You've probably heard about the mysterious, lost Titanic tourist sub, and the urgent search and rescue efforts that launched yesterday.
1. The missing vessel isn't actually a submarine. It's a "submersible" named Titan with limited communication and navigation controls, which is operated by a company called OceanGate Expeditions.
2. Titan was designed to carry five people . . . usually two crew members and three tourists . . . down to view the wreckage of the Titanic, which sank in 1912.
3. The Titanic rests about 13,000 feet underwear, and Titan IS capable of descending about that far, after being launched from a ship at the surface.
4. For this expedition, the crew departed Newfoundland, Canada on Saturday onboard a ship called the Polar Prince. They began the dive inside Titan early Sunday morning . . . but contact was lost after just an hour and 45 minutes.
5. It generally takes about two hours for the submersible to get down to the wreckage, so it could've been close to the end of its descent when it lost contact.
6. The Titan has only done a few expeditions . . . the first being just two years ago. And last year, there was one incident where communication broke down for a couple hours, and Titan got lost . . . but they never fully lost contact.
Due to that issue, the Titan wasn't able to find the Titanic wreckage that day, but they went back down later that week and had a successful mission. (Here is a report about that trip.)
7. There's a video on YouTube that shows just how basic the submersible's controls are. There's no GPS or radio onboard, so they get TEXT MESSAGES from the ship above telling it where to go . . . and the vessel is "driven" by a Bluetooth Xbox video game controller. (???)
8. This past Sunday night, Titan was reported "overdue" . . . and then early yesterday, the U.S. Coast Guard launched search and rescue operations. A sector was sent from Boston . . . about 900 nautical miles from the site.
9. The situation was immediately urgent, because by yesterday morning, the submersible had been underwater for more than 24 hours, and they only have between 70 and 96 hours of air onboard. And limited food and water.
10. Not much is publicly known about how the Titan was equipped to handle emergencies, like if there were beacons that could signal its location.
11. But a journalist who was onboard the aborted mission last summer is Tweeting about it, and he says Titan has "seven ways" to rise back to the surface in an emergency, but he adds, "The question is, why haven't they?"
12. According to reports, Titan's passengers included a British billionaire businessman and explorer named Hamish Harding . . . a former French Navy Commander and top Titanic expert named Paul-Henry Nargeolet . . . and the CEO of OceanGate Expeditions Stockton Rush.
13. Trips like these are super exclusive, and reportedly cost at least $250,000 a pop . . . and even then, OceanGate claims they aren't making money on the trips yet, because of the high costs of the expedition, especially gas.
14. Unfortunately, you're up against a lot when you're doing searches at sea . . . there are tough weather conditions and the inability to do much at night . . . and in this case, there's also the depth . . . the lack of location data . . . and the fact that this is a very remote area of the Atlantic Ocean.
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