Time has run out , the oxygen aboard the Titan has run out .
Yet the hope that the five passengers aboard the submarine missing since Sunday – during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic – has not yet faded. Initially the estimated hours of autonomy were 96 but experts point out that this would be an inaccurate calculation. Passengers may in fact have taken some precautions to consume less oxygen , remaining calm and not eating.
According to submarine search and rescue expert Frank Owen, the oxygen estimate is based only on a "nominal amount of consumption." And even if rescuers are still working to find the missing, hopes are getting smaller and smaller.
The oxygen reserve for the five passengers on board the bathyscaphe would have run out around 11 am Italian today. On Tuesday (but also yesterday morning) hopes were rekindled with the noises picked up by a Canadian Lockheed P-3 Orion aircraft with underwater surveillance equipment. Thus the search area was expanded, which now has an area twice the size of Connecticut and an underground area 2.5 miles deep.
(Unioneonline/vf)
