OceanGate's submersible takes tourists 2.5 hours to descend over two miles to the Titanic wreck using a game-controller interface. The 22-foot sub seats passengers barefoot on the floor with one porthole and allows 4-5 hours of viewing. The disappearance is raising questions about whether extreme tourism adequately minimizes risk.
Roger, platform ready to dive.
The submersible's controls are quite basic. We run the whole thing with this game controller. The vessel detaches and starts to submerge.
You feel somewhat like you're on a totally different planet as you descend.
It takes about 2.5 hours to travel over 2 miles deep under the sea. Passengers describe the vessel as cold, with only one porthole to allow passengers to look outside. At just over 22 feet long and 8.3 feet high. This photo shows the seating configuration in practice— passengers on the floor barefoot. So what if nature calls on the roughly 10-hour mission? There is a small bathroom with a privacy curtain, and OceanGate says they turn the music up loud. The up-close-and-personal view of the Titanic wreckage can last 4 or 5 hours. Passengers who have reached these depths, an exclusive club. More people have gone into space, but going this deep underwater is actually technologically harder to engineer.
This incident is causing the broader tourism industry, and especially extreme tourism, to be looked at under a close microscope to say, are we doing everything we can? Are we minimizing risk?
