“It Would Be Dark And Cold”: Expert Explains Conditions On Missing Sub

The missing Titanic sub lost contact one hour and 45 minutes into the dive, with five people onboard and will run out of oxygen today. 

The submersible, which costs US$250,000 per person, was on its way to explore the Titanic shipwreck, which sits around 3,800 metres deep in the Atlantic Ocean. 

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On today’s episode of The Briefing, we talk to Chris White, a deep sea diver and Maritime defence expert from the Australian Maritime College, to find out what it could be like for those onboard.

Five people were on board the vessel when it went missing, and one of them was the British billionaire Hamish Harding. 

Contact was lost with the Titan one hour and 45 minutes into the expedition. By then, experts believe it reached a depth of about 3,500 metres, where each square inch of the structure would have been subjected to a force equivalent to more than two tonnes.

Mr White said two scenarios could happen in this incident. One was that the vessel made it back to the surface, and the submersible would be fitted or are usually fitted with drop weights, which were a weight that they could jettison or release.

It doesn’t need its power, battery, or propulsion to get back to flight on the surface, so that’s probably the best-case scenario in that circumstance,”

Mr White said.

Another scenario was that the vehicle became stricken and stuck either on the seabed or in the water column, which was between the surface and the seabed.

There would be no light other than the light that is being trans or created by a submersible,”

he added.

The water temperature would be approaching freezing, close to zero degrees. Without the power of the vessel to provide lights and Heating, it would be dark; it would be cold.”

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