Search Continues For Missing Titanic Submarine As Time Ticks Away
Search teams continues racing against time to find a tourist submersible that went missing during a dive to the wreck of the titanic.
Two Pakistanis are among the five people on the vessel – businessman Shahzada dawood and his son suleman.
Another of those believed to be on board is British businessman and explorer hamish harding.
Contact with the small sub missing an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to the wreck site on Sunday.
As of Monday afternoon, the crew members had four days-worth of oxygen left at most
It weighs 10,432 kilogrammes, measures 22 feet in length, and can hold five people for 96 hours.
Tickets for an eight-day trip including dives to the wreck at a depth of 12,500 feet cost $250,000.
The titanic wreck is located about 600 kilometres off the coast of newfoundland, Canada.
Experts said Monday that rescuers face steep challenges.
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Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said submersibles typically have a drop weight,
which is “a mass they can release in the case of an emergency to bring them up to the surface using buoyancy.”
“If there was a power failure and/or communication failure, this might have happened, and the submersible would then be bobbing about on the surface waiting to be found,” Greig said.
Another scenario is a leak in the pressure hull, in which case the prognosis is not good, he said.
“If it’s down to the seabed and can’t get back up in its own power, options are very limited,” Greig said.
“While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.”
Even if they could go that deep, he doubts they could attach to the hatch of OceanGate’s submersible.
Associated Press writers Danica Kirka, Jill Lawless and Sylvia Hui in London, Robert Gillies in Toronto, Olga R.
Rodriguez in San Francisco, Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Munir Ahmed in Islamabad contributed to this report.
