Explorers might not have had ‘time to realize what happened,’ expert says
The five people who died on the Titan may not have “had the time to realize what happened” if the submersible imploded as believed, an expert said.
If the vessel did implode, it would likely have essentially “exploded inwards in a matter of a thousandth of a second,” Will Kohnen, chairman of peer-review group Marine Technology Society’s committee on manned submersibles, told Reuters.
“And it’s probably a mercy because that was probably a kinder end than the unbelievably difficult situation of being four days in a cold, dark and confined space,” he said. “So, this would have happened very quickly. I don’t think anybody even had the time to realize what happened,” he said.
Photo: Titan search vessels seen from space
Satellite images courtesy of Maxar Technologies show deep-sea recovery vessels searching for the OceanGate Titan submersible near the Titanic wreck site on Thursday.
From top: The Canadian Horizon Arctic, Bahamian vessel Deep Energy and Canadian registered Skandi Vinland.
Friend of Rush describes the appeal of extreme adventures
It’s not for everyone but, for a certain type of adventurer, descending to the depths of the ocean inside a small and cramped vessel means “doing something extraordinary,” a friend of two of the people aboard the missing Titan submersible told NBC News Thursday.
Per Wimmer, who describes himself as an astronaut, adventurer, explorer, philanthropist, global financier, author and private island owner, operates in those circles.
The Danish national, 54, said in a telephone interview that he is friends with Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, the company that chartered the submersible, and British billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, who were among the five aboard the vessel.
Describing them as “adventurers,” Wimmer said they tried to “test the boundaries” and “do something extraordinary.”
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Focus turns to determining what caused ‘catastrophic implosion’
The dayslong search for Titan has come to a devastating end as officials turn their focus to what caused the “catastrophic implosion” believed to have killed the five people onboard.
The U.S. Coast Guard said on Thursday that debris discovered in the search for the sub was consistent with a catastrophic explosion. The debris was found off the bow of the sunken Titanic, officials said.
A U.S. Navy analysis of acoustic data had “detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion” near the Titan around the time it lost communications, a senior Navy official said. The sound was not definitive, but it was immediately shared with commanders, who decided to keep searching, the official said.
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