Titan submarine “was designed to come back” after 24 hours, says investor

The Titan submersible that disappeared en route to the sinking of the Titanic was designed to return to the surface after 24 hours, according to Aaron Newman, an OceanGate investor who visited the site on the ship in 2021.

Titan is held underwater by ballast – heavy weights that help a vessel’s stability – built to automatically release after 24 hours to send the sub to the surface, Newman said.

“It was designed to come back,” he told CNN .

Crew members are told they can release ballast by rocking the ship or use a pneumatic pump to release weights, Newman said. If all else fails, he said, the lines holding the ballast are designed to collapse after 24 hours to automatically send it back to the ocean’s surface.

Titan’s thrusters are powered by an external electrical system, while an internal system powers communications and a heater, Newman said.

Separately, Discovery Channel presenter Josh Gates, who made a test dive on the Titan in 2021, said he learned that year that there were four ways for the vessel to lose weight and bring it back to the surface in an emergency.

There is a computer-controlled weight release, a manual valve system that injects air into the outer ballast containers, a hydraulic system for dropping weights, and an ability to detach from the sled attached to the submersible and help move the vessel back to the surface. .