--- title: "When You Hear How the Doomed Titanic Sub’s Sonar System Worked, You May Die of Secondhand Embarrassment" description: "Former OceanGate contractor Antonella Wilby revealed that the imploded submersible relied on handwritten coordinates and Excel spreadsheets." date: "2024-09-23" modified: "2024-09-23" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/titanic-sub-sonar-system" categories: - "Future Society" tags: - "oceangate" - "submersible" - "the digest" - "titanic" --- # When You Hear How the Doomed Titanic Sub’s Sonar System Worked, You May Die of Secondhand Embarrassment ![Former OceanGate contractor Antonella Wilby revealed that the imploded submersible relied on handwritten coordinates and Excel spreadsheets.]() *\Image: OceanGate\* ## The Notebook During the ongoing US Coast Guard hearings into last year's OceanGate Titanic submersible disaster, a former contractor [revealed a shockingly inadequate navigation system]() the company's Titan vessel used to rely on. During her testimony, former contractor Antonella Wilby described how the submersible's ultra-short baseline (USBL) acoustic positioning system — which uses sonar pings to measure its velocity, position, and depth — actually worked. Instead of automatically feeding the positioning data into a mapping software, Wilby noted that the Titan's coordinates were written down by hand into a notebook before being entered into an Excel spreadsheet. From there, the data was fed into mapping software — a stunningly convoluted system that doesn't instill much confidence. "We tried to do that every five minutes," Wilby said during her testimony, as [quoted by the *Independent*](), "but it was a lot to do." The company claimed that it was working on an in-house navigation system, but had run out of time. "This is an idiotic way to do navigation," she [reportedly told supervisors]() before being sacked by OceanGate. ## Scribble Quibble We've already seen startling revelations come out of the Coast Guard's ongoing hearings, including footage of the [submersible wreck's tail cone]() and its [imploded crew compartment](). Besides relying on Excel spreadsheets to manually enter coordinate data, news also emerged last year that the Titan used a [wireless off-the-shelf Logitech gamepad for steering](). During a [*CBS News* segment]() at the time, reporter Joseph Frandino referred to the "MacGyver jury-riggedness" of the submersible. During her testimony, Wilby also recalled hearing a deafening bang when the Titan surfaced after a dive in 2022, which was loud enough to be audible above the ocean's surface. According to a separate testimony by OceanGate's former director of marine operations David Lochridge, former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush [had already crashed]() a Titan predecessor, dubbed Cyclops 1, in 2016. Rush was one of the five passengers on board the Titan when it imploded last year. In short, the more we find out about the events that led up to the Titan's surmise in early June of last year, the less surprised we are. It's starting to look more and more like Rush's well-documented disregard for safety regulations — he once bragged that safety was a "[waste]()" — may have played a big role in the disaster, an unfortunate and likely avoidable event that was steeped in controversy from the start. "I saw what I would classify as safety theatre," Wilby [said]() during her testimony when asked about the safety culture at OceanGate. "Don't worry it'll be fun," she said she was once told after raising questions about basic safety. "You'll have fun." **More on OceanGate:** *[New Footage Shows Imploded Crew Compartment of Doomed Titanic Sub]()* ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()