What is a submersible and how is it different from a submarine?
While many reports referred to the vessel as a submarine, Titan is actually a submersible and those terms are not completely interchangeable. The difference between them is that a submarine has enough power to leave a port and come back to a port by itself, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
A submersible, on the other hand, has limited power reserves so it needs to be “launched” by a mothership that will also have to recover it. You can think of submersibles like scuba divers, who need to be dropped to a certain point in the ocean where they can explore before they come back to a ship that will bring them back to a port.
What is ‘Titan’?
OceanGate’s submersible vessel that went to explore the wreckage of the Titanic is somewhat appropriately, or ominously, called the Titan. It is a manned submersible designed to carry up to five people (one pilot and four crew members) to a depth of 4,000 metres, where they can carry out surveys and inspections, research and data collection, film and media production and deep sea testing of hardware and software.
According to OceanGate, Titan makes “innovative use of modern materials” to be “lighter in weight and more cost-efficient to mobilise than any other deep diving submersible.” The materials the company is referring to are carbon fibre and titanium.
Carbon fibre is a polymer that is known to be quite strong despite being lightweight. It can be as much as five times stronger than steel and twice as stiff, according to Innovative Composite Engineering. Titanium is as strong as steel but around 45 per cent lighter. It is twice as strong as aluminium but only 60 per cent heavier, according to the United States Geological Survey.
The vessel was made using a mixture of proprietary technologies and some off-the-shelf components, which the company claims makes it simple to operate and replace parts in the field.
Titan’s length is 6.7 metres, its width is 2.8 metres and its height is 2.5 metres, as per OceanGate. It weighs a total of 10,432 kilograms and has a payload capacity of up to 685 kilograms. Its four Innerspace 1002 electric thrusters are capable of propelling the vessel to a maximum speed of 3 knots (around 5.5 kilometres per hour) underwater.
But its most important feature, perhaps, is its life support system that can sustain a crew of 5 for a maximum of 96 hours, according to the company. Also, the submersible uses a proprietary “Real Time Hull Health Monitoring” (RTM) system, which according to the company, provides “an unparalleled safety feature that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.”
THE TITANIC TREASURE HUNT
The exact location of the Titanic shipwreck was discovered in 1985. Since then, salvagers and researchers have dived to the depth of 12,500 feet where the remains of the Titanic are located.
It’s final resting place is almost 600km off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada in the North Atlantic Ocean.
WHAT A TRIP TO THE TITANIC INVOLVES
British firm Deep Ocean Expeditions was among the first to sell tickets for a trip to see the Titanic in 1998. A ticket was priced at $32,500. James Cameron, who directed the 1997 blockbuster film Titanic, also visited the deep and dark shipwreck site.To put into perspective how deep that is, let us understand that the record for a scuba dive is to a depth of 1,090 feet. A sperm whale is likely to go to a depth of around 7,380 feet.The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate, can go up to a depth of 13,000 feet.
A journey as deep as 12,500 feet is no joke. Human divers wearing specialised suits and on helium-rich air mixtures can reach depths of just a few hundred feet below the surface. They have to spend a long amount of time decompressing on the way up. Some couple of hundred feet deeper, the Sun’s light doesn’t penetrate through the waters and it is cold and dark. The pressure at such depths is crushing.
WHAT WENT WRONG WITH TITAN
The Titan, with four passengers and a pilot, made the treacherous journey. It had done so earlier too, in 2021 and 2022.OceanGate Expeditions CEO and pilot Stockton Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood, are on the Titan.Unlike submarines that navigate independently to and from ports, submersibles require a ship to launch and recover them. The Titan was submerged on Sunday morning from its support vessel. It should have taken eight hours for the Titan to reach the Titanic.
About an hour and 45 minutes later, the Titan lost contact with its surface ship — the Canadian research icebreaker Polar Prince.The 22-foot-long submersible is a novel concept, something we call ‘jugaad’ in India, and it hasn’t been approved by any marine regulatory authority. The submersible has emergency oxygen for up to 96 hours but oxygen consumption depends on human activity and metabolism. Oxygen intake of a person lying still would differ from someone exercising, or panicking.The Titan also doesn’t have any escape pod and the hatch can’t be opened from inside.The passengers knew all this and signed a waiver before embarking on the perilous journey. They paid $250,000 too. That is how strong the pull of the Titanic is. And as it looks now, is a fatal attraction.