Missing Titanic Sub Was Steered by a Third Party Bluetooth Controller

I don’t think you’d get me in a submersible that was means-tested and approved for the depths, but I would probably leave the planet before I got in one that was piloted by the kind of game controller you give to the kid with jam-smeared fingers.

And yet that’s exactly what the tourist sub that went missing on a dive to the wreck of the Titanic had to work with. The five-person submersible featured a toilet of sorts and an elevator-style simplicity to its operating systems, but to pilot the camper van-sized capsule an off-the-shelf Logitech Bluetooth controller was used.

There’s a video doing the rounds of a CBS story that reportedly shows the CEO of Oceangate, a privately-owned submersible company, touring the sub before its launch and acting rather jovial about a warning letter that explicitly states the sub is not approved for diving. A troubling flippant “it shouldn’t take a lot of skill” is even thrown out there about piloting a metal can to the depths of the ocean.

Five individuals, including Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, as well as British billionaire businessman and explorer Hamish Harding, are reported missing aboard the sub. The sub, which disappeared on Sunday approximately 700 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, lost contact with the surface vessel, the Polar Prince, just over an hour and 45 minutes into its dive to explore the wreck of the Titanic.

As of Monday night, the US Coast Guard estimated that the sub had a remaining emergency oxygen supply lasting between 70 and 96 hours. Authorities are making use of both surface and underwater search methods to locate the submersible.

Hopefully, the sub can be recovered and the people inside rescued.

Keep updated on the latest PC Gaming news by following GameWatcher on Twitter, checking out our videos on YouTube, giving us a like on Facebook, and joining us on Discord.