Call me CRAZY, but at $250K a tourist toodle in this thing, I’d want to see Coast Guard and deep water submersible safety certificates and all the nit picky details about crush pressures, etc.. Especially since my odds of surviving even a teensy mishap at THIRTEENTHOUSANDSFEETBENEATHTHESURFACE would be miniscule.

Good Lord..

The missing tourist submersible with five people onboard including British billionaire Hamish Harding has been missing since Sunday afternoon, and may have become stuck in the wreckage of the Titanic that it was diving to admire.

The sub, owned and operated by OceanGate Expeditions, was taking a crew of five people – including company CEO Stockton Rush, French explorer PH Nargeolet and Harding – 12,500ft underwater as part of its $250,000-a-head Titanic tour.

The tours are pitched to the same type of clients as space tourism: adventurous, curious, and extremely wealthy. OceanGate’s site says customers do not require any previous diving experience, but that there are ‘a few physical requirements like being able to board small boats in active seas.’

Well, of course you don’t need “diving” experience, because no one can dive at those depths – you’d be crushed like a bug long before you ever got miles near the ship, never mind the drowning thing. It’s just a cheap thrill for people who have that kind of money, but damn, folks – due diligence, anyone? There’s a billionaire adventurer on board. I’m so curious if he crawled over the technical aspects of this like he would a business deal he’d write the same check for.

I mean, when you start hearing about the problems these guys have encountered and the actual sub itself?

…The submersible is made of five-inch-thick carbon fiber, capped on each end by a dome of titanium. It is named Titan.

You could give me the $250K and I’m still not climbing in, even if you called me “Queen of the Mission Specialists.”

Best to just call me Cynical Chicken Little, because “homemade” is not a word I comfortably associate with “YOUR safety is our first priority in lieu of drowning and at crush depths.”

Remember my voyage to the Titanic last last summer? In OceanGate’s homemade carbon-fiber sub? (https://t.co/BqPhXNQbl6) They took passengers out again this summer—but as of today, the sub is lost. Coast Guard is doing a search and rescue. https://t.co/1u3x3Ucjf5 pic.twitter.com/j6z1efTCBH

— David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

Minor details about the ship functions like THIS would have me losing my mind with anxiety. Having been trained as an avionics tech and living through cell phones crapping out during hurricanes, there’s no way I’d stand for only one form of communication. It’s not like someone can go out on deck and send up a flare.

…The Titan subs have no way of directing themselves under water.

Instead, they rely on text messages from the mothership, instructing them where to go.

Is classified as a submersible, not a submarine, because it does not function as an autonomous craft, and relies instead on a support platform.

Jumping Jehoshaphat – you are asking for trouble courting a frickin’ disaster. Ghastly as it sounds, the Coast Guard admiral in charge of search operations is postulating they may have found one.

…Admiral Mauger conceded that it may have become stuck in the wreckage – and said the Coast Guard does not have the capabilities to reach it if that’s the case.

‘We don’t have equipment onsite that can do a survey of the bottom… there is a lot of debris [at this wreckage] so locating will be difficult.

‘We don’t have the capabilities at this time. Right now, we’re focused on trying to locate it,’ he said.

And they can’t navigate at all? “No way of directing themselves.”

Yeah. NO.

They also DO NOT CARRY AN EMERGENCY BEACON! Vurt da furk?! Are you kidding me? Again, it’s not like someone can launch a flare from the poopdeck.

You can get OnStar in a cut-rate Kia or use your cell phone location pinger, and yet people mortgage their homes to dive in these things that can’t be found if something goes wrong?

And they do go wrong. It’s not like they haven’t ever gone astray before – mighta coulda shoulda been the nudge to add one, wouldn’t you think?

Bet that caused some yips.

“Discussed” adding a beacon…and didn’t do it. Brilliant. Totally devoted to safety over profits.

You may remember that the @OceanGateExped sub to the #Titanic got lost for a few hours LAST summer, too, when I was aboard…Here’s the relevant part of that story. https://t.co/7FhcMs0oeH pic.twitter.com/ClaNg5nzj8

— David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

They do have redundancy in the ballast system, apparently. CBS’ Pogue says there are 7 different ways to get the thing to the surface, if they can. Mind you, this tweet is from yesterday, so they’ve been missing far longer than 7 hours.

If they were on the surface, is there any way to let someone know where they are? Although it doesn’t sound as if they are, sadly.

'It might as well be on the back side of the moon.'

Retired submarine commander, David Marquet, says it is 'not a good sign' that the missing Titanic tourist submarine was not found on the surface of the ocean.

🖥GB News on YouTube https://t.co/Wa58gYHxmd pic.twitter.com/2859ykGwP2

— GB News (@GBNEWS) June 20, 2023

So many questions.

The “tour” company has seemingly done everything it could to make it as difficult as possible, but I sure hope they find these folks. Just as I surely hope all those involved in the search do so safely and return in one piece themselves. There are nothing but ghastly ending scenarios here if they can’t find them and pull off a miracle.

That’s a deadly stretch of water out there and everyone is operating a long, long way from any support. Just getting to the search site is requiring precious hours, less mind searching.

I never saw the movie because I already knew the ending.

I’m praying this doesn’t turn out the same.

UPDATE: I HAD to add this tweet, y’all. “Homemade” is not an exaggeration. HO-LEE-CRAP

'There's no backup, no escape pod. It's get to the surface or die': Journalist reveals his trip in Titan sub which is made of abandoned pipes https://t.co/tJy4kdws5b pic.twitter.com/Q5wFAe5xRi

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) June 20, 2023

UPDATE DEUX: I want to share this article with you all concerning something we discussed in the comments – NDI, or non-destructive inspections. It’s how you could tell a hull was compromised by pressure – you paint a fluorescent liquid over areas, and it would see teeny tiny cracks in that carbon fiber or the fittings – the cracks or fissures would show up like little rivers or breaks. I’d wondered how their maintenance was testing the hull after every dive, and Foobar found this article. Seems they have had problems with just that thing prior to this awful incident.

A former employee of OceanGate, the company whose submersible is now missing after diving toward the wreckage of the Titanic, warned in 2018 that the sub’s safety could be compromised by poor “quality control and safety” protocols that “​​paying passengers would not be aware” of, a lawsuit says.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations, alleged in August 2018 court filings that he was wrongfully terminated after raising concerns about the company’s “refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design” of the Titan, the submersible that went missing Sunday.

The filings say that after OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush, asked Lochridge to do a quality inspection of the submersible, Lochridge developed grave concerns about a “lack of non-destructive testing performed on the hull of the Titan.”

While completing the inspection, Lochridge said, he asked coworkers if anyone had formally scanned the materials being used to secure the vessel from the high-pressure environment. Lochridge said he was told that no such scans had been done; instead, he said, sound-based systems would check for flaws in the hull in real time in order to detect issues.

That’s unconscionable if it’s continued. Unconscionable.