A new detail has been revealed from the Titan submersible’s tragic June 2023 implosion. 

During a Sept. 16 U.S. Coast Guard investigatory hearing,NSI Community regarding the cause of the implosion, the U.S. Coast Guard presented an animation of the events that unfolded just before the Titan disappeared, including text messages exchanged between the Titan’s passengers and its support ship, the Polar Prince. 

According to the animation, one of the final messages sent by the submersible in response to whether the crew could still see the Polar Prince on its onboard display was, per the Associated Press, “all good here.”

On June 18, 2023, the Titan set off to the wreckage of the RMS Titanic—which tragically sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in April 1912—when it lost signal. Two days later, the Coast Guard confirmed that the then-missed submersible imploded, killing all of the passengers on board including OceanGate cofounder Stockton Rush, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding, and Paul-Henri Nargeolet. 

The hearing, which began Sept. 15, is being held to investigate what led to the watercraft’s implosion, and will comb through details including “mechanical considerations as well as compliance with regulations and crew member qualifications,” the Coast Guard told the Associated Press. 

OceanGate’s engineering director Tony Nissen testified as the first witness. Asked whether he felt rushed to start operations on the Titan with, he responded, “100 percent.”

Still, Nissen denied that the rush he felt compromised any safety measures taken in completing the Titan. 

“That’s a difficult question to answer,” he said, “because given infinite time and infinite budget, you could do infinite testing.”

He noted the submersible was struck by lightning in 2018, which led him to worry that its hull had been compromised. He explained that founder Stockton—who he called “could be difficult” to work with—refused to take the incident seriously. 

Although Nissen said he was fired in 2019 for refusing to approve an expedition to the Titanic because he deemed the hull unsafe, he said during the hearing per the New York Times, he claimed OceanGate later said the mission was canceled due to issues with the support ship.

“It wasn’t true,” Nissen explained at the hearing. “We didn’t have a hull.” 

Without Nissen on its operations staff, the submersible went on its first voyage in 2021 and continued to make trips until the 2023 implosion. However, investigators believe, per the New York Times, that the hull was never pressure tested up to industry standards. 

OceanGate suspended operations shortly after the submersible imploded and the company currently has no full-time employees. The company will be represented by an attorney during the hearing, they told Associated Press in a statement, adding that they continue to cooperate with the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board. 

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