable to beryllium heard from the surface.

This mirrors grounds fixed yesterday by OceanGate’s erstwhile technological director, Steven Ross. Like Wilby, helium said that the dependable was attributed to a shifting of the unit hull successful its integrative cradle, though Wilby testified that determination were lone “a fewer microns” of damage.

According to Ross, six days earlier the Titan submarine imploded, the sub’s aviator and the company’s co-founder, Stockton Rush, crashed the vas into a motorboat mechanics bulkhead portion the vas was attempting to resurface from Dive 87. The incidental was caused by a malfunction with a ballast tank, which inverted the submarine, causing different passengers to “tumble about,” according to the Associated Press. No 1 was injured during the incident, but Ross said helium did not cognize if an inspection of the sub was carried retired afterward.