From visiting the Titanic to orbiting the Moon: the most dangerous eccentricities of billionaires like Bezos or Musk

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The British ocean liner James Cameron brought to the cinema in 1997 is back in the news due to an unfortunate event: the Titan, a tourist submarine that transports tourists to the remains of the famous ship, has been missing since Sunday. On board are five passengers who paid 250,000 euros for an excursion that could turn into a tragedy if they are not found before next Thursday. And it is that the rich not only have very expensive tastes, but also very risky ones.

One of the missing crew members is the British businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding, president of Action Aviation. At 59 years old, he had several Guinness records on his resume: the record for the longest time to overcome the deepest part of the ocean in a greater investment in the Mariana Trench and the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the planet, managing to cross in plane the two poles of which the Earth is made up. His last adventure was in 2022, being one of the six astronauts who were aboard the New Shepard rocket in the Blue Origin project of the Jeff Bezos.

The Amazon founder was also on that flight, in which the crew members paid $25 million to go into space (106 kilometers above the Kármán line, which separates the atmosphere from outer space). Bezos’s obsession with the universe led him to a marine expedition to recover the remains of Apollo 11, the first rocket that took us to the Moon. The tycoon has risked his life on other occasions, such as crossing the Arctic on a sleigh.

In this particular space race there is also Elon Muskwhich has collected 75 million dollars from tycoons like Yusaku Maezawa (Japanese fashion billionaire) or the DJ Steve Aoki to orbit the Moon in the Starship, a rocket that has exploded eight times during its tests, the last of which was in the air at the end of April.

Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, is another of the rich who find fun in adrenaline. And he is not satisfied with driving a Formula 1 car or fighting a heifer: at 72, he has crossed the two main oceans on Earth in a balloon, broken a couple of speed records in the Atlantic, climbed Mont Blanc, crossed the Channel La Mancha doing kitesurfing and driving a water car, the Virgin Galactic. In 2021, he crewed his Unity rocket-plane lifted off from New Mexico and spent an hour weightlessly above ground. The company continues to carry out tests to offer safe excursions for a reasonable price: 400,000 euros.

The Titan, three days missing

The tourist submarine of the OceanGate company began the descent last Sunday first thing in the morning from the Island of Newfoundland. An hour and forty-five minutes later, communication was lost. The United States, France and Canada are looking for them by sea and air, although time is against them: the submarine, with a capacity for five crew members, barely had provisions and has a 96-hour life support.

The rescue teams maintain the hope of finding them alive but the experts are pessimistic: the security system should have released them to the surface and they would be visible. Once this possibility has been ruled out, there are two other unflattering ones: that the submersible has caught on some object and is stuck or that it exploded due to pressure. The Titanic rests at a depth of 3,800 meters, so finding them in the body of water without coordinates or communications is very complicated.

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