THE COMPANY BEHIND the missing submersible near the wreck of the Titanic has come under scrutiny in the wake of the disappearance.
According to OceanGate Expeditions, the submersible has 96 hours of oxygen. The submersible first set off on Sunday at around 8pm local time, which suggests that the vessel now has less than two days of “life support” left.
Rescue crews from the US and Canadian coastguard embarked on surface-level searches yesterday and through the night in an attempt to locate the vanished vessel, which lost contact with the rest of the world less than two hours into its journey.
In the wake of the disappearance, attention has turned to OceanGate and the company’s CEO, Stockton Rush, who is aboard the missing sub.
Rush is a former pilot, having qualified in 1981, and holds a BSE in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University. He has since served on the boards of multiple exploration tech firms.
His biography notes that he “personally built a Glasair III experimental aircraft, which he still owns and flies”. The missing vessel uses sonar made by Teledyne, a company which Rush cofounded.
On the journey’s original validation dive, became the second person in history, along with film director James Cameron, to complete a solo dive to this depth.
Also aboard the vessel are former French navy commander Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and Hamish Harding, a British businessman and pilot, who was aboard the Blue Origin NS-21 space flight (the fifth manned suborbital space launched by Jeff Bezos’ space travel company).
As the search for the sub continues, much of the available evidence paints an eyebrow-raising picture of the vehicle’s safety specifications.
In a report by CBS published late last year, Rush is captured showing off that the navigation of the entire submersible is controlled by what looks like an early-generation video game controller. Elsewhere, Rush points to other parts of the vessel, saying he bought them at “Camping World”.
In the same video, CBS science reporter David Pogue reads from a waiver that states the vessel, named Titan, is an “experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death”.
Pogue, who signed that waiver in order to make the journey to the wreck of the Titanic last year, has since said on Twitter: “There are hydraulic, electric, and mechanical ways to rise. For example, they can drop sand bags. They can dump heavy lead construction pipes. They can jettison the legs. They can use the propellers. They can inflate an air bladder.
“The question is why haven’t they?”
16 June marked the vessel’s fifth journey to survey the wreck of the Titanic, having completed two journeys in 2021 and 2022, and two more earlier this month. 13 further descents had been planned, with a spot on the dive costing up to $250,000 per person.
The company’s most recent YouTube video shows rapper Macklemore going 400m below sea level in an OceanGate sub to look at sixgill sharks. The depth capability of the Titanic submersible is 4,000m.
The vessel relies on Starlink, the satellite internet service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Earlier this month OceanGate wrote on Twitter: “Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection we need to make our Titanic dive operations a success”. Unfortunately, rescue teams have been unable to establish communications with the vessel at any point.
Pogue has also confirmed that the submersible does not have a locator beacon, which could function as a black box and allow rescue teams to pinpoint where the vessel might be. Due to this, and the remote location and potential depth of the vessel, rescue operations face an uphill battle.
This difficulty is underscored by the fact that the Titan is the only five-person sub in the world capable of reaching the Titanic wreck. Historically, there were Russian-made submersibles which traversed the wreckage, but between 2005 and 2019, there had been no human visits to the Titanic. There are certainly very few, if any, other companies who offer such a tour.
At the time of writing, there is no suggestion as to what may have caused the disappearance.
OceanGate claims that the sub’s “proprietary Real Time Hull Health Monitoring (RTM) systems provides an unparalleled safety feature that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive”.
“This onboard health analysis monitoring system provides early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.”
As of this afternoon, however, the whereabouts of the vessel remain unknown.
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