Titan was supposed to reach the bottom of the Atlantic, and the game controller is responsible for controlling it. This one for $30

The submarine Titan was lost this week in the Atlantic Ocean when contact with the submersible broke off several dozen minutes after submersion. The members of the expedition planned to sail it to the wreck of the Titanic, which is located at the bottom of the basin, at a depth of over 4 km.

A $30 controller in a bathyscaphe. But similar ones are used by the US Navy

Now to the fact that in Titan – instead of professional instruments – an ordinary game controller was used to control it. In one of the videos from 2021, recorded on board the submarine, Stockton Rush, the head of OceanGate admitted that many ready-made solutions were used in the submarine, and a wireless gamepad with slightly modified analog sticks is responsible for the control.

It was quickly noticed that we were talking specifically about the Logitech F710 model. You can even find the controller today on Amazon for just $30. In Polish stores, it currently costs from PLN 210 to PLN 240. it appears that for the first time such a pad was seen in Titan in 2010.

Logitech F710 game controller photo: screenshot from logitechg.com

It sounds absurd, but it is not at all proof of the primitive or extremely economical equipment of the boat, which was supposed to reach the bottom of the Atlantic. Even the US Navy is now using similar civilian game controllers. As several on US Navy ships wrote, periscope operators have Xbox 360 controllers at their disposal, because it is a simpler and cheaper solution than the complicated sticks that were previously used in ships.

The Boring Company, owned by Elon Musk, also opted for an ordinary game pad. There, such a device is responsible for controlling the operation of one of the drilling machines for drilling tunnels.

If the bathyscaphe is not found by Thursday, the crew will run out of oxygen and the current rescue operation will likely be turned into a search operation. As an expert said on Wednesday in an interview with Gazeta.pl,

An additional problem is the fact that so far no alarm signals have been registered that could come from the missing submarine. The bathyscaphe was lost several hundred kilometers east of Newfoundland, Canada.