This morning a desperate race against time to find a missing sub.
With five people On Board that disappeared on an expedition to the wreckage of
the Titanic.
The ship started its journey from Newfoundland, Canada, Friday.
Carrying a 21ft submersible vessel operated by OceanGate Expeditions.
On Sunday, that submersible started what was
supposed to be a nine hour journey to the Titanic's.
Wreckage and back going 13,000ft below the surface.
But the vessel lost contact with the ship an hour and 45 minutes into its dive.
>> That's right, the search is still underway for OceanGates vessel.
The submersive not a submarine.
A submersible which is carrying people to the site of
the Titanic crash and the remains Of The Titanic.
Or it was, at least.
Now there is a massive rescue mission underway.
It includes multiple American and Canadian agencies, including the US Coast Guard.
That reported today that they are still searching thousands of square miles.
Basically more about the actual Titan.
There's a reason it's a submersible and not a submarine.
It's 21ft.
It's called the Titan.
It has the capacity to stay underwater for
only 96 hours according to its specifications.
Giving the five people aboard until Thursday morning.
That's tomorrow morning before air runs out.
One pilot and four passengers were inside the submersible early
on Sunday when it lost communication with a ship on the surface.
About again an hour and 45 minutes into that dive.
This is a big story for multiple different reasons.
But obviously the main one is folks are dying currently and
we don't know where they are.
And there are apparently buoys that emit sonar rays that are being
utilized in order to find them.
There are reports that they have heard a sound deep in the ocean.
But it's not easy to actually go that deep.
So it will take a while before they are found and
who knows how they will be and what condition they will be in.
For context about how deep we're talking about and
how difficult a rescue would be if the Titan is on the ocean floor.
The rescue effort would be difficult because of extreme conditions more than 2
miles below the surface.
The Titanic itself is 12,500ft underwater where light does not penetrate.
Only specialized equipment can reach those depths without getting crushed by
the massive water pressure.
Now, it's really interesting because it might not actually be
on the ocean floor, right.
So if the submersible experienced a mid dive emergency,
the pilot could have released weights to float back to the surface.
But here's the catch.
Absent communication,
locating a van size submersible in the vast Atlantic is challenging.
And while if it gets to the surface this is important to know they still
can't get out.
This is not like the movie Gravity, where there was an ejection button,
there was a way to get out.
You're panting on the shore.
All that beautiful cinematic no,
they cannot get out of that submersible because it is bolted from the outside.
So someone would have to go rescue them.
So, again, unclear whether it is underwater or above water.
It seems like there have been sounds, though, emitting from underwater.
All right, who's on board and what the hell?
Those on board the submersible.
It's the highlight of a tourist expedition that cost $250,000 a person.
And it included British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58,
Pakistani-born businessman Shahzada Dawoud, 48.
With his 19-year-old son, Suleiman, who are both British citizens.
The 77-year-old French explorer Paul Henry Nargeolet.
And Stockton Rush, founder and CEO of the vessel's US based operating company,
OceanGate Expeditions, is on board.
And that is very important for what I'm about to tell you now.
Cuz it turns out, Stockton Rush, he's been known to sort of poo certain regulations.
That could have prevented this incredible emergency and
the effort that is underway from happening in the first place.
In fact, a lot of people had been warning that this very thing could happen.
In 2018, more than three dozen people,
including Oceanographers submersible company executives deep-sea explorers.
Warned that they had unanimous concern about the craft's design.
And worried that the Titan had not followed standard certification
procedures.
In a 2019 blog post, however, which solid blog post, the company said that, quote.
Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is
put into real world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.
John, before I move to you,
just the overall thoughts on this journey in and
of itself, you are an adventuresome guy.
You're into Sci-fi.
You went to the North Pole.
You did a lot of things.
The fact that this kind of expedition exists in the first place,
I just want your thoughts on that.
>> Yeah, look, so I do understand the impulse to want to explore,
to see things from history.
I'm not a Titanic devotee like some people.
I don't necessarily understand the appeal of seeing it.
But I do know that multiple people I've talked to at our network are really into
the Titanic.
So I do understand that.
And I get that a lot of this sort of exploration can come with risks.
When I went to the North Pole,
we were trained on a variety of different safety stuff.
