Kit Roberts
An expert in underwater survival has hit out at the company which designed the ill-fated Titan submersible.
Rachel Lance, a Duke University biomedical engineer, highlighted that there were multiple red flags around the design of the vehicle.
She added that contrary to the claims of 'innovation' from OceanGate, the company was simply trying out things which had already been found to not work.
The Titan submersible imploded on a journey to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which rests on the bottom of the North Atlantic around 3,800 metres down. At that depth pressure is around 380 times that at the surface. All five people on board were killed.
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Submersibles which are designed to journey to that kind of depth have to be made out of extremely durable materials to withstand the pressure. This includes materials such as titanium.
While submersibles designed for shallower depths can be made of an acrylic sphere, very deep diving vessel have to have tiny viewing ports to ensure that the hull can withstand the pressure.
Lance criticised the design of the Titan submersible, which had a hull made out of a kind of carbon fibre. This was known to be unsuitable for a vehicle that would be travelling to those depths.
She told CNN: "This was a company that was already defying much of what we already know about submersible design.
"This is not exactly what, in my opinion, would be innovation because this is already a thing that has been tried and it simply didn't work."
For contrast, the submersible that director James Cameron used to visit the Titanic wreck, the Mir class, had a 'personal sphere' ( the bit which surrounds where the crew sit) made out of a steel alloy, and was capable of diving to a depth of 6,000 metres below the surface.
This is a great deal stronger than the carbon fibre hull used in the Titan submersible.
All five people on board the Titan submersible were killed when the hull of the submersible imploded at around 9.45am on Monday, including the CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush.
Titan's hull of carbon fibre as well as an acrylic viewpoint were widely criticised by many people in the submersible field, including James Cameron. The acrylic viewing port was only certified to be used at a depth of just over 1,300 metres, and the Titanic wreck rests at 3,800 metres down.
The OceanGate CEO had also admitted that the carbon fibre hull of the vessel broke design rules for that type of vehicle.