The biggest challenge for those on board the submarine that disappeared during an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic is not to panic, otherwise their oxygen will run out faster. Easier said than done perhaps, because the five may be at a great depth in a narrow tube of six meters long, which is controlled with a converted game controller. They cannot get out themselves, because the submarine is closed from the outside with thick bolts.
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The Titan’s hold is not for those suffering from claustrophobia. The entire submarine is 6.7 meters long, 2.8 meters wide and 2.5 meters high, but the space where the pilot and four passengers are seated only takes up part of it. Images of the submarine show that you can only sit down, not stand up.
There is exactly one button on board: the one to switch the equipment on and off. Furthermore, the control is done with a converted game controller. According to CEO Stockton Rush of diving company OceanGate Expeditions – who is believed to be among the five missing – it was made by the Swiss hardware manufacturer Logitech. “It’s actually a Sony Play Station-like game controller,” he told the British BBC. “If you want to go forward, press forward, if you want to go backward, press backward and the same with left and right.”
Speed
The device reaches a speed of 5.5 kilometers per hour, or the pace of a trained walker. It takes about two hours to descend the 4,000 meters to the wreckage of the Titanic and just as long to return. You can look outside through one tiny window in the back. You can do that from an improvised toilet, read: a hole in the bottom of the submarine in which there is a bottle to put a pee in.
The craft weighs 10 tons and is made of carbon fiber and titanium, not a luxury if you know that it can descend to a depth of 4,000 meters. The pressure there is 380 times greater than at the surface of the water.
On the outside are four electric drives, lights, cameras, a sonar and a scanner. Images can be viewed live on a digital screen on board. There is no GPS. Communication is done with messages that are exchanged via ultra-short baseline: an acoustic underwater positioning system.
If five people are on board, oxygen is available for 96 hours. Under normal circumstances, that is. If someone panicked or if the crew moved more than usual, they would use more oxygen and have less time to reach the surface.
And even if they manage to reach the surface, they have to keep hoping that they will be found in time. Because the heavy access hatch cannot be opened from the inside. An external team is needed to open the colossus and let the crew out.
PORTRAIT. Diving to the sunken Titanic is not even the most extreme adventure of billionaire Hamish Harding: “A food supply doesn’t matter. If things go wrong, you won’t come back” (+)
Five occupants, including two very wealthy businessmen, and little chance of escape: everything we know about the missing submarine
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