It wasn't anywhere near as dangerous as this, obviously, but there were concerns.
It's so expensive, it's so dangerous.
It's outside of, I think, the realm of rational thought for most people.
For a regular person, I mean, to spend a house, for a ticket,
to go to a thing like this makes it hard to understand.
But there's a lot about this that I think makes it a really unique sort of tragedy.
For the friends and
family of the people that are on that someone they know is lost.
And people can be lost in a variety of different ways, but but
not really like this.
People can go missing while hiking.
People can potentially be kidnapped or something.
And there's so much uncertainty in this.
Knowing exactly when give or take how much oxygen is.
Actually, there is such a different sort of way for
people to go missing that you have a timer.
When someone goes missing while hiking, you might
start eventually to lose hope after two days, four days, a week, or whatever.
But you don't know.
That's gotta be very difficult for all the people who know those aboard.
Right well, look, if folks are members of TYT,
we are gonna talk about one of those family members in our bonus episode.
So you do not wanna miss that.
But I did wanna give more context about this guy, Stockton Rush.
The CEO of OceanGate, and give you a sense of what this Titan actually looked like.
Cuz a lot of folks are raising some eyebrows about him
casting aside the amount of regulations that OceanGate had to go through.
And here is what it looked like on the inside.
This is from CBS about six months ago, take a look.
>> Inside the sub has about as much room as a minivan.
>> So this is not your grandfather's submersible.
We only have one button.
That's it.
It should be like an elevator.
It shouldn't take a lot of skill.
>> The Titan is the only five person sub in the world that can reach
Titanic depths 2.4 miles below the sea.
It's also the only one with a toilet, sort of.
And yet I couldn't help noticing how many pieces of this sub seemed improvised.
>> We can use these off the shelf components.
I got these from Camper World.
We run the whole thing with this game controller.
>> [LAUGH] Come on.
>> That's right, one button, like an elevator and a game controller.
That's what is that, John, a PS5?
I don't know, I don't game.
>> It looks older.
I don't know. >> It looked quite old.
But that is the so
called innovation that OceanGate CEO is touting there just a few months ago.
This is a guy again who said that a lot of these regulations are ridiculous,
considers himself an innovator.
And now they're lost John thought.
>> Yeah, I think, again, for most people, you see the interior of that thing, and
you think of the possibility of being in that for five minutes.
Let alone for days, absent a catastrophe.
And you think, no, I'm not gonna do this.
I don't think that I would have gotten on there for $250,000, honestly.
>> [LAUGH] >> But explorers are different.
They see things differently.
They make risk calculations differently.
And the thing is, while now we can go back and there were concerns that were raised.
I forget the outlet, but one of the big US news outlets.
Did a profile on this not that long ago, and
the writer had been super hesitant about this based on the conversations they had.
But I'm sure that those people probably met up with reps from the company.
And they were reassured of all of the tests that had been run and everything.
The company almost certainly was not stressing that we don't comply with
international standards for certification.
So, yeah, when you're doing something like this, there's always a level of risk.
I mean, you have to be a sort of person who does not approach this
the same way as other people.
And a lot of the time it's probably fine, but in this case, it's not looking great.
>> Yeah, I have to say, I think it is quite ironic.
That an ostentatious sort of over the top
expedition like this one is going to seek
the ruins of another ostentatious.
Over the top expedition that ultimately also resulted in the lives of many people.
A lot of rich people, but also a lot of poor folks died in.
So the irony should not be lost on any of us.
And this is, again, hoping that those folks are found alive.
But it does tell you something about the ways that billionaires get
lured into these kinds of expeditions.
Yes, I'm talking about Blue Origin.
I believe one of the people on board this Oceans Gate was also on the Blue Origin,
Jeff Bezos flight.
That sort of they're thrill seeking, right.
It's not just exploring.
There's nothing really to explore.
They're not goNNA find anything.
This is not for research.
This is for the pure bragging rights of saying that you did it.
And I think that we have reached a point where we should just tax billionaires.
Can we just tax them out of doing hair brain things like this?
And it is very interesting that, again, they do it with companies that are shoddy.
But that boast that they are innovators and
who knows how much venture capitalist money they receive.
