A career scientist in the submersible vehicle industry fears the worst — a catastrophic implosion — regarding the fate of the OceanGate, he indicated in an interview on Monday evening.
The submersible with five people on board has been missing since Sunday while bringing tourists to explore the wreck of the Titanic.
"For there not to be any communications or any movement, indications are that something went critical," Steve Somlyody, a Florida-based senior research scientist who has 20 years of experience in submersible design and operation, told Fox News Digital.
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"The pressure down there at 4,000 meters is pretty high. About 5,800 PSI at Titanic depth. If they had any kind of leak, it would lead to an implosion and it would happen in an instant, very immediately. You wouldn’t even know it happened."
Somlyody has worked for Bluefin Robotics and now scientific research firm Battelle.
He said he was speaking for himself and not the organization.
The researcher helped build the unmanned underwater vehicle used in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370 that disappeared mysteriously over the Indian Ocean in 2014.
Rescue options are limited, he said.
The HOV Alvin out of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and the U.S. Navy's deep-submersible research vehicle (DSRV), based on the West Coast, are, he believes, the only vehicles in the United States capable of reaching Titanic depth.
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Given the lack of time — just 72 hours of oxygen in the vehicle according to multiple reports — the Navy's DSRV, and possibly the HOV Alvin, would have to be flown close to the site, but also first readied for the mission, which could take untold hours, he said.
Vehicles such as the OceanGate would have multiple redundancies for both life support and for reaching the surface in an emergency.
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Among these redundancies would be several methods to lighten the vehicle and make it buoyant, said the submersibles expert.
"If they were to float up from that depth, it would take a significant amount of time, depending upon how much weight they were able to shed and how buoyant they become."
Ten hours to rise to the surface would not be unreasonable.
But all these efforts would be detectable by a sonobuoy — the kind being used in the rescue effort to search for the OceanGate.
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"They should be able to detect them," said Somlyody.
"The lack of signs of communication is deeply worrisome."
