If death was for sale, the richest had already bought it, like second-hand clothes. The new generation of multi-millionaire explorers doesn’t just want the world, it wants this world, the other and the one that comes next, in a time and space inaccessible to ordinary mortals with broken pockets. It is a neoliberal concept of exclusivity, based on the technology of placing the past and the future in the same reality, like a travel agency between worlds, making utopia a kind of hyper-dream in which only impossibility is impossible. The immense market of the “beyond”, where things are never exactly as they seem and only death, in its inevitable amplitude, proves to be egalitarian.
On April 10, 1912, the Titanic left the port of Southhampton (England) for its maiden voyage to New York (USA). It was a colossus of the seas, a masterpiece of engineering and technology at the service of navigation, an innovative concept, with the usual premise: luxury and exclusivity, which only money can afford. The Titanic, built at the shipyards in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where a mega-museum dedicated to her history now operates, in which multiple dimensions became a tragic lesson in the human condition, belonged to the White Star Line.
It was built between 1909 and 1911 by Harland & Wolff – Heavy Industries, a renowned shipbuilding company, which almost sank with its “master piece”. The Titanic had as its trademark a technology that made the proclaimed king of ocean liners sink-proof. It took close to three hours to prove the opposite and many decades for this company – still one of the largest shipbuilders in the world today – to rescue its prestige from the bottom of the seas.
The Titanic sank on April 15 (1912) after a collision with a iceberg the size of a mountain. Its wreckage would only be located on September 1, 1985 by French oceanographers Robert Ballard and Jean-Louis Michel, at 3,800 meters deep, in the North Atlantic, close to 600 kilometers off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. It was as if the ship itself had emerged from the darkness into its archetype of myth, from a certain tragic romanticism that Humanity uses as a kaleidoscope for its smallness.
It is curious how everyone, from those who concentrate all the wealth in the world to the vast majority of nothing, have in common the colonial aim of conquering a piece of immortality, which is not listed on the stock exchange and, stubbornly, does not define its price. . There is no way to do a take-over of death, which is older than trilobites.
The Portuguese, Mário Ferreira, is president of Media Capital. © Credits: José Coelho | LUSA
It is curious how everyone, from those who concentrate all the wealth in the world to the vast majority of nothing, have in common the colonial aim of conquering a piece of immortality, which is not listed on the stock exchange and, stubbornly, does not define its price. . There is no way to do a take-over of death, which is older than trilobites.
The fact that the submarine Titan, in what is described as a “catastrophic implosion”, tragically joins its own to the wreckage of the Titanic, is also of the darkest irony, as if 111 years of the history of Humanity were reunited, proving themselves to be new, as of all other infinite times, which is death the most reliable of technologies. One of these days, the Titanic and the Titan will be just one finished example of what ends. In the end, the truth is just this: Titan is just another drop in the ocean. Death is always waiting for an expedition.
life support
There is not, nor could there be, a comparison between the size of the Titanic and this submersible unit, let alone for that very reason. The Titan was like an exploratory probe at the service of luxury tourism, a technological exponent, made of carbon fiber and titanium, transformed into a kind of “high-tech” Tuk-Tuk of the depths, costing each crew member close to 250 thousand euros . The Titanic was 269.10 meters long, 28.2 meters wide, 53.14 meters high, weighing 43,000 tons. Titan, a Cyclops class submarine, was 6.7 meters long, 2.80 meters wide, 2.50 meters high, weighed 10,432 kilograms, had the capacity to dive to a depth of four thousand meters and had an autonomy of oxygen for 96 hours, for a maximum crew of five people.
Unlike the Titanic, this was not the Titan’s maiden voyage. According to OceanGate Expeditions, it was the submersible’s third expedition to the Titanic. Titan’s “dives” were divided into seven days. Each trip lasted eight hours: two and a half hours for the descent; three hours of exploration, two and a half hours for the ascent. Some of the privileged few who have seen what remains of the Titanic with their own eyes would be used to plunging into cash at best. But nothing compared to the millions that this expedition brought together aboard the Titan, starting with the American Stockton Rush, founder and executive director of OceanGate, whose brand, with the title of a Hollywood B-movie, didn’t leave much to the imagination, passing fromhub” the multinational. OceanGate, by basing its profit base in the inhospitable territory of research, has never been aby-the-book” technological or commercial, being both and, at the same time, neither. No one was expecting what would come next.
