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OceanGate puts off this year’s Titanic dives

OceanGate Titan sub
OceanGate’s Titan submersible is designed to withstand Titanic pressures. (OceanGate Photo)

Everett, Wash.-based OceanGate has had to postpone this summer’s deep-sea dives to the Titanic shipwreck, just as they were about to start, due to complications relating to the expedition’s intended mothership.

The complications have to do with the status of the Norwegian-flagged MV Havila Harmony under Canadian maritime law, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told GeekWire today. The ship’s operators at Reach Subsea feared that the ship might be impounded if the expedition went forward as planned, Rush said.

Rush said that the issue cropped up on June 7, and that the resulting complications couldn’t be resolved in time to do this year’s Titanic Survey Expedition. The first departure from St. John’s, Newfoundland, had been scheduled for June 28.

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Paine Field celebrates first passenger flights

Water cannon arch
Fire trucks shoot out sprays of water to form a celebratory arch for the first Alaska Airlines jet to take off on a scheduled passenger flight from Paine Field in Everett, Wash. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

EVERETT, Wash. — Today marks a “first” for the new passenger airline terminal at Everett’s Paine Field, thanks to Alaska Airlines’ kickoff of daily service. But it’s a “second” for Thomas Paine, the grandnephew of the airport’s namesake.

Paine and another grandnephew, Nicholas Moe, were here in 1955 when the airport dedicated a bust of their granduncle, airmail pilot Topliff Olin Paine, who grew up in Everett. The bust has since disappeared, but to mark today’s terminal opening, dignitaries dedicated a bronze statue of the elder Paine, standing right on the curb where passengers walk in to catch their flights.

Thomas Paine and Moe pulled the veil off the statue, rekindling 64-year-old memories in the process. “Things have changed a lot since then,” Paine said.

When it’s fully up and running, the 30,000-square-foot terminal will offer 24 daily nonstop flights to eight destinations in the western U.S., providing a quicker alternative to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for northern Puget Sound communities.

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Alaska Airlines adds VR to in-flight entertainment

Alaska Airlines VR
Alaska Airlines offers SkyLights’ Allosky virtual reality headset for in-flight entertainment. (Alaska Airlines Photo)

Alaska Airlines is adding virtual reality to its in-flight entertainment menu in an experiment aimed at recreating a movie theater experience at 35,000 feet.

The Seattle-based airline has partnered with SkyLights, a French-American immersive-media company, to offer VR headsets and noise-canceling headphones to first-class customers on 10 flights that go between Seattle and Boston, and Boston and San Diego.

The users can watch 2-D and 3-D films such as “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” or “Ready Player One.” They can also click into 360-degree, head-tracking virtual-reality videos.

SkyLights’ lightweight Allosky VR headsets have been adopted for tryouts on other airlines, ranging from Joon and XL Airways to Lufthansa, but Alaska Airlines’ experiment ranks among the most ambitious yet.

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Alaska Airlines to serve 8 cities from Everett

Paine Field passenger terminal
An artist’s conception shows the passenger terminal that’s planned for Everett’s Paine Field. (Propeller Airports Illustration)

Alaska Airlines says it’ll offer daily nonstop flights to eight cities including San Jose, Calif., from Paine Field in Everett, Wash., with the aim of helping travelers circumvent traffic jams on the road in Seattle and in the terminals at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

In addition to San Jose, the destinations served will include Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orange County in California, Phoenix, Portland in Oregon, San Diego and San Francisco.

Seattle-based Alaska estimates that the flights from Everett will provide a closer-to-home travel option for more than a million people living in the north Puget Sound region. The routes to Silicon Valley and San Francisco could be particularly attractive for techies.

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Titanic sub’s launch pad is ready for liftoff

OceanGate platform
Workers install an air tank on the mobile subsea platform that OceanGate will use to deploy its Cyclops 2 submersible. (OceanGate Photo)

Construction work is complete for an essential part of the dive system that’s due to carry scientists and amateur adventurers down to the world-famous Titanic shipwreck this summer.

The nearly 11-ton mobile subsea platform will be used to launch a five-person submersible into the depths of the Atlantic Ocean, and bring it back to the surface at the end of each dive.

Everest Marine. a division of Burlington, Wash.-based Penn Cove Shellfish, spent five months on the custom fabrication of the 38-foot-long aluminum platform. It’s designed to be used with the Cyclops 2 deep-sea submersible that’s been assembled by OceanGate at its headquarters in Everett, Wash.

