NASA Insists It Didn’t Do Much Work on the Titanic Sub That Imploded, Killing Its Crew

The agency's role was exaggerated by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.

Submersive Distancing

As the US government works to get to the bottom of last summer's Titan submersible tragedy, NASA wants the record to reflect that it mostly wasn't the agency's fault.

During public testimony before the US Coast Guard this week, per ABC News, NASA materials engineer Justin Jackson said that although the agency was originally slated to do more work on the imploded OceanGate submersible, those plans never fully came to fruition.

Those plans, Jackson explained, dated back to early 2020 when OceanGate's then-CEO reached out to the agency to build a composite hull for the seacraft slated to explore the ruins of the original Titanic shipwreck. A contract under the Reimbursable Space Act Agreement was signed, but ultimately NASA wasn't able to build the hull due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ultimately, NASA only ended up doing remote consultation on a mockup of the submersible, but cooperation between the agency and OceanGate broke down in 2021 over marketing disagreements.

Fake Collab

As ABC News reported last summer, the agency was opposed to OceanGate saying on its marketing materials that the Titan sub had been "designed... in collaboration [with] experts from NASA."

"It was the language they were using was getting too close to us endorsing," Jackson told military investigators. "So it was, our folks had some heartburn with the endorsement level of it."

Ultimately, it seems that refusal to co-sign was pretty prescient.

Prior to its tragic final launch, company CEO Stockton Rush — who died along with four others when the Titan imploded under the weight of the ocean — told CBS in 2022 that that seemingly exaggerated collab made the whole endeavor safe.

"The pressure vessel is not MacGyvered at all because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA, [and] University of Washington," Rush told CBS reporter David Pogue. "Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go. You're still going to be safe."

Obviously, those assurances were empty in the end — and NASA, along with an embattled Boeing, wants none of that heat.

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