The implosion confirmed of the OceanGate submersible carrying five tourists into the deep ocean has prompted new scrutiny of the company behind the expedition, including earlier comments made by the pilot of the diver who was among those who died.
A sub pilot clip has resurfaced and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush giving an interview in 2021, in which he says he has “broken some rules” to make Titanic trips possible for his company. The interview was conducted with vlogger Alan Estrada, who joined him on a trip that year to the Titanic wreck aboard the ship Titan.
“I’d like to be remembered as an innovator. I think I was a General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, “You’re remembered for the rules you break,” Rush said. “And I’ve broken some rules to do it. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
“I broke some rules to do this…”
Things that inspire confidence #titan CEO #Titanic pic.twitter.com/JXLdQNqbM0
— John Holowesko (@jholowesko) June 21, 2023
Talking to EstradaRush spoke specifically about the ship’s design, which many have been questioning since news of its fate came to light.
“Carbon fiber and titanium — there’s a rule that you don’t do that,” Rush said, speaking of the materials used to build the submarine. “Well, I did. It’s choosing the rules that you break that are going to add value to others and add value to society, and that really to me is about innovation.”
Will Kohnen, chairman of the Society for Marine Technology’s Committee on Manned Underwater Vehicles, told Reuters that while carbon fiber was a “unique” approach, “nobody had ever made a carbon fiber pressure hull for this depth.”
“It’s very difficult to test and verify,” he said. “…Metal hulls have elasticity. We know how they behave… But carbon fiber, very, very strong in tension. They’re not as strong in compression. And we know that. But it’s how it’s done. They react under extreme pressure that leaves a lot of research.”
(OceanGate Expeditions via AP, file)
Part of the sub was also a 7-inch-thick acrylic plexiglass window that Rush said “squeezed out about 3/4 of an inch.”
“It just warps,” he said, addressing the immense underwater pressure the ship would face. “…Before it breaks or fails, it starts to crackle, so you’ll get a big warning if it’s going to fail.”
Those comments were made when the submarine was still in its “test phase,” Estrada noted in the video. But for Rush, the trial phase wouldn’t stop him from dreaming big for his future.
He told Estrada that he hoped to make the ship much more technologically sophisticated. Finally, he wanted to be able to get in and the sub to be able to hear a voice asking him, “Stockton, how deep are we diving today?”
“The sub is your vehicle to get there. It should be an elevator,” Rush said. “It shouldn’t be an exercise in buttons and switches and stuff.”
After the submarine disappeared on Sunday, Estrada told Reuters that when it went down with the boat, they lost communication at about 3,280 feet. The condemned Excursion to OceanGate experienced a loss of communication approximately one hour and 45 minutes after departure.
CBS News’ David Pogue, who traveled on the Titan submersible last year, told “CBS Mornings” Friday that “there were things that seemed unsophisticated” when he boarded the ship last year. He even brought it to Rush.
“He said, ‘Yeah, that’s right. But those are just bells and whistles. The part that keeps you alive, the part we care about, is the carbon fiber cylinder and the titanium caps,'” Pogue recalled. “And that, he said, ‘is buttoned up.'”
CBS news @poguewho traveled underwater on OceanGate’s Titan submersible last year, says that while the tragedy of the implosion will likely have a “chilling effect” on deep-sea tourism, it is unlikely to deter those explorers who have “significance by risk of death”. pic.twitter.com/rvshqrp57p
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) June 23, 2023
But some experts had already questioned ship safety.
In 2018, a professional trade group wrote a letter warning that the Titan’s design could have “catastrophicAlso that year, an OceanGate employee raised concerns about the safety of the ship and how the company was testing it and was later fired. The vessel reportedly never received DNV-GL certification, a high standard among marine crews.
Then in February, just months before the ill-fated trip, a Florida couple sued OceanGate, saying they had paid for a trip that had been canceled multiple times and had not received a refund. One of the trips, they allege, did not occur due to “equipment failure.”
But Pogue said that while many question Rush’s designs, they should remember that he was a “Princeton-educated aerospace engineer” who built and designed earlier aircraft and submarines. The Titan, he said, had also been designed in consultation with NASA and had been “under the sea 20 times without incident”.
“Yes, it looks terrible now. Yes, we see things that were missed,” he said. “But no one thought anything of it at the time.”
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Li Cohen
