1. A submersible has gone missing while on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic in the Atlantic Ocean. An extensive search and rescue mission is now unfolding. Here’s what we know so far.
2. The submersible was carrying people down to the wreck of the Titanic. OceanGate, a private company operating out of Washington, provides crewed submersibles for industry, research and exploration. Each dive is meant to include a scientific objective, including studying the wreck’s decay.
3. The inaugural dive took place in 2021, according to the company’s website. Following the success of its 2021 and 2022 expeditions to the Titanic wreck, OceanGate announced it would continue to return annually to monitor the decay of the iconic vessel. OceanGate hired the Canadian vessel Polar Prince to ferry dozens of people and its Titan to the North Atlantic wreck site.
4. The US Coast Guard said on Twitter that the Polar Prince lost contact with the submersible about 1 hour and 45 minutes after it began diving toward the site on Sunday morning, local time. David Concannon, an adviser to the company, also confirmed this. It had a 96-hour oxygen supply, he said in an email to The Associated Press (AP) on Monday afternoon — this was 32 hours after the sub left the surface. Mr Concannon told the AP he was supposed to be on the dive but could not go due to a matter with another client.
This kind of extreme adventuring seems to have become quite popular amongst the mega rich, given the opportunity would you take a seat on a private spacecraft or submersible? Why, Why not?
5. The US Coast Guard said there was one pilot and four “mission specialists” aboard. Mission specialists are people who pay to come along on OceanGate’s expeditions, taking turns operating sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible. Among the five people on board the Titan, just three names have been confirmed.
6. Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, were on board, their family said in a statement. “We are very grateful for the concern being shown by our colleagues and friends and would like to request everyone to pray for their safety,” the statement said. Hamish Harding, a 59-year-old British billionaire businessman and explorer, was also on board.
7. Mr Harding holds three Guinness World Records, including longest duration at full ocean depth by a crewed vessel. His stepson wrote on Facebook that Harding had “gone missing on [a] submarine”. A day earlier, the billionaire posted on his social media that he would be aboard the submarine. There have been no posts from him since.
We now know the fate of the submersible, given the information we have thus far, do you think this was a particularly dangerous mission? Why, Why not?
8. The wreck of the Titanic lies at a depth of almost 4,000 metres at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean,about 600 kilometres off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada. The five-person Titan is capable of diving to 4,000 metres. It weighs 9,072 kilograms in the air, but is ballasted to be neutrally buoyant once it reaches the sea floor, according to OceanGate. Unlike submarines that leave and return to port under their own power, submersibles require a ship to launch and recover them.
9. The Titan is made of titanium and filament wound carbon fibre, OceanGate says on its website. It has proven to “withstand the enormous pressures of the deep ocean”, the company says. According to the company, the sub has sensors to analyse the effects of changing pressure on the sub as it dives, in order to assess the integrity of the structure.
10. “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,” the company says. OceanGate charges $US250,000 ($364,612) for a spot on its eight-day expedition to see the famous wreck in its Titan submersible. A full dive to the wreck, including the descent and ascent, reportedly takes 8 hours
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