The owner of OceanGate, oddly enough, became known in the air rather than the sea. At just 19 years old, he became famous for becoming the youngest person in the world to fly a US Air Force jet. At the age of 22, he landed at McDonnell Douglas, an aircraft builder, as a flight test engineer. In 2009, Rush decided to sail on his own, creating OceanGate Expeditions, which would specialize in expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic. In 2012, he co-founded the non-profit OceanGate Foundation, a research and knowledge center for maritime technology, science, history and archeology. OceanGate Expeditions – which worked in collaboration with NASA, Boeing and the University of Washington in the development of this prototype – which created a class of submersibles capable of reaching depths of up to six thousand meters, was its exploratory arm and the engine of the your profits.
The “Titanic” project, let’s call it that, was like a futuristic visit to the past. The bottom of the sea, being so unexplored, is to the past what space is to the future. Despite signing the terms of responsibility and the legal assumption of the danger of death, no one ever thought it possible that reality would become so hard for someone who invested so much in it.
The British Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is the founder of the Virgin Group. © Credits: Patrick T. FALLON / AFP
The “Titanic” project, let’s call it that, was like a futuristic visit to the past. The bottom of the sea, being so unexplored, is to the past what space is to the future. Despite signing the terms of responsibility and the legal assumption of the danger of death, no one ever thought it possible that reality would become so hard for someone who invested so much in it.
The submersible Titan officially disappeared on Sunday, June 18th, leaving the world in its usual suspense/social media cause. With an hour and 45 minutes of submersion, it was normal for the submarine to be close to three thousand meters deep. On the surface, the Canadian ship Polar Prince, supporting the Titan expeditions, lost contact with the submarine. The Polar Prince was the ship that transported the Titan to the dive site for the wreckage of the Titanic, at a distance close to the site of its sinking, about 1,600 kilometers from the US state of Massachusetts, which is why it was the coastal authority of the city of Boston to issue the first alert for his disappearance.
From that moment on, the world has not lost focus on this case, making it a struggle for underwater survival, with life counting down. According to the US Coast Guard, the crew of the Titan, as of 8 pm on Monday (June 20), had close to 70 hours of oxygen, possibly a little more, it was not known exactly. At that time, as in the days that followed, it was more what was not known than what was known, with only a glimmer of hope remaining after the sonars of the search and rescue teams heard some distant noises, which could be of the Titan, something that quickly ceased to be of interest, given what slowly became obvious: the Titan and its crew were hardly doomed. The world asked for no less than a miracle. But the sea is not lavish on these concessions.
Only for regular customers
As the submersible was lost in the vacuum of the depths, the identity of these luxury tourists came to the surface, with careful disclosure. Some of them were already known adventurers, on land, at sea or in space, others, not really. It is a restricted list, which is generally only disclosed to the posteriori.
The captain of the submersible Titan was Paul-Henry Nargeolet, who served in the French Navy for 25 years and has recently been hailed as one of the pioneers in exploring the wreckage of the Titanic. It was, in fact, Paul-Henry, captain of OceanGate’s deep submersion team, who was the first explorer to reach the wreckage of the Titanic. Hardly anyone would be more prepared for this mission on the Titan, which was never properly certified. In other words, it was a prototype, these trips being, for all intents and purposes, experimental.
OceanGate Expeditions operates as an expedition company through the rules and legal minutiae of an equally unexplored market. It is precisely in this undefined space that this market for experimental adventurism proliferates, making the planet a technological halt for “great unknown”, as a rule, hostile to human beings. Man’s nature, however, is to look for him at all costs, even if it is a small, medium or one of those eccentric fortunes. It is clear that, for those who owned them, this is also a relative concept.
In this regard, one of the most distinguished crew members on this last Titan expedition was, without a doubt, Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British multimillionaire, also linked to the aeronautical industry, owner of Action Aviation, a company that sells private jets, based in Dubai . This was the British billionaire’s first venture into depth. Last year, he was one of those chosen – like Mário Ferreira, the Portuguese businessman, main shareholder of Media Capital, owner of TVI and CNN Portugal – for an expedition into space, aboard a rocket from Blue Origin, a pioneer in the so-called space tourism, a “universe” not very accessible to most taxpayers on planet Earth. Mário Ferreira, as he confessed these days, was about to join this Titan expedition. He didn’t do it because something in his instinct advised against it and because the safety of the submarine raised doubts in him.
The American Elon Musk intends to one day create a condominium on Mars. © Credits: Frederic J. BROWN / AFP
In this regard, one of the most distinguished crew members on this last Titan expedition was, without a doubt, Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British multimillionaire, also linked to the aeronautical industry, owner of Action Aviation, a company that sells private jets, based in Dubai . This was the British billionaire’s first venture into depth. Last year, he was one of those chosen – like Mário Ferreira, the Portuguese businessman, main shareholder of Media Capital, owner of TVI and CNN Portugal – for an expedition into space, aboard a rocket from Blue Origin, a pioneer in the so-called space tourism, a “universe” not very accessible to most taxpayers on planet Earth. Mário Ferreira, as he confessed these days, was about to join this Titan expedition. He didn’t do it because something in his instinct advised against it and because the safety of the submarine raised doubts in him.
