The boss of the fateful OceanGate submarine previously spoke about ‘breaking rules’ in the craft’s construction.
The deep sea vessel’s air supply is now estimated to have run out as the desperate search for it continues.
In a video posted to YouTube last year Stockton Rush, OceanGate CEO, told Mexican actor Alan Estrada about the sub’s seven-inch thick acrylic window – the only way to gaze out onto the wreck of the Titanic.
He said the window gets ‘squeezed’ as the craft gets down to 12,500 feet below the surface. If it is going to fail, the structure gives a ‘warning,’ he says in the video.
But Rush admits in the clip he had ‘broken some rules to make this.’
Asked what the window is made from, he says: ‘It’s acrylic – plexiglass.
‘It is seven inches thick and weighs about 80lbs. When we go to the titanic it will squeeze in about three-quarters of an inch and just deforms.
‘Acrylic is great because before it cracks or fails it starts to crackle so you get a huge warning if it’s about to fail.’
Some experts believe the craft may have suffered a catastrophic failure due to the pressure underwater – with the window being a possible area of concern.
‘The sub is your vehicle to get there. It should be an elevator, it should not be an exercise in buttons and switches and stuff,’ he says.
@CoastGuardCAN Ann Harvey and Motor Vessel Horizon Arctic (ROV) have arrived on scene and are conducting search patterns in search of submersible, Titan. #Titanic pic.twitter.com/sg96QCaMzD— USCGNortheast (@USCGNortheast) June 22, 2023
He tells the actor: ‘I’ve broken some rules to make this.
‘I think I broke them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon and firmer and titanium, there’s a rule you don’t do that – well I did.
‘There’s picking the rules that you break that are the rules that will add value to others and add value to society, and that really to me is about innovation.
‘Experts have explained how the missing submersible would be moved if found at the bottom of the sea, as hopes for a rescue diminish.
A Q&A panel conceded that the search for the Titan vessel, which went missing during a voyage to the Titanic wreck site, is ‘running out of time’ and ‘doesn’t look good’.
British Antarctic Survey marine geophysicist Dr Rob Larter said: ‘It is incredibly difficult to find an object of this sort of size at the bottom of the ocean.
‘You are talking about a totally dark environment.
‘You are not going to be able to find this with active sonar from a surface ship.
‘You’re going to have to have some sort of deep-towed or autonomous vehicle that’s roaming around nearer the sea floor.’
He added that the Victor 6000 remotely operated vehicle (ROV) is, he believes, the ‘only thing’ that is on site with the capability to get down to the sea bed and explore.
