Titan

An Ocean of Imagination.

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When I was a child in Ohio in the 1970s, I would sit lay down in front of the big console television – too close, my mother would say – and watch “The Underwater World of Jacques Cousteau“, whenever he was on, mesmerized by his exploration.

More than Star Trek or Gunsmoke or even M*A*S*H, this was the television show that could hold me hostage to the demands of parents.

It was a very different world then, and a very different world for me. Ohio is nowhere near an ocean, but through the lens of a huge wooden console television, I could see the world that Jacques Cousteau was exploring. Wondrous!

When we were asked at the Elementary School what we wanted to be, you heard the standard fare of ‘fireman’, ‘doctor’ and ‘policeman’. And then, I was there standing up saying, “I want to be an oceanographer… or maybe a Marine Biologist, I’m not sure yet.” I remember a few heads turned, and one girl smiled at me.

To me, it was all about the fun parts Jacques Cousteau would show us, the edited version of his world. That’s what we share with each other, really, our own edited versions of the world, some more staged than others. I did not understand all the work that went into it, all the waiting around, none of that.

No, it seemed like every time I saw my buddy Jacques Cousteau, he was immediately jumping into the water and showing me the cool stuff – not all the work that went into finding it, all the work in preparing and all the safety precautions. To my young mind, all I saw was that this guy got to go floating around the world and showing me the coolest stuff I had ever seen that was real. It was stunning, it provoked imagination.

Later in life, if I wasn’t near an ocean, I was on the way to live within driving distance of one. Snorkeling or diving, if there was something worth seeing I would go look. I also spent a lot of time looking where no one else did, crawling on reefs that jutted out of the ocean at low tide, scraping myself but peering into cracks and crevices.

I never found anything new to the species, but each thing I found was new to me. A new creature. A new thing to understand. A new part of the world that I had not just read about, but saw in person, experienced in person. I had lived some moments with it, sharing time however fleeting, knowing full well that they were likely looking back at me. This was especially true of the octopuses I interacted with.

If I was fortunate, it had not bitten me or stung me somehow. I’ve been pretty fortunate, though I will tell you swimming through a bunch of baby Portugese Man-O’-Wars in a sleeveless t-shirt does not have a fortunate outcome.

The equipment, though, wasn’t cheap, and my life had a way of pushing and pulling me away.

When there was nothing to look at in the water, the water was still there, a promise of the unexplored, the wind always seeming to blow my hair one way or the other as I looked out at it. I belong near the ocean. There’s a part of me that always wanted to be a part of it, living underwater like in Jules Verne‘s “20,000 Leagues Under The Sea“.

So in my life, I’ve read everything I could find on anything to do with the oceans. My time in the Navy wasn’t on board a ship, so I didn’t get the ‘haze grey and underway’ experience, but the Navy being the Navy every command was treated as a ‘ship’, so I understood the crew thing.

Fast forward to today.

The news finally confirmed what I had thought had happened, that the Titan had imploded on it’s little expedition. It was the only reasonable explanation given the redundancies for surfacing. I’m no expert, but I know how systems are engineered for hostile environments and.

If anything went wrong, it was supposed to surface within 24 hours either by the crew or automatically. That it never showed up at the surface within 48 hours, to me, meant that it had suffered a catastrophic failure.

But to me, the biggest question remains, “Why go down there?” The French diver I understood to an extent, but the rest I did not. A wreck seen once is pretty much the same wreck, it would be cold down there (I read that it frosted on the inside when it did successfully go down), visibility was limited to a porthole with the light you brought with you… and the wreck symbolized one of the greatest tragedies at sea, and in my mind is a graveyard.

I don’t imagine they were laying wreaths.

So as someone who has explored, I don’t see why a sane person would spend $250K to go do that. I could see scientists doing it under specific circumstances, but in a world where drones are commonplace, I’d rather watch a flat screen from a drone and have a long hot shower whenever I wanted. What sort of person wants to do that? And who has that kind of money laying around in their couch? Maybe the two questions are connected.

We spent a lot of time looking for them, too. There will be some knowledge to gain from this for underwater engineering, I’m sure, as well as procedures and so on. Yet it seems a waste overall, a waste to go down in the first place, a waste to everyone who went looking, a waste to their loved ones who now are left to mourn, perhaps even saying themselves that it was a waste.

As deaths go, I imagine it wasn’t too bad. It would likely be quick at that depth, the pressure of 4,000 lbs per square inch taking their lives probably as fast as a human can lose a life. Maybe there was a leak at first, and maybe there was a bit of anxiety or despair.

The ocean is deep, mysterious, full of amazing things. We should continue exploring. Tourism, though, should be kept to PADI depths. We have flat screens. We have drones. We should be smart.

