Saturday, 23 Nov 2024

Titan diagram shows there's room for ONE person to extend their legs

‘This looks like HELL!’ Anxiety-inducing Titan diagram released by OceanGate shows how there’s only room for ONE person to extend their legs on cramped missing submersible

  • The Titan submersible lost contact shortly after 4am on Sunday and has less than 24 hours worth of oxygen onboard 
  • Promotional diagrams released by expedition company OceanGate show just how cramped the inside of the sub is for five people 
  • READ MORE: DailyMail.com’s full coverage of the missing OceanGate sub 

An anxiety-inducing diagram shows just how cramped the occupants of the OceanGate Titan are, with only room for one person to extend their legs.  

Promotional materials for the now-infamous expedition to the famous wreck of the Titanic have surfaced on Twitter, and reveal the claustrophobic seating configuration.

The diagram, drawn up by OceanGate, shows how just one person is able to fully extend their legs inside the cramped 22ft long submersible. 

The sub lost communication with its operator, OceanGate Expeditions, less than two hours into its dive to the shipwreck on Sunday, with five people on board.

Since then, a large-scale rescue operation including planes and a fleet of vessels has been scrambled to the area 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, as oxygen supplies in the sub dwindle. 

Promotional diagrams released by expedition company OceanGate show just how cramped the inside of the sub is for five people


French explorer PH Nargeolet and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush are among those trapped on the submersible 


Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son Suleman are also on board, along with British billionaire Hamish Harding 

An interior shot shared by OceanGate shows just how tight the space is for five people to share. CEO Stockton Rush can be seen here clutching the game controller that powers the sub

NBC tech editor Ben Goggin tweeted the illustration of the seating configuration, saying: ‘I found an old PDF promoting the Titanic-bound Titan submarine. It shows a “typical seating configuration” for 5 people.

‘Only 1 person can extend their legs. This looks like hell folks.’

One of Pakistan’s richest men, Shahzada Dawood, is aboard the vessel alongside his son Suleman, British billionaire Hamish Harding, OceanGate chief executive Stockton Rush and French explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolet. 

A glimmer of hope lit up the bleak search earlier today when the Coast Guard announced that ‘banging’ sounds had been detected underwater.

It remains unclear if the banging came from the submersible, but it has now become the ‘focus’ of the mission.

Some experts say the fact the sounds were even detected could suggest that the sub is closer to the surface than initially feared.

According to OceanGate’s website, the sub can last for up to 96 hours underwater with five people consuming oxygen.

After four days of being underwater, the supply inside the cramped space has dwindled to less than 24 hours.

OceanGate Expeditions is one of the only companies that offers the tours, with tickets costing up to $250,000

Only one person in this promotional picture released by OceanGate can be seen with their legs stretched out

The Titanic wreckage is 12,500ft underwater – some 11,000ft deeper than many US and British Navy subs can dive 

The search is complicated by how far off-shore the Titanic wreckage sits. It is 900 miles east of Cape Cod and 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland in a remote, choppy patch of the Atlantic 

Submarine search and rescue expert Frank Owen told the BBC his hopes for a recovery increased ‘by some magnitude’ when he heard the noises had been detected.

‘There’s a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, on board this craft is a retired French Navy diver. 

‘He would know the protocol for trying to alert searching forces… on the hour and the half hour you bang like hell for three minutes.

‘Below about 180 meters, the water temperature drops very rapidly. That creates a layer that the [sonar signal] bounces off.

‘But if you’re in the same depth water it tends to go quite straight,’ he said.

Rescue ship Deep Energy is the latest ship to join the ongoing search for the vessel in the middle of the Atlantic. 

The large vessel has deployed remote operated subs to go looking for the Titan underwater.

This is the last sighting of the submersible, in a photograph shared by Hamish Harding’s company

This image shared by the US Coast Guard shows Deep Energy at the search site for the missing sub 

So far, they have not yet been able to detect any sign of it or where the banging came from. 

In addition to Deep Energy, there are multiple C-130 planes and Boeing Poseidon P-8s involved in the search too.

The Coast Guard has now searched 10,000 square miles of ocean surface to no avail.

Their primary hope is to find the Titan ‘bobbing’ on the ocean surface.

In that scenario, it would likely be hoisted onto the His Majesty’s Canadian Ship Glace Bay, which is en route, and which has a decompression chamber on board.

If the Titan is stuck underwater, unable to surface, the rescue becomes more complex.

The crew was diving to the ocean floor to survey the Titanic wreckage 

Firstly, the rescue crews will have to find it and direct a hoisting cable 2.5miles underwater.

If they are able to hook a hoist or claw onto the sub, it will have to raise the vessel slowly enough to cooperate with the underwater pressure – 400 times that of sea level.

Once on the surface, the Titan can only be opened from the exterior.

There are growing questions over the safety precautions in place and manufacturing of the 21ft Titan, which some experts likened to a slap-dash can put together haphazardly with cheap parts.

OceanGate Expeditions CEO, Stockton Rush, who is trapped inside the sub, boasted in an interview last year with CBS that the Titan was ‘safe’.

He claimed NASA, Boeing and The University of Washington had all signed off on the construction of the submersible, assuring its safety.

NASA and The University of Washington are distancing themselves from the project.

They said in statements to ABC News that they had been consulted, but were not involved in the building or testing of the sub. 

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