As the hunt for a submersible craft that went missing during a voyage to the Titanic grows desperate, questions have been raised about the simple, store-bought control that steers the vessel.
The 23,000-pound submersible, which vanished in the North Atlantic Sunday with five people aboard, is piloted by a video game controller during dives of up to 13,000 feet, the CEO revealed in an interview last year.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, whose company runs the tourist expeditions at a cost of $250,000 per person, told CBS News in November 2022 that a modified Logitech gamepad controller is used to pilot the submersible. Rush is one of the five passengers on the missing sub.
A surface ship guides the submersible to the shipwreck by sending text messages to the crew, which then steers the ship using the Logitech gamepad, according to the CBS News report.
The submersible is taken out to sea and returned to dock by a larger mother ship. Unlike a submarine, it does not have the power to do so on its own.
While the $40 Logitech controller has drawn some mockery online, it's not uncommon to use modified video game controllers to control real-life vehicles.
The U.S. military has for years used military-grade controllers that are similar to PlayStation or Xbox controllers and allow soldiers to operate cameras, fly unmanned aerial vehicles and more.
“The U.S. Army recognized that today’s warfighter is an 18- to 20-year-old with PC gaming experience. They wanted a controller with the form factor of a video game controller, but built to withstand a military environment,” Walter Freed, a business manager with Ultra Electronics, the company that makes the controllers, told NBC News in 2011. “If I plugged this into a laptop, it would recognize it as a gaming controller.”
Attack submarines controlled by the U.S. Navy also use Xbox controllers to maneuver photonics masts, according to USA Today.
The pilot using the controller to steer the Titan is also operating in a space that Aaron Newman, a former passenger and OceanGate investor, said on TODAY is "a tube that’s comfortable, but not spacious."
The submersible also becomes cold and pitch black, other than the lights from the sub, as it descends, according to Newman.