A piece of the Titan's carbon-fiber hull recovered after the submersible's deadly catastrophic implosion showed "anomalies," a National Transportation Safety Board engineer said Wednesday during a weekslong hearing on the incident.
Don Kramer, the acting chief of the NTSB's materials laboratory, testified during the U.S. Coast Guard's hearing into the June 2023 implosion of the OceanGate submersible while on a deep-sea dive to the Titanic shipwreck.
Asked whether a submersible, even experimental, carrying people should be designed with an unknown life cycle, Kemper said, "It's flat wrong."
"You don't get a second chance," he said.
Kemper said that among the mechanical issues, cumulative carbon fiber breakage, defects due to fabrication or damage from exposure while the sub was being taken to the Titanic site on the open sea could have been possible causes.
Additional causes could include a failure of the sub's acrylic window or a shear failure along the glue line between the hull and ring, though he noted they lack the data to do a more "precise analysis."
Kemper said the Coast Guard should require that experimental craft be limited to an operator and assistant, with no passengers, and require inspections, among other recommendations.
OceanGate suspended all exploration and commercial operations after the deadly implosion, which killed five people, including Rush.
The hearing on the incident is scheduled to run through Friday.
The main purpose of the hearing is to uncover the facts related to the implosion and to make recommendations, the Coast Guard said.