I've heard some comparisons made between the Titanic & the Titan, mostly along the lines of something about a bunch of rich people boarding a fancy new vessel everybody thought was invincible & ending in a watery grave because they flaunted safety regulations.
But this is not an apt comparison. At all. 1/
Comparing the RMS Titanic with the OceanGate Titan is like comparing apples to school buses. And it isn't simply a matter of physical differences: the entire industries each one was a part of are completely different. So are the circumstances. So is the history. So is... all of it, pretty much. 2/
The issue of safety regulations in particular is a major difference. That we even have a concept of maritime "safety regulations" at all is due in great part to the sinking of the Titanic, not because she wasn't following current regulations, but because the regulations of the time were either inadequate or hadn't been established at all. 3/
For instance: Titanic had enough space for 40 lifeboats, but the White Star Line (the company that owned her) put only 20 on board - four more than the British Board of Trade decreed for a ship of her size. So she in fact *exceeded* the regulations of her time. 4/
She may have been going too fast... but this wasn't out of recklessness, necessarily, but because there was a long-burning coal fire in one of her bunkers, & speed was of the essence to get to port sooner. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041108020906.htm
It's may be easy to say the Titanic was populated by a bunch of rich fucks who were just interested in the latest, greatest, biggest thing - & while that may be true, her captain was no slouch & her crew had good seagoing experience under their belts. Moreover, the rich fucks didn't make up the entire passenger list. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/exhibits/titanic/passengers.php
We perhaps forget that air travel didn't really become a thing until the 1960s, & before then, people of *all* social & economic classes traveled by ship. Most of the folks on board the Titanic weren't just there to go on a cruise, they were actually trying to go somewhere - like the New World, to establish a new life.
Did Harland & Wolff use shoddy materials to cut costs? There have been studies done on the quality of steel used to make her hull, and while it's extremely brittle (especially at low temperatures), I haven't found anything yet which says her hull materials were that different from others of the time. It looks more like people built with the quality of metal they had, & didn't even know about thermal changes.
Here's a really boring paper about the Titanic's hull steel here, if you're into metallurgy: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-C13-17a17f71ae2f9d4316c52e62d4650c9f/pdf
What is true about both the Titanic & the Titan is that hubris. In the Titanic's case, it was a larger social phenomenon, while with the Titan, it was down to one man & the company he headed - perhaps along with a belief in deregulation that has certainly plagued my country since the 1980s.
Maritime law was changed after the Titanic disaster, based on the lessons learned from the sinking. I certainly hope the lost Titan will teach some similar lessons, & that we take them to heart.
https://www.noaa.gov/gc-international-section/rms-titanic-history-and-significance
Elmo, on the witness stand in 2043: Honestly, I thought sending people to Mars was a pretty safe thing to do.
@mcfate Oh man, I'd almost love to be a court reporter in *that* trial... almost.
Oh, it'd be a horror.
"Look, who knew there was all that radiation in space?"
:: displays a dozen articles from as early as 2015 pointing out cosmic radiation issues ::
"Oh, crackpots say all kinds of stuff."
"The crackpots were RIGHT, though."
"That's debatable."
"Everyone aboard died before they got halfway, the rocket MISSED Mars entirely."
"But we LEARNED a LOT!"
Adding to this, the Titan exists in a… industry? Field of engineering? In a social norm that is hell-bent on safety and adherence to that safety to minimize risk, environmental damage (to some extent), and expenditure of resources on search and rescue.
The Titan was never fully “classed” by a regulatory body. It’s porthole was rated to something far shallower than the Titanic’s depth. An employee of Oceangate had stridently expressed concerns about the safety of the vessel. ->
He was fired.
Multiple well-respected engineers outside the company had expressed concerns as well.
They were ignored.
And Stockton Rush is on record having said that safety regulations as stringent as those which are enforced today are a waste and an unnecessary barrier to “innovation.” He proudly flaunted the fact that he has broken or circumvented laws and regulations, and believed that he would be remembered for doing things that broke the rules.
He was right, I guess.
If the Titan had been designed and used in accordance to the specifications laid out in the current laws and regulations, this /almost certainly/ would not have happened. And it definitely would not have played out in the way that it did, even if something /had/ gone wrong.
Either that, or the… “expedition”… would have never been carried out.
Or the company wouldn’t exist, due to the fact that designing and building and maintaining and using such a vessel is EXPENSIVE.
The VP of White Star did say at the time that he believed the ship was unsinkable. I'd say that this wasn't unique to that ship though, or even that company, or that particular man. It was more the hubris of the wealthy industrialists of an entire age. There, perhaps, is some comparison to the Titan, for the CEO of Oceangate seems to have had the same attitude. https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/RMS-Titanic-the-unsinkable-ship/