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Hello everyone. Welcome to the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today I'd like to discuss about the tragedy of the Titan submersible and why I want to talk about that because we need to learn a little bit more on what happened. And first, before I start, I want just to highlight with you, I'm not in a position here to question the decision of the passengers to join this expedition or to discuss money or to discuss how people decide what they will do with the money and also the free will of the people that decided to enter in this. So it's not my business and it's not my ability here. I'm just, of course, my condolences to the families. And what I will try is to stick a little bit more on the technical and the project side and how we can learn with that. And I divided my explanation. This will be a little bit longer than the usual, but in three things. The first one is complexity. We need to understand about the complexity of going to the deep sea and why I want to say this because look, of course, most of us, we are fascinated about space exploration and space exploration is challenging. Right? For example, when we saw the James Webb Space Telescope, when we see every time we send a rocket to the space just to leave the gravitational pull, it's a big feature. How you calculate in a way that you can really go away from the attraction of the gravity of the earth and then go to space. And this is complex, but honestly, deep Sea is a much greater engineering feature.
And I know that you will be surprised and say, why? Why the ocean? You know, I went to the beach today and the ocean is there, so it's so easy. Look there. If you want to go down, you just, you know, put some weight and go and you will dive. No, because pressure plays a massive role. And now while you listen to this podcast, you have pressure. All the column of air on the top of you is pressuring your head down to the center of earth. It's this weight that gives you the pressure. What's the difference between here and at where the Titanic is about 4000m below the sea level? What is the difference? It's because it's water. It's water. And water is a far more dense material than air. Just to give you an idea, a military submarine of the United States, usually the limit of deep depth is around 1600ft or 500m. This Titan went to 4000, 4000. So it's massive. And just to give you an idea of the pressure, every square inch of that submersible had to tolerate the weight of an elephant on the top. Imagine every single square inch with an elephant on the top. This is about 380 atmospheres. So it's challenging by itself. With everything you do, it's challenging. Then let me go to the second design and engineering material. First. There is a huge polemic on the design of this. So several experts, even in the past, they said about the concern and they had multiple concerns.
First one only opened by the outside. It means when you are inside, they use the boats from outside and they do not open. It's impossible for you to open. It means even if you are able to go back and float, you will die due to the lack of oxygen. When the supply of oxygen comes to an end because it's locked, you cannot open it by any way. The second no GPS and I know you will say one thing that oh, why they didn't put. First GPS only works when you are floating or when you are at very low depth. It will never, ever work at the depth that the submersible would work. But they are locator bic, there are other mechanisms you can use to help to guide and give a little bit more autonomy to the submersible. This submersible was 100% supported by the vessel floating on the top. If for any reason there was an interference or loss of communication, this Titan would navigate with absolutely no sense of direction of where where I am. You know how far I am because I don't have anything. Everything I have comes from the vessel on the top. And it happened before it happened. And before to stay something like 4 or 5 hours, five hours without contact between the vessel and Titan. And we knew this now. The third, material, they use a mixture of titanium and carbon fiber, and it's a completely new material and a breakthrough technology, but not very well tested. It's different from aluminum. It's different from stainless steel where we know how it behaves.
And all the tests they were nondestructive nobody put Titan up to the very limit, you know, send it to the ocean, up to the very, very limit when Titan would collapse. And then they will see, okay, it resists up to this that nobody did that. It was only nondestructive tests. And one thing nobody said operational lifetime for it. Because every time you go down and go up, you are creating fatigue on the material you are creating. But who did that? And this goes to my last point on this, who certified that: Because it operates in international waters, there is a very low requirement in terms of law. So it was not certified. It means imagine, for example, every single plane you take is certified by enormous, innumerous boards and agencies. This one was not certified. Every single person that entered accept that that was not certified. And even, for example, if you see James Cameron speaking now, he said how on earth a company is able to operate with something that is not certified? You know, of course, the mother ship was certified in Canada, but not that vessel because that vessel only operated in international waters. And this drives me to the third point. It's all about business. Of course, there was a huge pressure from the founders and this to, you know, to get traction to, I would say, become a brand on this field to get, I would say, the acceptance of this ultra wealthy people to do this kind of discoveries.
It was a business. And of course, when you do a test that destroy things, it costs money, a lot of money. And they wanted to make listen to me because it's so extreme. They wanted to make this kind of trip accessible for people. And this is why it's $250,000. And look, I know what you think. You think that I'm crazy, but for that type of program, it's a bargain for these ultra wealthy people to have these experiences. And they wanted to make this popular. Just this year, Titan went to the wreckage of a Titanic five times. Nobody talks about the same five times what happened afterwards. This time it didn't support, you know, and its business, for example, that business would be far more reliable if they instead of charging 250, they charge 1.5 million, 2 million per person. And then they will say, this titan will go down, up and it will be retired from operations. Okay. If people want really to have this experience. But you know, you want to have more people and this and then you make this kind of trade offs that put everybody on risk. And on the business side also, it's very important. Everybody has the freedom to decide on the risks they want to run. Okay. This is my belief. But do this for I'm not talking about the CEO because he was a member of the company, but the other four, did they know exactly what were the risks? Did they know this information? And they accepted that or not? I'm not able to say on that.
But it's very and this is why an accident like this one is so incredible for us. And on the top of that, I just want to highlight one thing that amazes me is that in this same week, we had a ship with immigrants that was in open sea in the Mediterranean and it sunk, killing 80 people. And this is not even on the footnotes of any magazine. And this is on the top. Please. I don't want to make any judgment, but this because of the nature and because of the nature of the wealthy and this exotic attract much more attention than people on almost the same tragedy just trying to get a better life. So this is something for us to think on this week. So interesting. I remember my time at the UN where I had to cope with this challenges all the time, but again. I don't want to hear too, I would say, to blame those who decided to go down. And I think it's their right. And of course, my condolences to the families of this tragedy. This is very, very sad. But at least let's understand that when we go to the frontier, to the limit, there is an additional complexity. It's not like building a ship. Second, design engineering matters a lot. This is why the James Webb took 25 years. And look, if you become greedy on the business side, you may put everything else at risk, including people's life. Think about that. I hope you enjoy this podcast. See you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
