NASA, Boeing describe limited roles despite Titan's owner touting aerospace ties

OceanGate co-founder Stockton Rush said the carbon fiber hull used in an experimental submersible that imploded was developed with help of NASA and aerospace manufacturers, but a NASA official said Thursday that the agency had little involvement and a Boeing official said some recommendations were ignored.

NASA intended to play a role in building and testing the carbon fiber hull. But the COVID-19 pandemic prevented NASA from fulfilling its role, other than consulting on a one-third scale mockup, not the submersible Titan that imploded while attempting to go to the Titanic wreckage, said Justin Jackson, a materials engineer for NASA.

At one point, Jackson said NASA balked at allowing its name to be invoked by OceanGate. “The language they were using was getting too close to us endorsing, so our folks had some heartburn,” he told a Coast Guard panel.

Boeing was involved in an early feasibility study of the use of carbon fiber for Titan's hull and in OceanGate's acoustic sensors on the hull, but OceanGate departed from recommendations on the hull thickness and orientation of carbon fiber layers for greatest strength, said Mark Negley, material and process engineer at Boeing.