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Reports written by Susan
Wels
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Images produced by Matt Tulloch | |||
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Thursday, August 13, 1998
"Each morning the sun rose behind us in a sky of circular clouds, stretching round the horizon in long, narrow streaks and rising tier upon tier above the skyline, red and pink and fading from pink to white, as the sun rose higher in the sky."
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 Even
early this morning, the weather is already hot and sultry, and a searing
wind is scattering white caps across a slate-grey sea.Despite the threat of rougher water, the Nadir’s crew is busy readying Nautile for a dive. There’s always hours of work they need to do before the yellow sub and its three passengers can safely free fall 2.5 miles down to the Titanic’s wreck. Nautile is essentially a titanium sphere protectively encased inside syntactic foam. If the sphere has the slightest leak, it will implode in a fraction of a second at the Titanic’s depth, where the water pressure reaches a pulverizing 6,000 pounds per square inch. |
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 Three
people—a pilot, co-pilot and observer—share the tiny space inside
the sub, which they typically inhabit for 12 hours on a dive. To maintain
a breathable atmosphere inside Nautile, carbon dioxide is continuously
removed with a soda lime filter, and extra bottles of oxygen are placed
inside the sub.Every 30 minutes, Nautile must use its underwater acoustic telephone to stay in voice contact with the surface, so its communication system is carefully checked before every descent. The crew also thoroughly goes over the sub’s extensive wiring and electronic systems. Despite Nautile’s complicated engineering, it has had few prob | ||||