Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2023 6:21 pm
Only the US Navy, or maybe the Royal Navy, would have the deep rescue technology to pull it off. And then again it's entirely dependent on the rescue vessel actually knowing exactly where they are and then on top of it being able to get there on time. Even a thirty-five knots it's going to be at least a couple of days to get there from either Britain or the US. By then, even if the sub hasn't imploded, they'd be out of their supply of breathable air.
It's an interesting what-if scenario but every single conceivable odd is against a happy ending. This sort of rescue makes the trapped Chilean miners or the rescue of those Asian boy scouts from the cave they were stuck in look like easy scenarios by comparison.
A company running this sort of undersea adventure certainly isn't running it on a shoestring budget. But it appears they regarded it as something routine when each and every single tour to the Titanic is fraught with high chances of disaster. Even the best welding in the world, which submersible vessels usually have, is subject to massive stresses from repeated immersion to highly elevated levels of water pressure - one sudden hairline crack in a weld and it's the end for that submarine. Even today most nuclear naval submarines that are built to one of the toughest construction codes ever developed don't submerge beyond several hundred yards of depth simply because even to navy vessels it's still too dangerous - really deep dives are the exception, not the rule, and are done only out of necessity (like in training operations with a rescue ship nearby) and aren't part of the sub's regular routine. For a civilian-built and operated vessel? I'm not saying these guys are greedy, despite the cost of the tour, but they were most likely running with a starry-eyed business plan and probably began to believe after repeat trips with no issues that the danger had become remote.
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