In Search of Sugar.

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I was out of sugar, an immediate concern, but not so immediate that I didn’t make one cup of coffee to wake up enough to go get it.

Along the way, I felt hunger, so I stopped by a Subway to get a breakfast sandwich. The line was long, someone had called in an idiotic order – and Trinis love idiotic orders. Everyone wants different things, and the selection of vegetables varied from sandwich to sandwich, across 6 sandwiches. The lady looked up, saw me, and immediately knew my order and got it started.

I suppose I am a bit predictable.

Eating the sandwich, with the coffee kicking in, I made a mental list of other things I should get while at the store while watching a young mother try to be sensible to what looked to be a 4 year old girl, with mixed success.

“Why can’t I have coke?”

“Because you’re not an adult, that’s why.”

Do as I say, not as I do. I smiled, cleared what little mess I had made at the table, and left – but there was a coffee shop nearby, so I decided I needed more coffee. It was on the way, after all. I strode in and happily was at the front of the line, and the barista served the coffee immediately, with her signature, “My darling Steve”. I asked if she was working alone.

“They abandoned me!”

“Well, the customers haven’t and we appreciate you.”

Settling in to finish the coffee, I caught bits of conversation. Once was related to some work drama, where two ladies were complaining about a third lady who was not there – something to do with ordering. Two elderly and one young woman were pointing and chattering at something on a laptop. Inane background noise, while every now and then the two possible college women were projecting their voices at each other from 2 feet apart at odd times, discussing something about a class.

Mundane.

Heading to the store, I found what I needed – the sugar – checked out, and came home. Writing this – the whole reason I’m writing this – is that no one was talking about the lost submersible, the Titan. It was not a part of their lives, it did not matter to them.

As one person put it yesterday, “If some people spent that kind of money to go looking for the Titanic in a ship named Titan… maybe they found it and people will visit their graves too.”

The world is harsh, people are harsh, and nature cannot be fooled.

And I forgot the sugar.

The Dark: The Titan submersible.

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It’s very dark down there. So dark, in fact, that the image at left might not do it justice. Lights don’t penetrate very far at those depths. At the depth of the wreckage of RMS Titanic, the pressure is around 4,000 pounds per square inch – the bite force of a saltwater crocodile.

Because of that, the Titan is spartan. Videos show a bluetooth controller and touchscreens in tight quarters. People spend $250,000 US to do this.

The New York Times has great coverage of the entire situation with the rescue efforts of the submersible Titan.

People also spend a lot of money to go to space. Virgin Galactic is willing to take $450,000 US of your spare change that you may find in your couch, as an example. It does have better lighting on that trip, I hear.

I’m an explorer myself, and I enjoy seeing new and interesting places and things. I have no interest in seeing the RMS Titanic’s wreckage which is essentially a graveyard. No one does expeditions like this in Pearl Harbor because those dead are honored and respected. The RMS Titanic’s dead apparently are not as much. Is it exploration or is it tourism? I think it’s tourism. Thrill seeking.

We can’t truly fathom how out of depth we are that deep in the ocean.

Why it sank is summarized as, “High speeds, a fatal wrong turn, cut costs, weather conditions, a dismissed key iceberg warning and lack of binoculars and lifeboats all contributed.” In essence, mistakes were made and the oceans do not abide mistakes very well.

Of course, we all hope that they are found alive and well, and someone will give them steaming cups of hot cocoa for their trouble. The news is alive with it because the news loves a good tragedy in the making, particularly one where it’s very dark and air is running out.

James Cameron might even do a movie about it, regardless of how it turns out, though I expect there won’t be much in the way of romance – and romance is what really sold the movie about the Titanic because we all know how it ends.

I suppose what bothers me most is that rescuing 5 survivors off that submersible that voluntarily went down there is such a news cycle item when there are people who are unable to get assistance in situations that they were involuntarily placed in. There are plenty of people who could use assistance from all these governments to simply keep their heads above water.

When the Challenger exploded, as could well happen with some of that space tourism stuff, these were scientists that were going to actually explore. To find out new things, to broaden humanity’s horizons, and I simply don’t feel the same about some people who pay exorbitant amounts to have a seat without giving anything of value back to humanity other than saying that they had a window view of a very sunken ship.

I bear them no ill will, in fact I wish them a safe rescue. It just seems priorities are askew. People paying to throw themselves off cliffs are costing millions in rescue efforts. People are spending hours watching nothing happen, because these things are not easy to do, and we have gained…

Well, when it’s all said and done, we’ll see what we’ve gained from this other than some advertising for the media, and maybe cost to taxpayers of the involved nations. That seems very weird to me.

Very weird.

It is, after all, very dark down there. We can send unmanned craft to go look at things that deep.