If there is anyone who has seen the remains of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea more than anyone else in the world, it is undoubtedly the director of the film who narrated the tragic journey of the ocean liner, James Cameron, who boasts about having made about 33 dives.

But how does Cameron’s capsule differ from the Titan submarine that disappeared this week and imploded with five occupants on board?

The ship, built especially for James Cameron, is called the Deepsea Challenger, and was secretly designed in Australia in collaboration with National Geographic and with support from Rolexwho created a watch model and proved it could withstand submersion. Although his challenge was to go deeper: the Mariana Trench.

This milestone was reached in 2012 when it sank much deeper into the seabed on March 26, towards the Mariana Trench, at 10,908 meters, and is considered the deepest point in the sea. This achievement was portrayed in a documentary film: Deepsea Challenge 3D.

It took the team that designed and developed the Deepsea Challenger seven years to build and assemble lighting equipment, batteries and weights: unique systems specially designed to withstand eight tons of pressure per square inch, recalls the Spanish newspaper El País himself. He mentions that it is important that the ship can withstand the pressure of reaching the bottom of the depths.

Rolex Magazine photo of film director James Cameron on the Deepsea Challenger.

For this expedition, Cameron stepped into an aviator sphere that was so small he couldn’t stretch out his arms. He was the sole occupant of one complex ship 7.3 meters long (24 feet) a sphere with 64 mm thick steel walls and highly specialized foam glass. Cameron maneuvered the ocean floor amid unfamiliar terrain and strange new animals, shooting for a feature-length documentary and collecting samples for historical research. Because? Promote exploration and scientific discovery, notes National Geographic.

Almost no security on the Titan

Regarding the stricken OceanGate Expeditions ship, James Cameron said many warnings about the safety of the tourist submarine that imploded near the Titanic, killing five people, were ignored.

“I am struck by the similarity between the Titanic disaster, whose captain was warned several times about the ice ahead of the ship, and yet rushed full speed into an ice field on a moonless night, and many people died as a result,” he said. Cameron in an interview with ABC News.

For Cameron, there were several “potential points of failure” in the Titan submarine and indicated that the “Achilles’ heel” was the carbon fiber cylinder. He added that the hull broke into “very small pieces” after Titan imploded when the hull broke under pressure.

Cameron criticized the design for moving away from proven techniques in favor of experimental methods. “There are three possible points of failure, and hopefully the investigation can pinpoint exactly what happened,” he told Good Morning America. “The viewing window in the front was a Plexiglas window. They told me it hadn’t been tested that deep when they were diving, which is a point. They also had two little glass balls on the submarine for floating, which is a bad idea, Cameron said, reiterating that the carbon fiber hull was the “weakest link.”

A warning system probably sounded the alarm and the crew was trying to take off just before the implosion, said the explorer who has made at least 72 underwater dives, 51 of them in Russian Mir submersibles to a depth of 4,877 meters, including 33 to the Titanic .

The deceased

On board the submarines were traveling British millionaire Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his son Suleman, both also British nationals, expert French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, and Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Expeditionswho charged $250,000 per tourist.

Cameron mentioned his 25-year friendship with Nargeolet.

“I can hardly process that he died tragically in this way.”