OceanGate ramps up the research for its second deep-sea expedition to the Titanic:
One year after OceanGate's first expedition to the Titanic shipwreck, the Everett, Wash.-based company is gearing up for its second annual set of dives starting next week — and this time, science will be at center stage.
Last summer's expedition kicked off what's intended to be a yearly series of visits to the 110-year-old ruin, nearly 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic. As any movie fan knows, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank during its first voyage from England to New York in 1912, causing more than 1,500 deaths.
The shipwreck was rediscovered in 1985, and there's been a string of crewed and robotic surveys since then. But OceanGate's plan is different. The 13-year-old company and its research partners aim to document how the rapidly deteriorating Titanic and its surroundings are changing on a year-to-year basis — supported by customers who are paying $250,000 each to be part of the adventure.
[...] "One of the ways that we're able to support this kind of scientific research is by finding different ways to fund it," Rush said. "We can take media, as we'll do this year and as we did last year, and film these wrecks and these locations. And we can bring people who are willing to help fund the operation to participate. That gives us a completely different way to fund this, and be able to go back to the Titanic and other sites every year."
[...] This year's expedition begins June 15 [...] is due to wrap up on July 25.
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Deep sea researchers have used two submersibles to make the first full, 3-dimensional scan of the wreck of the sunken passenger ship, The Titanic, including much of the 3-mile long debris field. This is a major step forward in evidence-based analysis of the wreck from over a hundred years ago.
The new scan was "devoid of that," he said, adding, "It is completely based on data and not human interpretation and that is why we are now seeing it in its larger context for the first time ever."
Atlantic Productions said "one major area of deterioration" had already been observed in the officers' quarters. "This included the room of Captain Edward John Smith and discovered that the iconic captain's bathtub has now disappeared from view," it added.
"Now we're getting objective, so we can get really serious with the science of understanding the wreck," Stephenson said.
He added that he was "absolutely convinced," that the photogrammetry model would now be used "not just for Titanic, but for all underwater exploration," because it "ushers in a new phase of exploration and analysis."
Much of the wreck lies in two main pieces, far apart from each other, at a depth of about 4,000 meters. Around 700k images where taken and stitched together to created the model.
Previously:
(2022) Researchers Discover Wreck of Ship that Tried to Warn the Titanic
(2022) OceanGate Ramps Up the Research for its Second Deep-sea Expedition to the Titanic
(2020) An Aurora that Lit Up the Sky Over the Titanic Might Explain Why It Sank
(2020) US Court Grants Permission to Recover Marconi Telegraph from Titanic's Wreckage [Updated]
(2018) Finding the Titanic with ROVs and Navy Funding
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 08 2022, @09:57PM (3 children)
It takes a sales guru to entice people to pay, while working as a deckhand. Time to read those old Tom Sawyer stories again . . . whooops forgot that Tom is racissssss.
(Score: 2) by dwilson on Thursday June 09 2022, @01:30AM
Only in a few, arguably fucked-up, countries. In the rest of the world, it's just literature.
- D
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday June 09 2022, @04:21PM (1 child)
Yep 'cause nobody volunteers to help the environment and people definitely hate free boat rides.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 09 2022, @04:47PM
If I'm an oceanographer and I have funding for in-situ specimen collection that I can achieve on this vessel, and I also get to go participate in the dive 13kft down, but the stipulation is that I need to chip in because there's no standing crew, well you're damn sure I'll swab the deck or clean the head every day, or do whatever else needs to be done. Far more useful than the rich ISS tourists who seemed offended calling them tourists because "look, they gave me some buttons to push, I'm working like a real astronaut!" Notice that they didn't have to swab the ISS walls or clean the ISS head or do anything deemed beneath their station as rich tourists.