Search efforts are underway for the missing OceanGate Titan submersible, and the five people on board are rapidly running out of air.
As more details surface about the tiny sub’s chairless interior, which would be cramped and uncomfortable in even the best of circumstances, it’s fair to wonder why someone would sign up for this trip in the first place.
Fran Capo is someone. The author, comedian, and speaker is one of only 180 people to successfully make the dive to the Titanic wreckage. She spoke to KNX News about what it’s really like to venture into the depths in a submersible.
“I asked them, are there any requirements when you go down to the Titanic? And they said there were three requirements: one, you couldn’t have high blood pressure. Two, you couldn’t be claustrophobic,” she said. “Well, what happens if you are claustrophobic? What if somebody lied? And they actually said to me, they shoot you with a dart gun … we can’t have people panicking down there.”
As for the third requirement: no farting.
““It’s pure oxygen down there, and if you fart too much, you could blow up the ship,” she said.
Capo made the trip in 2005 in the Russian Mir-1 submersible, one of the same vehicles used in the filming of the movie Titanic. The space inside was so cramped, her knees were touching the pilot’s. There was no toilet, and the round windows were only six inches in diameter.
“I asked Anatoly [Sagalevich, one of the Mir’s creators], how come the windows aren’t bigger so we can see better?” Capo recalled. “And he said, because it’s six tons of pressure on every inch of this submersible, and if the windows are bigger, there’s more of a chance that it could break.”
But despite the danger, Capo said she was never afraid during her trip.
“I wasn’t scared because I knew the Mir had done many voyages before and there was never a problem, so I kind of go by the law of averages.”
She added that she wouldn’t have gone on the Titan because of the size of the sub’s window, which the company brags is the “largest viewport of any deepsea manned submersible.”
A former OceanGate employee voiced alarm about the sub’s safety years ago, including the window, which was only certified to withstand depths of 1,300 meters. The depth of the Titanic wreck is nearly 4,000 meters. The employee claimed in a legal filing that rather than addressing his concerns, the company fired him.
CBS correspondent David Pogue, who went on the Titan in 2022, told NPR that his own trip was “not smooth” and that OceanGate’s expeditions “rarely go to plan.”
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