The late Stockton Rush may have seen the Titan as a stepping stone to bigger projects (Picture: CBC)
Newly-resurfaced comments by Stockton Rush suggest his ill-fated Titan dive was part of a grander ambition to ‘monetise’ the ocean depths that killed him.
The OceanGate CEO, who died along with his pilot and three passengers in a suspected ‘catastrophic implosion’, gave a number of interviews as his company ramped up its sea exploration projects.
One interview in which he derided excessive safety as ‘pure waste’ in 2022 received widespread attention when the sub went missing.
In another bitter twist of irony, it’s now emerged that Mr Rush thought the mission would ‘prove’ that new technologies used to build the sub – which one disgruntled ex-employee blasted as ‘experimental’ – do indeed work.
Speaking to American business magazine Fast Company in 2017, he revealed hopes of billion-dollar deals making deep-sea vessels for other industries.
He said: ‘There’s all these resources to be explored and I couldn’t understand why there weren’t any manned subs.
‘The biggest resource is oil and gas, and they spend about $16 billion a year on robots to service oil and gas platforms.
Mr Rush pictured with submersible pilot Randy Holt in a forerunner of the Titan in 2013 (Picture: AP)
‘But oil and gas [companies] don’t take new technology. They want it proven, they want it out there.’
‘Adventure tourism is a way to monetise the process of proving the technology.’
While friends of Mr Rush have described his passion for ocean conservation, the interview suggests he also had a shrewd eye for business.
But OceanGate, which charged up to $250,000 a pop to see the Titanic, had not started making money yet, Mr Rush continued.
He added: ‘We’ll be profitable with the Titanic trips. The Titanic is where we go from startup to ongoing business.’
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The timeline of the Titan project suggests OceanGate may have still been in a similar financial situation this year.
The submersible entered development in 2013 and would not embark on its first commercial dive until July 2022, which is the only one that’s happened since.
A Discovery Channel cameraman who went on the Titan’s first full test dive in May 2021 claimed he was told the first commercial dive was supposed to happen two months later.
He and another passenger on the trip described various ‘malfunctions’ as well as a ‘clumsy’ launch.
If the issues had indeed forced the company to delay the trip by more than a year, it likely would have continued to run up costs while unable to sell tickets.
Passengers on previous dives described ‘malfunctions’ and ‘clumsy’ behaviour by the craft (Picture: AFP)
OceanGate claims the Titan completed over 50 test dives in other circumstances, including to depths similar to those of the Titanic, both in waters around the Bahamas as well as in a pressure chamber.
Because the vessel operated in international waters, OceanGate was not legally obliged to have it certified as seaworthy in any country.
It’s thought some or all of its components could have been certified for deep-sea diving anyway, as is standard practice when such items are manufactured in the US.
But in 2018, an former employee who was fired by the company claimed the sub’s viewport was only certified to withstand pressures at 1,300-metre depths – 2,500 metres less than the Titanic.
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In a lawsuit, he wrote: ‘OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.’
Mr Rush gave another interview in 2019 claiming the industry was ‘obscenely safe because they have all these regulations’
He added: ‘But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.’
In a blog post that year, the company said it met standards ‘where they apply’ but that classifying the vessel was an ‘anathema to innovation’.
Reporter David Pogue, who joined the 2022 expedition for a CBS News feature, said passengers sign a waiver acknowledging the craft is ‘experimental’, ‘has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death’.
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Newly-resurfaced comments suggest the late Stockton Rush may have seen the Titan as his ticket to billion-dollar business deals.