'Like Going Into Space': Extensive Rescue Efforts Continue As 30 Hours Of Air Left On Missing Sub
Rescuers attempting to locate the orca-sized submersible that disappeared en route wreckage of the Titanic are encountering a gargantuan task that will push the limits of technological know-how, as per the experts.
Search is like 'going into space'
Teams from around the world were racing against the clock Tuesday to locate the vessel and its five-person crew before their oxygen runs out -- projected at under a day and a half from now.
But scouring a 7,600-square-mile (20,000-square-kilometer) area of the North Atlantic to a depth of more than two miles is not easy.
"It's pitch black down there. It's freezing cold. The seabed is mud, and it's undulating. You can't see your hand in front of your face," Titanic expert Tim Maltin told NBC News Now.
"It's really a bit like being an astronaut going into space."
Passengers include Pakistani tycoon
The 21-foot (6.5-meter) submersible, named Titan, was carrying three fee-paying passengers when it vanished Sunday: British billionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood and Dawood's son Suleman.
OceanGate Expeditions, which runs the Titan's trips, charges $250,000 for a seat.
The company's CEO Stockton Rush and French submarine operator Paul-Henri Nargeolet, nicknamed "Mr Titanic" for his frequent dives at the site, are also aboard.
US Coast Guard Captain Jamie Frederick told reporters Tuesday that his organization was coordinating the search.
But, he said, it was incredibly difficult, and far beyond what the coast guard would normally tackle.
"While the US Coast Guard has assumed the role of search and rescue mission coordinator, we do not have all of the necessary expertise and equipment required in a search of this nature," he said.
"This is a complex search effort, which requires multiple agencies with subject matter expertise and specialized equipment."
Frederick explained that rescuers were using multiple methods as they comb the vast area for the Titan, which lost contact with its mothership just two hours into its dive near the Titanic's watery grave.
"The search efforts have focused on both surface with C-130 aircraft searching by sight and with radar, and subsurface with P3 aircraft, we're able to drop and monitor sonar buoys."
Seafloor, water column or surface
So far, the searches have proved fruitless.?
The effort was being augmented Tuesday by a huge pipe-laying vessel with a remotely operated vehicle expected to be deployed at the Titan's last known position.
Jules Jaffe, who was part of the team that developed the optical imaging system used to find the Titanic in 1985, said rescuers would have to look in three separate places.
"It's either sitting on the seafloor, somewhere in the water column, or sitting on the surface," he told ABC10 in San Diego.
"It could be in the water column. I think that's probably the most likely place it is."
Jamie Pringle, a professor of forensic geosciences at Keele University in Britain, said if the mini-sub had settled on the ocean floor, it could be very difficult to spot.
"The bottom of the ocean is not flat; there are lots of hills and canyons," Pringle said, according to NBC.
Adding to the challenge: the enormous pressure four kilometres under water, around 400 times what it is on the surface.
Such pressures strain equipment enormously, and very few vessels can survive these depths.
According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, nuclear submarines generally operate at just 300 meters.
'Banging' sounds heard during search?
However, rescuers on Tuesday detected underwater "banging" sounds in the North Atlantic where the craft vanished two days earlier, media reports said, citing US government communications.?
A Canadian P-8 aircraft involved in the search "heard banging sounds in the area every 30 minutes.?Four hours later additional sonar was deployed and banging was still heard," said an internal email sent to US Department of Homeland Security officials, according to Rolling Stone magazine.
(With inputs from AFP)
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