‘The Simpsons’ Writer Mike Reiss, Former Passenger on the Missing Titan, Thinks Sub’s Chances for Rescue Are Grim

As the world waits to hear about the fate of the lost submersible Titan and the five-person crew onboard, passengers who have previously traveled aboard the tiny craft are speaking out about their own experiences on it. Journalist David Pogue was one of the first to raise concerns about the vessel after his 2022 trip on it, and Mike Reiss, the writer and former showrunner for The Simpsons, has revealed that he took four trips on it in the past, but each one left him worrying he “may never get off” the experimental craft.

Speaking with the BBC, Reiss said, “I know the logistics of it and I know how vast the ocean is and how very tiny this craft is. If it’s down at the bottom I don’t know how anyone is going to be able to access it, much less bring it back up.”

Reiss added that he’s “not optimistic” that the sub will be found before its 96-hour oxygen supply runs out, which would happen today (June 22). Reiss says that the tiny ship lost communication with it’s host ship on each of the four trips he took on it in the past, though communication was eventually regained.

In a separate conversation with CNN, he said, “I took four different dives with the company, one to the Titanic and three off of New York City, and communication was lost, at least briefly, every single time. It just seems baked into the system. I don’t blame the submarine as much as I blame deep water, but you would always lose it and come back.”

Reiss said that each time he traveled aboard Titan, he feared that something dire could happen. “I got on the sub and at the back of my mind was ‘Well, I may never get off this thing,’ that’s always with you,” he said.

Still, Reiss defended OceanGate, the company that runs the Titan’s trips, likening their deep-sea exploration to space travel: “This is not to say this is a shoddy ship or anything, it’s just that this is all new technology and they’re learning it as they go along. You have to just remember the early days of the space program or the early days of aviation, where you just make a lot of mistakes on the way to figuring out what you’re doing.”