Missing Submersible Titan /Titanic.

[oakleaffy]

Depth shown here in visual form.

Wow.

It’s scary how deep they intended to go- beyond imagining. The absolute terror those on board must be feeling is unreal.

The French are sending a robot capable of reaching that depth to search...

Missing Titanic-bound submarine: ‘Dark, uncomfortable’ inside | news.com.au — Australia’s leading news site

I’m trying to find out how long the mission should have taken. Does anyone know? They left at 4am on Sunday morning. What time should they have been back?

According to this wiki entry, culled from CNN:

"On 16 June, the expedition to Titanic departed from St John's Newfoundland, aboard the research and expedition ship MV Polar Prince. The ship arrived at the dive site on 17 June and the dive operation began the following day on 18 June at 9:00 ADT. For the first hour and a half of the descent, the Titan communicated with the Polar Prince every 15 minutes, but communication stopped after a recorded communication at 11:47 ADT. The vessel was expected to resurface at 18:10 ADT. Authorities were notified about the incident at 18:35 ADT." (Others say, not until 22.43)

Elsewhere, I've read it was meant to be a 10-hour round trip. The journey down takes two hours, and two hours back up. The rest was meant to be surveying the wreck of the Titanic. But the ship they launched from lost contact with them 1 hour 45 minutes into the dive down. Didn't call for help until 10 hours later.

Does that mean they likely didn't get to the wreck?

Their only way of navigating to the wreck was via guidance in brief texts from the ship above. I am surprised the ship didn't call for help much sooner. God knows what has happened to them.

I am finding it hard to get my head round just how deep they were going. The open ocean is just vast.