The submersible and its platform are due to go through a round of shallow-water dives in Puget Sound this month, followed by deep-water testing in the Bahamas in April.

Those tests will lead up to the inaugural Titanic campaign in June, which will make a series of dives to the ship’s remains, 13,000 feet beneath the surface of the North Atlantic.

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OceanGate wins more funding for Titanic sub

OceanGate team with Cyclops 2
OceanGate’s workers get into the holiday spirit as they work on the Cyclops 2 submersible at the company’s Everett headquarters. (OceanGate Photo via Twitter)

OceanGate is in the midst of a $5.1 million investment round aimed at pushing the Everett, Wash.-based company closer to a Titanic undersea adventure.

The round was reported today in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joel Perry, OceanGate’s director of media and marketing, told GeekWire that the privately held company’s existing investors have already filled out much of the funding. He declined to identify the investors.

The money will give OceanGate “a little more runway” as it finishes work on its Cyclops 2 deep-sea submersible, Perry said.

OceanGate’s team has nearly completed construction of Cyclops 2 at the company’s Everett marina workshop. Perry said the pressure vessel underwent testing this week to make sure there were no leaks.

“It’s a perfect seal,” Perry said.

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OceanGate gets Titanic sub ready for the holidays

Cyclops 2 sub viewport
A scale model of the Titanic luxury liner sits on the other side of the clear acrylic viewport and titanium dome that’s due to be installed on the Cyclops 2 submersible at OceanGate’s headquarters in Everett. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

EVERETT, Wash. — Almost all the pieces are in place for a Yuletide delivery of Titanic proportions: the completion of a multimillion-dollar underwater craft that’s due to explore the world’s most famous shipwreck next year.

Cyclops 2, a five-person submersible that takes advantage of the latest in marine engineering, is taking shape at OceanGate Inc.’s headquarters on Everett’s waterfront.

“The goal is to have it in the water by the end of the year,” said Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s CEO and co-founder.

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Alaska Airlines is ending flights to Cuba

Alaska flight to Havana
A Cuban flag is propped up on an seat in Alaska Airlines’ jet for the carrier’s inaugural flight to Havana in January 2017. (Alaska Airlines Photo via Twitter)

Less than a year after Alaska Airlines began daily flights to Cuba amid a burst of red-white-and-blue fanfare, the Seattle-based airline says it’ll end them in January.

Alaska said demand for the flights to Havana has faded after an initial burst of interest.

“Travel is about making connections, and we were honored to have played a role in helping people make personal connections by traveling between the U.S. and Cuba,” Andrew Harrison, chief commercial officer for Alaska Airlines, said today in a news release. “We continually evaluate every route we fly to ensure we have the right number of seats to match the number of people who want to go there.”

The Trump administration’s shift in policy toward Cuba was a contributing factor. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump tightened restrictions on business dealings, and last week, travel requirements were changed to rule out individual “people-to-people” educational travel to Cuba from the U.S.

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Google Maps expands empire all the way to Pluto

Pluto in Google Maps
You can get an annotated view of Pluto from Google Maps. (NASA / JHUAPL / SwRI / Google)

If you zoom way, way out on Google Maps, you can now find your way around places like Sputnik Planum, Seville Mons, Aphrodite Terra and Damascus Sulcus.

Those are destinations on Pluto, Iapetus, Venus and Enceladus, just made available for virtual exploration by the Google Maps team in cooperation with astronomical artist Björn Jónsson, NASA and the European Space Agency.

The best place to start is https://www.google.com/maps/space, which will get you situated with a choice of 17 realms to explore.

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OceanGate hits milestone in Titanic effort

OceanGate Cyclops 2 cylinder
Workers survey the scene after a titanium ring is placed on the carbon fiber wound cylinder for Cyclops 2’s pressure vessel. (OceanGate Photo)

OceanGate says it’s completed assembly of the core pressure vessel for its Cyclops 2 submersible vehicle, which is due to take on the first crewed scientific expedition to the Titanic shipwreck in years.

The privately held company, based in Everett, Wash., said in a news release that it’s finished bonding two titanium rings to the ends of a 56-inch-wide, 100-inch-long carbon-fiber cylinder, thus forming the core of the pressure vessel.

Tony Nissen, OceanGate’s director of engineering, said bonding the rings to the cylinder marked a “major milestone” in the construction of Cyclops 2.

“The precision we achieved guarantees that we have a solid foundation to work with as we continue assembly of the sub,” he said.

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