Sealed In With A Game Controller: Inside The Missing Titanic Sub

A submersible carrying five people that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic wreckage in the Atlantic Ocean is a cramped vessel called the Titan that is piloted by a video game controller and sealed by more than a dozen bolts.

U.S. and Canadian officials are searching for the wayward craft, which the U.S. Coast Guard said went missing after a research vessel called the Polar Prince lost contact with it about 900 miles off Cape Cod, Massachusetts, roughly an hour and 45 minutes into a dive on Sunday.

OceanGate Expeditions, which owns the Titan and offers trips to the Titanic wreckage for $250,000, says on its website that the Cyclops-class vessel has a 96-hour life support system for a crew of five. The Titan weighs 23,000 pounds and can reach a depth of nearly 2.5 miles underwater, which is about the depth of the Titanic’s wreckage on the Atlantic Ocean’s floor about 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.

Featuring a viewport window on one end, the Titan is roughly the size of a van and can work with smaller, commercially available ships, Oceangate says. It does not require a “man-rated crane or A-frame” for launch and recovery.

Oceangate says the Titan has “pressure vessel material” made of carbon fiber and titanium. The vessel can move at a speed of up to 3 knots with four electric thrusters. Integrated technology features include sonar equipment, a laser scanner, lights, and cameras. The Titan attaches itself to a launch and recovery platform that can sink by filling tanks with water and return to the surface in two minutes by filling ballast tanks with air.

This short clip will help you understand why the Titanic mini sub is missing and why this was an accident waiting to happen. pic.twitter.com/srrXmFnoTq

— Frida Ghitis (@FridaGhitis) June 20, 2023

In some ways, the vessel boasts state-of-the-art technology. Oceangate says the Titan is the only manned submersible to employ an “integrated real-time health monitoring system” to monitor the hull. The system is supposed to provide “early warning detection” to the pilot if a problem with the hull is found, allowing time for the ship to make it back to the surface.

OceanGate also said the Titan features “off-the-shelf technology” which “helped to streamline the construction, and makes it simple to operate and replace parts in the field.”

In a CBS News report last year, OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush showed off an off-brand video game controller that he said “runs the whole thing and a largely empty interior except for an assortment of screens and some sort of toilet set-up.”

Remember my voyage to the Titanic last last summer? In OceanGate’s homemade carbon-fiber sub? (https://t.co/BqPhXNQbl6) They took passengers out again this summer—but as of today, the sub is lost. Coast Guard is doing a search and rescue. https://t.co/1u3x3Ucjf5 pic.twitter.com/j6z1efTCBH

— David Pogue (@Pogue) June 19, 2023

The report by CBS correspondent David Pogue said the Titan is sealed by an outside crew with 17 bolts, and there is no way for the crew to get out themselves. The report also noted that the submersible lacks underwater GPS but rather is guided by text messages from the surface ship.

As reported by Fox News, Rush told Pogue in a November episode of the “Unsung Science” podcast that he worries most about “things that will stop me from being able to get to the surface. Overhangs, fish nets, entanglement hazards.” But in reference to general safety, Pogue said he did not think the underwater voyage was “very dangerous,” noting the “scary part for most people is going down to 6,000 PSI [pounds per square inch].”

As of Monday evening, the U.S. Coast Guard said the missing vessel may have as little as 70 hours of oxygen remaining. The five-person crew is believed to include billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet, and British businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, according to The New York Times. The Daily Mail reports Rush himself is the fifth person aboard the submersible.

“Our entire focus is on the crew members in the submersible and their families, we are deeply thankful for the extensive assistance we have received from several government agencies and deep sea companies in our efforts to reestablish contact with the submersible,” OceanGate said in a statement on Monday.