Titan Sub Implosion: Demystifying the Implosion
The Titanic ship sank on April 14th, 1912, only to get the site discovered on 1st September 1985. The Hollywood producer also made a movie Named “Titanic”.Ever since then, adventurers have been fascinated to see the actual debris of Titanic and this has led to adventure tourism where the submersible takes the crew to the wreckage site which is at 12500 feet deep below sea level.
OceanGate Expedition is one such company that built a submersible named Titan which takes passengers to the site where the debris of the Titanic is and charges $250,000 per person for the same. On that fateful day, when the Titan sub implosion happened it was carrying 5 members and got imploded in the deep sea killing all five on-board members. The Titan sub implosion occurred at 3800 M below sea level just after sub loss contact with its support vessel during the descent.
But let us understand what is the implosion.
Before that let us know the structure of the submersible. The submersible hull has two components the light hull and the pressure hull. The job of light hull is to maintain a hydrodynamically efficient shape. The pressure hull maintains the structural integrity affected by the difference between inner pressure and outer pressure at depth.
Since World War 1 the submarines used to be built of Carbon Steel which can withstand the pressure which is created as it goes down. Nowadays the hull are made up of Titanium which has a better strength-to-weight ratio and is more durable than most steel.
The implosion of The Titan sub occurred when it was at 3000 m below sea level The vessel was so deep that the pressure surrounding it would have been equivalent to the weight of the Eiffel Tower which is tens of thousands of tons. So even one rupture in the structure of the sub would cause the imbalance between the pressure inside and outside the sub, causing it to implosion means getting it compressed within. The chain of events would have been so quick that it would have happened at one-thousandth of a second. The crew hardly would have realised the happening and remains if any would have been turned to ashes due to the extreme explosion which occurs following the implosion.
The renowned YouTuber Jake Koehler who runs the Youtube channel DALLMYD was too about to go for the same dive but it was cancelled due to a malfunction in the submersible. In a recent video, he said the same thing could have happened to him too which luckily got averted.
People are more eager than ever before to take the risk to experience the thrill despite the risk involved in their lives this has led to a boom in adventure tourism. Hence despite the risk involved adventure tourism is expected to be a 1 trillion dollar industry in 2023.
