Titan: To the Titanic and Back 13 ½ Times

This book was released on June 7, 2025, just before the second anniversary of the Titan tragedy. The United States Coast Guard (USCG) completed hearings about the accident at the end of September 2024. The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had additional information that is not in the public record to help them formulate their conclusions. However, the fascinating public hearings provided all the information needed to speculate on the root cause of the implosion. As I expected, in the final report released by the Coast Guard on August 5, 2025, they could not specifically identify the exact root cause of the implosion. The possibilities described in my book were exactly right. Discovery and Netflix films were "docu-dramas" that lacked engineering and fabrication details. This book greatly supplements those films with more detailed information and context. If you read this book, you will be amazed at how much was left out of those films. It is a privilege to work with the USCG under their Author Assistance Agreement. The content of this book was reviewed by the Coast Guard prior to publishing. This book includes dozens of custom graphics to better explain the engineering decisions. It also includes modified graphics from the hearings to improve upon those graphics. This book does not sensationalize the tragedy and is not written to disparage Stockton Rush. However, decisions and stories that involve him are analyzed and commented on honestly. Most people are not going to watch 70 hours of painfully slow-moving testimony, as I did to create my YouTube videos about OceanGate and the Titan. The challenge was to digest the first eight days of testimony—which included over 60 hours of testimony from 22 witnesses—and develop cohesive stories. Parts of stories that fit together could be spread throughout one witness's testimony since different examiners could ask the same question in multiple ways. Parts of the stories that fit together could be given by various witnesses over numerous days. Then, the available documentation was used to determine what was relevant to each story. Each story is its own jigsaw puzzle. This book is therefore an educational resource about the disaster, presented in story form, to coalesce the most pertinent information about OceanGate and what led to the Titan implosion. It provides the most efficient way to understand the nuances of the Titan disaster. In the future, this book will serve as a reminder and a reference about this complex tragedy because this story will be discussed for decades. The content also helps one better understand the context of the same witnesses who gave interviews—but not under oath—to the media companies that have recently released documentaries about OceanGate and Titan. The final report pointed to hull delamination with buckling, versus water intrusion at the forward ring epoxy joint as the two probable causes. The third in line as the root cause of the accident, the acrylic viewport, was ruled out. This book explains the details that led to these conclusions better than the final report explains them. Reading this book will better prepare you to understand the final reports. Thank you for considering reading my book. Gordon Telepun