An engineer with the National Transportation Safety Board is scheduled to testify in front of the Coast Guard on Wednesday about the experimental submersible that imploded en route to the wreckage of the Titanic.Engineer Don Kramer is slated to testify as the investigation continues into the implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible.OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush was among the five people who died when the submersible imploded in June 2023.The Coast Guard opened a public hearing earlier this month that is part of a high level investigation into the cause of the implosion.
Some of the testimony has focused on the troubled nature of the company.Earlier in the hearing, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said he frequently clashed with Rush and felt the company was committed only to making money.“The whole idea behind the company was to make money,” Lochridge testified.“There was very little in the way of science.”Lochridge and other previous witnesses painted a picture of a company that was impatient to get its unconventionally designed craft into the water.
The accident set off a worldwide debate about the future of private undersea exploration.The hearing is expected to run through Friday and include several more witnesses, some of whom were closely connected to the company.Other witnesses scheduled to testify Wednesday were William Kohnen of Hydrospace Group Inc.
and Bart Kemper of Kemper Engineering.The co-founder of the company told the Coast Guard panel Monday that he hoped a silver lining of the disaster is that it will inspire a renewed interest in exploration, including the deepest waters of the world’s oceans.Businessman Guillermo Sohnlein, who helped found OceanGate with Rush, ultimately left the company before the Titan disaster.“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration.
This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles and I don’t believe that it will be,” Sohnlein said.Coast Guard officials noted at th...