the dive 9 occupants of the Limiting Factor. At the full depth of Challenger Deep, the pressure is 16,000 pounds of force per square inch, equivalent to a school bus sitting on top of every cubic inch of water (or to the atmospheric pressure on the planet Venus!)—but Dawn and Victor, inside the sub’s meticulously engineered chamber, are protected from the ocean’s crushing force. Outside the hatch of the Limiting Factor, the crew have placed a handful of Styrofoam cups decorated with colorful doodles in a mesh bag. As the sub descends, the cups are fully exposed to the tremendous water pressure. When the sub returns to the surface, the cups are retrieved—warped and compressed to a fraction of their original size, but, amazingly, mostly intact. Not even a year later, in June 2023, the tragic loss of OceanGate’s Titan submersible near the wreck of the Titanic provided a sobering reminder of the perils of deep-sea exploration and the potentially catastrophic consequences of extreme underwater pressure. At the depth where the Titan’s hull suffered its deadly implosion, the pressure was an estimated 5,500 pounds of force per square inch, enough to crush a soda can to the size of a marble. Fortunately, unlike the Titan, the Limiting Factor has been constructed and certified to the highest industry standards. +4 HOURS, 17 MINUTES | −10451 METERS Apart from the expedition’s symbolic importance, as a first for a Black woman, Dawn’s dive has an immediate, tangible goal: pushing the science of seafloor data collection to new limits. One of the Styrofoam cups that rode all the way to Challenger Deep inside the hatch of the Limiting Factor, compared with a fresh Styrofoam cup.
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