Last Friday, the 23rd, the hopes of rescuing the Titan and its crew alive were already slim. As mentioned, experts ended up concluding that the submarine had suffered a “catastrophic implosion”. This means that the submersible succumbed to pressure. Every ten meters of depth, they explained, corresponds to an atmospheric pressure of one kilogram per square centimeter. With the integrity of the submersible compromised, what happened was inevitable. On board the Titan, Stockton Rush, Paul-Henry Nargeolet, Hamish Harding, as well as Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, father and son, both British citizens, descendants of what is considered the richest family in Pakistan, died. Shazada Darwood, 48, heir to a considerable fortune, and Suleman, 19, a student, were both wildlife and nature conservation lovers. They liked to collect undiscovered sites, joining expeditions and sponsoring others. They had never embarked on an experience as radical as this one, in the depths of the North Atlantic. In the wreckage that joined those of the Titanic, five families were shattered. Pain is another one of those things money can’t buy.
Expensive and dangerous hobbies
On August 4, 2022, Mário Ferreira, president of Media Capital, the most unlikely of astronauts, left for space aboard a Blue Origin rocket, Jeff Bezos, owner and master of the Amazon empire and a fortune that seems endless, known for its eccentricities. It was, in fact, from one of these that Blue Origin, an aerospace company, was born, whose most mediatic mission was the rescue of the F-1 engine of the historic Apollo 11 Mission (crewed by Neil Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins), which for more than four decades it lay at the bottom of the sea. The engines were rescued in March 2012, a turning point for Blue Origin, which definitively opened its wings to space, where the first Portuguese space tourist was launched.
In Portugal, it took some time to conclude that it was not “fake news”, because TVI, who knows why, got an exclusive interview with its owner, who made his fortune in the waters of the Douro and is now I was preparing for something that few in Humanity have access to. Or courage. Or money. Without the latter, chances are very slim, although the space tourism business is in the process of being disseminated, with the entry of Richard Branson, the chief adventurer, into this market. Mário Ferreira returned from space with the experience of a lifetime, difficult to translate into words, which this time he delivered exclusively to CNN Portugal, to share the information among the villages.
If the entrepreneur was afraid? A bit. How did it feel to glide in zero gravity? From the other world. And the space, Mário Ferreira? Of those things that only seen. And was it very expensive, Mr. President? Well, it wasn’t change, but a far cry from the twenty-something million that the competition was mentioning. It was only 250 thousand euros, more or less. The first Portuguese space tourist, after a suborbital trip of just over ten minutes, will keep the moment for eternity, as well as the Portuguese flag, which he handed over to the universe, which from the outset prevented him from showing it live, of course, on a television near you.
Read more:First images of the wreckage of the “Titan” removed from the sea
It is not possible to talk about multimillionaires and a new breed of modern adventurers, not to mention the British Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, founder of the Virgin Group (which he consolidated in the 80s), which operates in markets as diverse as music, fashion, passing through aviation, the development of biofuels and, about to launch its commercial line, aerospace travel. He has a net worth estimated at more than 4.6 billion euros, which is still not enough to leave the place two hundred and something on the Forbes list. Turning to space tourism, which is decidedly all the rage for many on this list, Branson seems to have moved beyond his long Atlantic obsession. In 1986, his Virgin Atlantic Challenger tried to break the record for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, having sunk in British waters. The following year, he returned to the load, aboard the Virgin Atlantic Challenger II, shaving two hours off that record. The following year, he would cross the Atlantic by air in his famous hot air balloon, the Virgin Atlantic Flyer.
Like Willy Fog from the air, Richard Branson has twice tried to go around the world in a balloon, with immense media attention, but without success. In 2021, he launched (and launched) the first commercial aerospace trip, broadcast live on the internet, with him as the owner and crew of Virgin Galactic, which is now about to start its regular flights to space. Upon arrival on dry land, with the natural ecstasy of someone who has made history, along with five other crew members, Richard Branson announced to the world that this (History) was about to change: “We are here to make space more accessible to everyone. Welcome to the dawn of a new space age.” Virgin Galactic thus joins Blue Origin in a heavyweight space showdown. It is almost certain that the eccentric of eccentrics, Elon Musk, the man who one day intends to create a condominium on Mars, will not fail to fly towards that destination, which begins to fly away from fiction. A luxury that few can afford. As one day happened with the Titanic.
(Author writes under old spelling agreement.)
