The Titan’s Passengers Were Pioneers Seeking To Advance Scientific Knowledge?

Special Edition

Writing in the June 27, 2023 issue of the Wall Street Journal, Gregg Opelka, identified as a “musical-theater composer-lyricist,” writes about the catastrophe of the Titan submersible as if its occupants were the Twenty-First Century equivalents of Ferdinand Magellan and other courageous explorers of bygone days.

The Titan’s passengers, Opelka opines, “were adventurers by nature” who “saw themselves as pioneers for whom the risk of danger was outweighed by the reward of the advancement of science and the expansion of human knowledge.” While mourning the five lost lives, including a nineteen-year-old boy who may have been coerced by his father to join the misadventure, Opelka believes we should “cheer on explorers who willingly accept the ultimate risk to advance our understanding of the earth….”

Why would the Wall Street Journal print such absurd fiction? The Babylon Bee would have been a more fitting outlet. Okay, before going any further, I admit to being fascinated by the foolhardiness of the four adults in question before the Titan took its final voyage. My impression was that the Titan was akin to a bicycle wheel without spokes. I’m not trained in structural engineering, but the first time I saw a photograph of the Titan’s interior, I wondered, “Where are the internal supports, struts that would presumably mitigate the possibility of implosion?” I then exclaimed, out loud, to no one but myself, “That is just plain crazy!”

I’m sorry, but the Titan’s passengers were not explorers seeking to advance science. They were thrill-seekers with lots of money to burn and overcome with a lapse of common sense. Perhaps paying $250 thousand bucks for the thrill ride of a lifetime temporarily disables one’s capacity for rational thought. The hold-harmless document they signed contained the word “death” at least three times. I mean! How red must a red flag be to attract one’s attention?

At a depth of 12,500 feet. the Titan would have been under 10,000 tons of pressure, equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Tower. Ten thousand tons pressing on a carbon-fiber tube lacking internal struts! According to several sources, an OceanGate employee had warned his superiors that the hull design was faulty. He was subsequently fired. Independent structural engineers had warned OceanGate similarly. They were ignored. Were the Titan’s passengers informed of these warnings? I am inclined to doubt it.

Concerning the Titan’s pilot, also CEO of OceanGate and the guy who signed off on the design, I haven’t read anything that leads me to believe he was doing anything other than what CEOs are supposed to do: make a profit. Science, schmience! The wreck of the Titanic had been visited many times before. There was nothing to see down there at 12,500 feet but a spooky wreck. No new revelations concerning its sinking. No secrets of the earth’s beginnings or geology waiting to be discovered.

Now, there are two wrecks and five more lost lives, lost not in the name of science, but in the names of money and hubris, a deadly combination if ever there was one.

Copyright 2023, John K. Rosemond