Cramped Conditions and a Video Game Controller: Inside Missing 'Titanic' Sub

Search and rescue teams are racing against time to find an advanced submersible vessel with five people on board that went missing yesterday in the Atlantic Ocean near the wreck of the Titanic.

As the clock continues to tick on the rescue mission, with the sub's occupants only having a limited amount of oxygen, the vessel itself has come under scrutiny, with many expressing surprise at its small size and simple-looking instruments.

The vessel, owned by OceanGate, a private company that organizes deep-sea expeditions, is called Titan. It can carry a maximum of five people: a pilot, a content expert and three paying passengers. Tickets for an expedition to the Titanic wreckage cost about $250,000.

Aboard the submersible on Sunday were Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet and billionaire British explorer Hamish Harding, together with Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood.

According to OceanGate, Titan can reach depths of 13,123 feet and is lighter and "more cost-efficient to mobilize than any other deep diving submersible."

It is made of carbon fiber and titanium, measures ​​22 feet by 9.2 feet by 8.3 feet, and weighs 23,000 pounds. Titan can travel at a speed of 3 knots and can provide oxygen for a total of 96 hours for five passengers and crew.

The interior appears similar in size to a van, although a caption on OceanGate social media describes it as "roomy compared with traditional deep diving submersibles," adding that "crew members have ample space to work together to document the Titanic wreck site."

Once inside, crew members can only leave after the bolts applied on its surface are opened by someone on the outside, a feature that has made some on social media feel uneasy.

"Everything I read about the titanic submarine is triggering my claustrophobia," said a Twitter user, who, sharing an image of the Titan's interior, called it "cramped."

CBS footage showing that the submersible is operated with a Logitech controller—exactly like a video game controller used by people across the world in their homes—has also caused a stir.

"The submarine that went missing while taking people on tours to see the Titanic used a cheap Logitech controller and other off the shelf parts," wrote Twitter user Ian Miles Cheong, sharing footage of the controller.

The exact same Logitech controller can be found for sale on Mercari for $25. But video game controllers are actually widely used in several sectors, with modified Xbox 360 controllers being used to control military hardware.

The benefits of using video game controllers, experts say, is that they're quite easy to use and require only minimal training.

CBS correspondent David Pogue, who boarded the OceanGate submersible in summer 2022, wrote that many parts of the vessel "seemed improvised, with off-the-shelf components."

During an interview with OceanGate CEO Rush, Pogue said: "It seems like this submersible has some elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness. I mean, you're putting construction pipes as ballast."

Rush responded that while there were "certain things that you want to be buttoned down," the vessel "is not MacGyver at all, because that's where we worked with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington."

The submersible went missing after leaving Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on Sunday morning. The descent from the surface to the wreckage of the Titanic, which lies around 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, takes approximately eight hours.