Disappeared in the North Atlantic Ocean bathyscaphe “Titan”, which dived towards the wreck of the “Titanic”, lacked oxygen: this stems from calculations US Coast Guard, that the oxygen supply inside the underwater vehicle was to run out on June 22 at 2:08 p.m. Moscow time.
The company Bathyscaphe OceanGate Expeditions, designed for five people, carried out another expedition to the wreck of the liner Titanic which sank in 1912. They are located at the bottom of the Atlantic at a depth of about 3.8 km, at approximately 650 km southeast of the island of Newfoundland. According to the Wall Street Journal, during the dive, it was planned to take DNA samples near the wreckage of the ship.
On the morning of June 18, communication with the bathyscaphe was interrupted and it disappeared from the radar. On board, among the tourists who have paid for the dive, is British billionaire Hamish Harding.
In 2020, OceanGate founder Stockton Rush admitted in an interview with GeekWire that the bathyscaphe’s hull was “showing signs of cyclic fatigue”. This was due to the fact that the Titan, capable of diving to a maximum of 3,000 meters, repeatedly descended on the wreck of the Titanic, that is, to a depth of 3,800 meters. At the same time, the company’s website indicates that the maximum allowable diving depth of the bathyscaphe is 4000 meters. Stockton Rush himself piloted the Titan during the last expedition which ended in the loss of the device.
The deputy head of the BARS design bureau, the captain of manned underwater vehicles, Ivan Konik, in a conversation with Russian media, made a disappointing forecast regarding the fate of the crew of the bathyscaphe. He explained that if the hull of the underwater vehicle had not been crushed, the people inside should have survived, but it was very difficult to find such a small object at depth, so their only chance of salvation was their own rise.
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