BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: The men who went missing after their submarine vanished while diving to get to the Titanic wreck are apparently locked inside the vessel as the sole entrance is sealed with 17 bolts and can be opened only from the outside. Operated by OceanGate Expeditions, the 22ft carbon fiber and titanium submersible was taking a team of five people to view the famous wreck when it went missing off the North American coast in the Atlantic on Monday, June 19.
The submersible was released around 4 am on Sunday, June 18, but lost contact with its mothership MV Polar Prince after 1 hour 45 minutes into the dive. The Titan is believed to have one crew member and four other passengers on board, including British billionaire Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henri Nargeolet, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, Pakistan millionaire Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman. The Boston Coast Guard estimates that passengers on board have 72 hours of oxygen left, and the carrier has a 'life support' of 96 hours. As the extensive search continues, here's what we know about the missing Titan submersible.
Submersible weighs as much as six mid-sized cars
The Titan is a research and survey submersible that can descend to a depth of 4,000 meters. The 6.7-meter (22-foot) ship, which is made of "titanium and filament wound carbon fiber," weighs 10,432 kg (23,000 lbs), which is almost the same as six mid-sized automobiles. It features a 4K Rayfin camera from Sub C Imaging, 2D sonar from Teledyne, 40,000 lumens of external illumination, and a laser scanner from 2G Robotics. The vessel has electronics and thruster control pods located outside the pressure hull to maximize the amount of room for people and equipment onboard.
Crew members locked inside vessel with 17 bolts
The Titan has to be propelled from a recovery platform that contains tanks for submerging and resurfacing the ship. In order to minimize any surface turbulence, the platform floods its flotation tanks with water for a controlled drop to a depth of 9.1 meters. When submerged, the platform employs a proprietary motion-dampening flotation technology to keep a surface connection while still offering a secure underwater platform. The sub comes to rest on the submerged platform after each dive, and the entire system is raised to the surface in about two minutes by pumping air into the ballast tanks. Once they reach the surface, there is no way to get out, as those inside are locked in with 17 bolts from the outside.
Titan is controlled by Playstation controller
Titan has a peak speed of only 3 knots, which means it can take eight hours or longer to explore the Titanic wreck, dive to its depths, and then climb back to the surface. The vessel is controlled by a reinforced Playstation controller, with buttons, joysticks, and gamepads. Despite the lack of GPS, it is led by text messages supplied by a crew above the water. According to the website, Titan communicates with the topside comms and tracking team via text messages which are exchanged via a USBL (ultra-short baseline) acoustic system.
'Unrivaled view' of the deep ocean
An aerospace-grade carbon fiber hull, titanium end caps, and a dome were used in the construction and design of the Titan. A team of engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center consulted with OceanGate’s engineers during the development of the submersible. The corporation said that Titan had been relocated around the end of April to make final preparations for the 2023 Titanic expedition. It features two titanium hemispheres and the largest manned submersible filament-wound carbon fiber hull. OceanGate claims that Titan's viewport is "the largest of any deep diving submersible" and that its technology offers an "unrivaled view" of the deep ocean.