CBS Sunday morning
News broke on Sunday about an OceanGate Expeditions tourist submarine heading for the wreck of the Titanic who went missing with five people on board. Shortly after, details emerged about the sub’s non-compliant sub-compliant design, including control apparently handled by a $30 Logitech F710 wireless PC game controller from 2010.
Reuters reports that the five-man crew of the missing ship, known as Titan, which includes Hamish Harding, a British billionaire and adventurer, and OceanGate’s founder and CEO, Stockton Rush. It disappeared on Sunday during an expedition to the Titanic shipwreck after they lost contact with the research vessel Polar Prince approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes after their dive began.
The submarine was last reported in the North Atlantic Ocean, about 900 miles east of Cape Cod, in a body of water known to have a depth of about 13,000 feet. Search and rescue operations began soon after and are still ongoing. According to the BBC, the entire submarine is locked from the outside, so even if the ship surfaces, the occupants cannot escape without outside help and could suffocate in the pod.
a CBS Sunday morning segment where ccorrespondent David Pogue joins in Titanic enthusiasts who pay to ride OceanGate’s specially designed underwater vehicle. Originally aired November 27, 2022.
As the potential disaster gripped social media, details emerged about OceanGate’s history of avoiding or complaining about safety regulations. In particular, people started to share a CBS Sunday morning segment airing in November 2022 in which reporter David Pogue pays a visit to the Titanwhere he later embarked on an expedition to the Titanic.
During the CBS clip, Rush gives Pogue a tour of the submarine, noting the presence of “just one button” throughout the ship and saying that a submarine “should be like an elevator”. Pogue also mentions how many parts of the submarine appear to be improvised, including ready-made computer screens, a lighted handle “from Camper World,” and the use of construction tubing as ballast. During that segment, Rush holds up a Logitech F710 Wireless controller that appears to have 3D-printed thumbstick extensions and says, “We’re running the whole thing with this game controller.”
OceanGate
Introduced in 2010, the Logitech F710 controller is a wireless dual-thumbstick gamepad for PCs that uses 2.4 GHz communication with a USB receiver. While the chunky design may seem outdated by today’s standards, it’s been in continuous production for 13 years and usually retails for around $29.99 on Amazon.
Shortly after news of the Logitech controller on board the Titan distributed on Tuesday morning, the Cheap Ass Gamer Twitter account, which regularly posts video game deals, Posted an Amazon link to the Logitech F710 controller on Twitter, and the item quickly sold out.
logitech
This isn’t the first time Titan has been lost. On Monday Pogue tweeted that during his report last summer on the Titanthe submarine also got lost for a few hours (while Pogue was on the surface), although he later noted that the submarine was still in contact with the surface during its journey and that in this situation all communication with the submarine has been lost.
While using a $30 PC game controller for operations doesn’t inspire confidence in the Titan‘s construction, the exact cause of the submarine’s disappearance is currently unknown. Efforts are focused on locating the submarine and crew, after which an investigation will likely attempt to determine the cause of the incident.
Authorities, fearing for the lives of the crew on board, deployed multiple resources (including sonar buoys and aircraft with underwater detection capabilities) to aid in the search operation. On Monday afternoon, the US Coast Guard estimated that the Titan can have about 70 to 96 hours of oxygen left.