This happens all the time.
Not a lot of people die in the process.
But hey, Rush has said that regulations on submarines is ridiculous and over the top.
And it's not clear whether it seems like OceansGate complied with all of
those regulations.
But again, we don't know exactly went wrong between the button and
the PS5 controller.
How could anything go wrong, really?
I did wanna just pivot because John and
I know we love Musk News just sort of helps us midweek.
Just sort of like huffing glue or something.
It could be that Elon Musk, richest man in the world, is involved in OceansGate.
And possibly involved in how it was navigating itself down there under
the water.
Because just a few weeks ago, early June, OceansGate Expeditions tweeted, quote.
Despite being in the middle of the North Atlantic, we have the internet connection
we need to make our #Titanic dive operations a success.
Thank you @Starlink.
Now, Starlink is a satellite internet provider.
It's a subsidiary of SpaceX, according to insider.
It's not clear, though, whether Starlink had any role in the Titan's disappearance,
loss of communications.
Or if it was used on this message mission, the submersible or the Polar Prince,
which is another expedition.
It's also unclear whether SpaceX, the company behind Starlink and OceanGate,
might have had any financial or business ties.
But curiously, and we know how much Musk likes to talk about submarines.
Neither Starlink nor Musk has spoken about the missing passengers on the Titan.
Nor clarified whether there was a relationship between the OceanGate and
Starlink.
It's been [SOUND] Completely silent, like the bottom of the ocean floor.
>> My God.
>> John, >> Yeah, I have no idea.
It's entirely possible that they were using Starlink like a lot of people and
organizations could.
And they decided to tweet @Elon Musk because when any random person or
organization does that.
There's like a one in three chance that the richest man in the world just replies.
Did the odds go up if you say something racist or anti Semitic, but
you always have a good shot.
So it doesn't mean that they had an actual relationship with him or the organization.
And I don't even know, functionally, in terms of the technology,
what that would even look like.
It's one thing if you were to say they have something that when they surface,
they can connect.
I'm not even sure about that.
But how deep possibly could the signal from one of those satellites go?
I mean, that's the whole issue here, is that at that depth,
there's almost nothing that can communicate.
I've read Tech rundowns of what has been used to communicate globally with our
nuclear submarines, and it's ridiculous.
It's like they're trailing an antenna, like, 5 miles long for
this ultra low frequency thing.
So I imagine it was not an important part of this.
As ready as I am to pin any international catastrophe on Elon Musk,
I don't think this one yet should be on his shoulders.
>> TBD, all right.
I still hold out.
>> Will see.
>> No, but just for some context, guys, because, yeah, it's a saga.
Everyone's following it.
There's roundabout coverage again,
just like other billionaire expeditions to the outer space.
Somehow our media love this kind of story, and I think it's important to
put it in context for when other people go missing on the ocean.
So this is from Charles Lister,
who is tweeting along with a lot of other journalists and folks.
Reminding us that last week a boat carrying around 750 desperate refugees
sank off the coast of Greece and only 104 survived.
Today, a search is on for
the submersible carrying five wealthy individuals in the Atlantic.
Both are tragedies, but one achieved hour to hour media coverage.
Guess which and there is a photo of what is, I believe a fishing trawler.
And this is Priyamvada Gopal, who wrote for Al Jazeera a story,
basically an opinion piece saying the exact same thing.
Who's reporting that over half on board were Pakistani, likely poor.
And there were probably Syrians, Libyans and other North Africans on board as well.
The sea is a dangerous place, but
somehow it's not as exciting when they are refugees braving those waters.
As it is when there are billionaires going to sort of catch a glimpse of the Titanic.
And they're called Titaniacs, John, by the way.
>> I did not know that, yeah.
>> It's Titaniacs.
>> So I'm glad that you brought this up because I think a lot of people have
noticed that disparity.
The devil's advocate I guess the news is interested in novelty.
And so here's the tragedy of that ship being lost in
the Mediterranean is that in many ships lost like that.
So the media is gonna be less interested in something.
If it was the first large migrant vessel, it's possible that maybe they would cover.
But there's definitely a class thing, there's definitely a money thing,
a lesson to be learned by the media, but probably will not be.