For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
I don’t think that this is the right question for this community, but I’m not optimistic on their rescue.
Even under ideal conditions, the ocean is enormous, and even with all things going well, finding a properly-equipped submarine that wants to be found, can be a bit like a needle in a haystack, at least according to people with more naval experience than I.
I hope that they would be rescued, since suffocating to death in a metal tube that’s sealed from the outside seems like rather a horrid way to go, but at the same time, the submersible that is lost was not particularly well equipped. The control system was a wireless game controller which was infamous for having dropout issues. Using controllers is fine and all, since they’re often used in commercial and military applications due to their intuitiveness and better ergonomics (plus the manufacturer doesn’t have to design and build a new one from scratch), but using one that was infamous for having connection problems was rather tempting fate.
The lost submersible also didn’t have anything like an emergency beacon that could be used to locate them, and it was sealed from outside. Even if they managed to resurface, anyone aboard would still be trapped within the tube, unable to get out.
It’s astonishing to me that they wouldn’t have an emergency beacon on a marine vessel that will kill it’s occupants if not unsealed in time.
It’s not like a beacon would be that expensive.
And why wasn’t there an independently powered ballast ditching system? Like an emergency button to quickly surface?
With the known unsafe culture of the company, and these obvious oversights, it’s amazing this didn’t happen sooner.
I wouldn’t even be surprised if the emergency air was somehow compromised in order to save a couple dollars.
OceanGate is just as doomed as their CEO.