Above left: Two deep see diving vehicles explore the Titanic wreck, at the beginning of the movie. Above right: Brock Lovett uses a handheld video camera to record pictures of the Titanic's deck, from one of the diving vehicles. He is heard saying, "Dive six. Here we are again on the deck of the Titanic, two and one-half miles down, three thousand eight hundred twenty-one meters. The pressure outside is three and a half tons per square inch. These windows are nine inches thick and if they go, it's [goodbye] in two microseconds. Alright, enough of that bullshit."
There is a problem with Lovett's numbers. Since 1 meter = 3.281 feet, 3,821 meters is equivalent to about 12,537 feet. The pressure at this depth would be approximately 5,585 pounds per square inch (psi),[a] but Lovett says the pressure is 3.5 tons psi, and since 1 ton = 2000 pounds, the number given by Lovett equates to 7,000 psi; this is quite a bit higher than 5,585 psi.
Brock is also wrong about the thickness of the windows. He says they are 9 inches thick, but the Russian Mir, the actual Deep Submergence Vehicle that is carried by the Akademik Mstislav Keldysh, is capable of descending to a depth of 6,000 meters, and each of its three viewports is only 18 centimeters (7.1 inches) thick.[b]
Above left: The Russian spelling of the name on the side of the scientific research ship used in the movie (click image to enlarge), when 'translated' into English letters, reads "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh." Above right: The Deep Submergence Vehicle being retrieved from the water, after its crew is done exploring the Titanic wreckage.
James Cameron has intentionally placed inaccuracies in the film, with the hope that the audience will notice them. In upcoming posts in this analysis, we'll look at some more inaccuracies, and we'll see why Cameron wants us to notice them.
a. The 5,585 psi figure was obtained using the MyCalTool 'Pressure at depth' calculator, URL = http://www.calctool.org/CALC/other/games/depth_press.
b. Wikipedia, Mir (submersible). Web, n.d. URL = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir_(submersible).
