Titan sub hearings live: OceanGate CEO said regulations stifled innovation, Coast Guard official testifies
Two members of the Coast Guard are testifying this afternoon
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Former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush complained about safety regulations on multiple occasions, according to John Winters, master marine inspector with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound.
“He did express on multiple occasions that regulations were stifling his innovation process,” Winters testified to the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation on Thursday.
OceanGate did not request the Coast Guard inspect the doomed Titan submersible, which imploded last summer, killing all five people on board, Winters said.
The inspector also said OceanGate “never attempted to circumvent any regulations,” despite Rush’s complaints.
Mark Negley, an engineer with Boeing, also testified on Thursday morning.
Negley said Boeing only worked with OceanGate during short periods. The company did a “brief” feasibility study 2012-2013, he said, before doing two acoustic studies in 2016. Their last communication was in March 2020, Negley testified, when Boeing declined to respond to OceanGate’s request for a proposal.
Negley once sent Rush his safety analysis of Titan’s hull, WIRED reports, warning that there would be a “high risk of significant failure” if the contraption went to the depth of the Titanic wreckage.
Two Coast Guard members are testifying on Thursday afternoon.
See it: New images of Titan sub wreckage revealed
Dr. Don Kramer ends testimony as hearing moves to questions
Dr. Don Kramer, a National Transportation Safety Board engineer, has ended his testimony, during which he analyzed the wreckage of the Titan sub.
Members of the board now have the opportunity to ask Kramer questions.
Proceedings begin
Today’s hearing has started.
Jason Neubauer, the board chairman, is currently opening proceedings.
The first witness, Dr Don Kramer, is sworn in.
Recap: Testimony has focused on troubled nature of the company
The hearing is due to conclude on Friday after two weeks of evidence. Much of it has so far focused on the troubled nature of the company.
Former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge told the hearing how he frequently clashed with CEO Stockton Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.
“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified. “There was very little in the way of science.”
Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water.
On Monday the investigative panel heard testimony from Guillermo Sohnlein, Roy Thomas and Phil Brooks.
Sohnlein co-founded OceanGate with Rush in 2009 but left the company in 2013. Despite the panel’s efforts, Sohnlein said the world may never know what led to tragedy.
Thomas, an engineer for the American Bureau of Shipping, one of the main classifying agencies for submersibles, spoke about complications with using carbon fiber materials. After repeated dives, the materials are susceptible to becoming “deformed” and subsequently “fail,” he said, adding OceanGate never tried to seek classification with the agency.
Rush designed the vessel with a carbon fiber hull. The agency would not have classified the sub using that material.
Brooks, a senior hardware engineer, spoke about his role in analyzing data for OceanGate and the company’s lack of funds.
The “company was economically stressed” and asked him to go without paychecks, he said.
Who is testifying today?
Today’s evidence will focus on testimony from engineers.
Don Kramer, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board, is up first.
Other witnesses scheduled to testify later today are William Kohnen of Hydrospace Group Inc. and Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering.
Recap: Karl Stanley ‘wouldn’t have gone’ on 2019 dive if he knew more
Stanley told the hearing on Tuesday he would not have gone on the 2019 dive on Titan in retrospect.
The comments came after a member of the panel asked Stanley if he was aware there was a lightning strike in the vicinity of the sub in the Bahamas just before the 2019 dive.
“The first time I heard of a lightning strike was reading about it..There’s a lot of things that, if I had known, I wouldn’t have gone,” Stanley said.
“People have told me that I was stupid, naive. But really, what it came down to was, at that point, I had no reason to believe that Stockton was a liar, and I had no evidence of any lies on his part.”
Stanley earlier testified that the sub made noise when it dived in 2019. The sound happened so clearly and frequently, he said, that he could “localize where it was coming from.”
“It was unnerving and then when it kept happening, I remember I was the one that was able to isolate the area where it was coming from and told them, ‘this, this is the area,’ and was listening right there,” Stanley said.
“It’s also a clue to me about Stockton’s psychology...he was scared. Because if he wasn’t scared, he would have already isolated where the noises were coming from him on his first dive,” he continued. “When I isolated the area, that was new information to him, but he was down there by himself, scared, and he kept going.”
Recap: Testimony of Karl Stanley who said ‘there were a lot of red flags’ with Titan
Yesterday Karl Stanley testified that there were “a lot of red flags” when he accompanied Stockton Rush on a dive in the Titan sub in 2019.
Stanley was a childhood friend of Rush’s.
“He told us to be prepared for noises. He had recently done the solo dive on his own, and basically just said, ‘this is going to make noise’ and ‘brace yourselves,’” he told the hearing.
“Another clue in retrospect, is he didn’t tow out,” Stanley said, adding that not towing out deeper showed Rush did not have “a lot of faith” in the sub.
Stanley also noted Rush did not drive the sub.
“He didn’t do any of the driving...I believe I was the first one to drive, but he basically insisted it was his idea,” he said. “Nobody asked to drive...I think that was his kind of sick way of if we had imploded, we were a little bit in control of our own destiny.”
Welcome back to live coverage
Welcome back to our live coverage of the hearings.
Proceedings are due to resume at 8.30am ET, with the first witness scheduled to testify at 9am ET.
The US Coast Guard will hear from Don Kramer, an engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Hearing to resume tomorrow
The Titan submersible hearing will begin again on Wednesday, September 25.
Wednesday’s hearing will feature testimony from Don Kramer, National Transportation Safety Board engineer; William Kohnen of Hydrospace Group Inc. and chairman of the Manned Underwater Vehicles Committee; and Bart Kemper, principal engineer of Kemper Engineering.
This blog will resume on Wednesday morning.
Video: Newly released footage reveals more Titan sub debris post-implosion that killed five
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