A journalist who travelled on the same submersible that has gone missing near the Titanic with five people on board has described how it was cobbled together from abandoned pipes and driven by a games console controller.
CBS correspondent David Pogue said passengers on the Titan submersible are sealed inside the main capsule by 17 bolts that can only be opened from the outside – with only 90 hours of oxygen.
‘There’s no backup, there’s no escape pod – it’s get to the surface or die,’ he told the BBC.
Mr Pogue – who descended to see the Titanic last year – compared the sub to something put together by MacGyver – the TV series character known for his ingenuity in making devices from different items to get out of difficult situations.
Recalling the interior of the submersible in November, he described white camping lights on the ceiling, off-the-shelf security cameras, Ziploc bags for a toilet and construction pipes as ballast.
‘The main centre section looks like a shiny white tube about minivan length. It’s made of five inch thick carbon fibre which no one has ever used in a submersible before,’ he told Unsung Science.
‘At each end of the white tube is a tiny silver dome. The front end cap has a 22-inch round window made of seven-inch thick plexiglass so you can see out. When you get to the bottom of the ocean – that’s your view of the Titanic.
‘If you have to go to the bathroom you can crawl into the window end of the sub and hang up a black cloth for privacy. There’s a one foot square box on the floor that contains Ziploc bags.
‘There are a couple of touchscreen PC monitors on the floor of the sub but there are no controls. The multi-million sub is controlled with a games controller.’
The vessel is controlled by a reinforced Playstation controller, though it doesn’t have a GPS system and is guided by text messages sent by a team above water.
Mr Pogue said it would be impossible for those inside it now to escape without help.
Speaking to the BBC, he said passengers were sealed inside the main capsule by 17 bolts that were applied from the outside and could only be removed by an external crew.
He told The Context programme that the craft – which he said was ‘not made for consumers’ – had seven different functions to allow it to resurface and it was ‘really concerning’ none of these had worked.
He added that these resurfacing capabilities would be irrelevant if the sub became trapped or sprang a leak.
