A former passenger details what it's like inside the missing Titan submersible

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

Ninety-six hours - according to the U.S. Coast Guard, that is believed to be the sustainment capability for the Titanic submersible that went missing in the North Atlantic on Sunday with five people onboard. David Marquet is a retired U.S. Navy submarine captain. He told NPR this morning that their chances of survival at this point are very low.

DAVID MARQUET: I'm hopeful, but I think the family should prepare themselves for bad news - I would say at this point, about 1%.

KELLY: We're going to speak now to someone with direct firsthand experience of the missing vessel. "CBS Sunday Morning" correspondent David Pogue traveled on the Titan submersible last year. Hey there.

DAVID POGUE: Hi.

KELLY: Hi. So were you doing the same itinerary that these five people set out to do, going down to explore the wreck of the Titanic?

POGUE: I was indeed. We were there to do a story about this very unusual adventure-travel company and their one-of-a-kind submersible.

KELLY: Ah. And describe it for us. It's called the Titan. It is not big, 22 feet long?

POGUE: Yeah. Inside it feels like you're in a minivan without seats. You sit on the floor. The actual body of the thing is a carbon-fiber cylinder. So the walls are curved. It's very modern-looking. It has cool lighting. There's a sound system. There's a couple of computer screens. And there is one round window at the end, about 21 inches across. And when you're visiting the Titanic, you take turns looking out the porthole.

KELLY: Looking out the porthole. OK. How do you steer it? Who's steering it? Who's controlling it?

POGUE: There are two pilots, one of which is Stockton Rush, the sub's designer and the CEO, and he drives the sub with a game controller. It looks like the one you'd use with an Xbox or something. It has the right levers and buttons to go up, down, left, right and so on. And his argument is it might look cheap and consumer-y (ph), but it's a tried and true, very reliable component, and it does exactly what we need.

KELLY: And sorry, just to be clear, this is something that looks like a video game controller or actually is an off-the-shelf video game controller?

POGUE: It actually is an off-the-shelf game controller. I will say that there are a number of off-the-shelf parts on this submersible. He told me that the lighting he bought from camperworld.com. The main thing, though, is that the part we care about, that carbon fiber tube - the pressure vessel, as he calls it - that was designed in conjunction with NASA and the University of Washington and was intended to be fail-safe.

KELLY: And, I mean, you came back. You're here talking to me now. So you were safe. Did things go to plan? Was your trip smooth?

POGUE: My trip was not smooth. We made it 37 feet down, and then they ran into a mechanical problem, and we had to abort the dive. I was devastated and crushed and did not see it coming. But I have since learned that these dives rarely go to plan. With each of these expeditions that OceanGate makes, they spend five days over the shipwreck. And typically, of those five days, they managed to get down only once or twice. And this season it's been zero.

KELLY: And the setup you're describing is that there's the submersible, which is actually going all the way down, and there's a surface ship that is close by that is in constant contact and where you're kind of launching to and from?

POGUE: That's right. The definition of a submersible is a craft that is too weak and low-powered to get anywhere on its own. It has to be carried everywhere. So we'd sail out to the Titanic spot on this surface vessel, where the controls are and the navigation. There is no GPS underwater, and regular radio waves don't travel underwater. So all the where-are-we stuff depends on the control room on the ship.

KELLY: So as we all try to imagine what the experience has been for this crew of five on the now-missing Titan, walk me through what kind of prep, what kind of training you were required to do before you got on board.

POGUE: We got a lot of training for getting around on the surface vessel, which is not a consumer vehicle by any means. It's an industrial petroleum-rigged servicing ship. So it has dangers of its own. And then we got in-depth tours of the Titan itself, inside and outside. We learned the parts of it. There really is no safety gear in there except for a fire extinguisher and fire masks, which we practiced putting on and taking off. That's pretty much it, because there's not much you can do if something goes wrong.

What you can do is rise to the surface. And there are seven different ways to return to the surface - just redundancy after redundancy. They can drop sandbags. They can drop lead pipes. They can inflatable a balloon. They can use the thrusters. They can even jettison the legs of the sub to lose weight. And some of these, by the way, work even if the power is out and even if everyone on board is passed out. So there's sort of a dead man's switch such that the hooks holding on to sandbags dissolve after a certain number of hours in the water, release the sandbags and bring you to the surface, even if you're unconscious.

KELLY: I want to understand what you're saying. You're saying there's redundancy upon redundancy - seven different ways this vessel is supposed to surface. But as far as we can tell, it hasn't surfaced. So what does that tell us?

POGUE: Well, we really have no idea. I mean, the waves are six feet high. It's all white caps. The sub itself is white. I don't know how an airplane is going to expect to find it in hundreds of miles of rough seas. So for all we know, they are floating somewhere on the surface right now. And the tragedy of that is you're bolted in from the outside. There's 18 bolts that seal you inside. You can't get out without assistance from an external crew. So that would be the real nightmare scenario - if they're alive and floating and unable to escape.

KELLY: Without wishing to speculate, because, as you said, nobody knows what the situation is. Some of the things you have just described to me give me real pause. I think you used the word janky to describe some of the gear. Who regulates a submersible like this? Who is enforcing safety regs? Are there safety regs?

POGUE: Nobody, because these dives take place in international waters. So there's no governing body. And I will tell you that when we boarded the surface vessel, we signed waivers that would curl your toes. I mean, it was basically a list of eight paragraphs describing ways that you could be permanently disabled or killed. So this is not a tourist company or an airline, you know, for the masses. This is for rich, adrenaline-junkie adventurers who thrive on the risk. It's a lifestyle that not all of us may be able to identify with. But for them, you know, the risk is the life.

KELLY: David Pogue of CBS sharing his experience of traveling on the now-missing submersible, the Titan. David Pogue, thanks.

POGUE: Thank you.

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