Titan: To the Titanic and Back 13½ Times

Stories About Bad Decisions Made

As of this writing, we have reached the second anniversary of the Titan tragedy. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) completed hearings about the accident at the end of September 2024. The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) likely have additional information that is not in the public record to help them formulate their conclusions. I hope the NTSB can identify the exact root cause of the implosion, but this is unlikely. However, we have the bulk of useful information now.   It is a privilege to work with the USCG under their Author Assistance Agreement, which permits me to utilize and reproduce the information and materials from the Coast Guard's public hearings. This book includes dozens of custom graphics and modified graphics from the hearings that help explain the engineering.   This book does not sensationalize the tragedy and is not written to disparage Stockton Rush. However, decisions and stories that involve him are analyzed and commented on honestly.   Most people are not going to watch 70 hours of painfully slow-moving testimony, as I did to create my YouTube videos about OceanGate and the Titan. The challenge was to digest the first eight days of testimony—which included over 60 hours of testimony from 22 witnesses—and develop cohesive stories. Parts of stories that fit together could be spread throughout one witness's testimony, since different examiners could ask the same question in multiple ways. Parts of the stories that fit together could be given by various witnesses over numerous days. Then, the available documentation was used to determine what was relevant to each story. Each story is its own jigsaw puzzle.   This book is therefore an educational resource about the disaster, presented in story form, to coalesce the most pertinent information about OceanGate and what led to the Titan implosion. It provides the most efficient way to understand the nuances of the Titan disaster.   The content also helps one better understand the context of the same witnesses who gave interviews—but not under oath—to the media companies that have recently released documentaries about OceanGate and Titan.   The final reports will likely discuss two possible root causes of the implosion: hull delamination, with or without discussing buckling, versus water intrusion at the forward ring epoxy joint. The third in line as the root cause of the accident will likely be a failure of the acrylic viewport. These chapters explain the details that may have led to any of these conclusions. Reading this book will better prepare you to understand the final reports, no matter what they conclude.

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