Consider This from NPR - What It's Like Inside The Submersible That's Lost In The Atlantic

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Time is running out to locate the submersible vessel that went missing Sunday, on a voyage to visit the wreckage of the Titanic. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates the five people aboard the vessel, known as the Titan, could run out of air by Thursday morning.CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue was aboard the same vessel to take the same voyage last year. He says its interior is the size of a minivan, it's built with a combination of off-the-rack and highly technical components and it has a hatch that's bolted shut from the outside.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. In the search and rescue operation for a missing submersible in the North Atlantic right now, time is measured in breathable air. And there's not much left on the 22-foot vessel known as the Titan, wherever the Titan might be. We know at this point we're approximately about 40, 41 hours. That is U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick at about 1 p.m. Eastern

time on Tuesday, which means the five people aboard the Titan could run out of air before 6 a.m. on Thursday. The vessel lost contact with its support ship on Sunday. It was run by a company called OceanGate, which offers exclusive, high-priced tours to visit the wreckage of the Titanic more than two miles below the ocean's surface. It's basically imagining a spacecraft disappeared on the far side of the moon. That's David Marquet. He's a retired U.S. Navy submarine captain. A, you have to find it. B, you have to get to it. Even when you get to it, you still need to somehow get the people out of there to safety.

Marquet told NPR on Tuesday morning that chances of survival at this point are very low. I'm hopeful, but I think the families should prepare themselves for bad news. I would say at this point about 1%. Consider this. As the search for the Titan continues, attention is beginning to turn to the vessel's operator and its safety protocols. Ahead, we'll hear from someone with firsthand experience on an OceanGate trip. These dives take place in international waters, so there's no governing body.

And we signed waivers that would curl your toes. From NPR, I'm Elsa Chang. It's Tuesday, June 20th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

Download the WISE app today or visit WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theschmidt.org. It's Consider This from NPR. David Pogue has been aboard the same vessel that is now missing somewhere in the North Atlantic. He's a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, and

he took a trip on the Titan Submersible last year on assignment. My colleague Mary Louise Kelly caught up with him to talk about it. Hey there. Hi. Hi. So were you doing the same itinerary that these five people set out to do, going down to explore the wreck of the Titanic? I was indeed. We were there to do a story about this very unusual adventure travel company, and they're one of-kind submersible. Yeah. And describe it for us. It's called the Titan. It is not big, 22 feet long? Yeah. Inside, it feels like you're in a minivan without seats. You sit on the floor. The actual body of the thing is a carbon fiber cylinder, so the walls are curved. It's very modern-looking. It has cool lighting. There's a sound system. There's a couple of computer screens.

And there is one round window at the end, about 21 inches across. And when you're visiting the Titanic, you take turns looking out the porthole. Looking out the porthole. Okay. How do you steer it? Who's steering it? Who's controlling it? There are two pilots, one of which is Stockton Rush, the subs designer and the CEO,

and he drives the sub with a game controller. It looks like the one you'd use with an Xbox or something. It has the, the right levers and buttons to go up, down, left, right, and so on. And his argument is it might look cheap and consumery, but it's a tried and true, very reliable component, and it does exactly what we need. And sorry, just to be clear, this is something that looks like a video game controller or actually is an off-the-shelf video game controller? It actually is an off-the-shelf video game controller? It actually is an off-the-shelf game controller. I will say that there are a number of off-the-shelf parts on this Subversible. He told me that the lighting he bought from camperworld.com. The main thing, though, is that the part we care about, that carbon fiber tube, the pressure vessel, as he calls it, that was designed in conjunction with NASA and the University of Washington and was intended to be fail-safe.

And, I mean, you came back. You're here talking to me now. So you were safe. Did things go to plan? Was your trip smooth? My trip was not smooth. We made it 37 feet down, and then they ran into a mechanical problem, and we had to abort the dive. I was devastated and crushed and did not see it coming.

But I have since learned that these dives rarely go to plan. With each of these expeditions that OceanGate makes, they spend five days over the shipwreck. And typically of those five days, they manage to get down only once or twice. And this season, it's been zero. And the setup you're describing is that there's the submersible, which is actually going all the way down, and there's a surface ship that is close by that is in constant contact and where you're kind of launching to and from? That's right. The definition of a submersible is a craft that is too weak and low-powered to get anywhere on its own.

It has to be carried everywhere. So we sail out to the Titanic spot on this surface vessel where the controls are and the navigation. There is no GPS underwater, and regular radio waves don't travel underwater. So all the where are we stuff depends on the control room on the ship. So as we all try to imagine what the experience has been for this crew of five on the now-missing Titan. Walk me through what kind of prep, what kind of training you were required to do before you got on board. We got a lot of training for getting around on the surface vessel, which is not a consumer vehicle

by any means. It's an industrial petroleum-rigged servicing ship. So it has dangers of its own. And then we got in-depth tours of the Titan itself inside and outside. We learned the parts of it. There really is no safety gear in there except for a fire extinguisher and fire masks, which we practiced putting on and taking off, that's pretty much it because there's not much you can do if something goes wrong. What you can do is rise to the surface. And there are seven different ways to return to the surface, just redundancy after redundancy. They can drop sandbags. They can drop lead pipes. They can inflate a balloon. They can use the thrusters. They can even jettison the legs

of the sub to lose weight. And some of these, by the way, work even if the power is out and even if everyone on board is passed out. So there's sort of a dead man's switch such that the hooks holding onto sandbags dissolve after a certain number of hours in the water, release the sandbags, and bring you to the surface even if you're unconscious. I want to understand what you're saying. You're saying there's redundancy upon redundancy, seven different ways this vessel is supposed to surface, but as far as we can tell, it hasn't surfaced.

So what does that tell us? Well, we really have no idea. I mean, the waves are six feet high. It's all white caps. The sub itself is white. I don't know how an airplane is going to expect to find it in hundreds of miles of rough seas. So for all we know, they are floating somewhere on the surface right now. And the tragedy of that is you're bolted in from the outside. There's 18 bolts that seal you inside. You can't get out without assistance from an external crew. So that would be the real nightmare scenario. They're alive and floating and unable to escape. Without wishing to speculate, because as you said, nobody knows what the situation is, some of the things you have just described to me give me real pause.

Who regulates a submersible like this? Who is enforcing safety regs? Are there safety regs? Nobody, because these dives take place in international waters. So there's no governing body. And I will tell you that when we boarded the surface vessel, we signed waivers that would curl your toes. I mean, it was basically a list of eight paragraphs describing ways that you could be permanently disabled or killed. So this is not a tourist company

or an airline, you know, for the masses. This is for rich, adrenaline junkie adventurers who thrive on the risk. It's a lifestyle that not all of us may be able to identify with, but for them, you know, the risk is the life. That was CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue talking with my colleague Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Elsa Chang. Support for NPR and the following message come from Carnegie Corporation of New York,

working to reduce political polarization through philanthropic support for education, democracy, and peace. More information at carnegie.org. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org.