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Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate Exhibits.Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Karl Stanley, a diving expert and friend of Stockton Rush, expressed concern about the Titan.
In response, Rush told him he would prioritize the submarine’s safety over his business.
Others have said that Rush really seemed to believe in the Titan’s safety.
Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate who died last week when his Titan submarine catastrophically imploded during a dive to the Titanic shipwreck, a friend told in 2019 that he would shut down his business before piloting an unsafe ship, according to emails obtained by Insider.
Rush was emailing his friend Charles Stanleyan expert in submersibles who had expressed serious concerns about the Titan’s integrity after hearing cracking noises during a dive in the Bahamas that year.
“I think the hull has a defect near that flange, that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is whether it will fail catastrophically or not,” Stanley said in an email to Rush.
On June 18, less than two hours into a dive to Titanic, the Titan submersible lost communication with his surface ship and went missing, launching a major search and rescue mission. Four days later, the Coast Guard announced that pieces of the submarine had been discovered, suggesting that the Titan had catastrophically imploded. All five people on board, including Rush, were pronounced dead.
“I made it clear after our dive that I will not take any non-essential crew, customers or media into the submarine until I am sure the hull is safe,” Rush insisted in his reply to Stanley. “As I’ve told you before, I canceled last year’s expedition and will cancel this year’s, or even close the business, before piloting an unsafe submarine.”
OceanGate did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment on the email.
Rush and OceanGate have come under scrutiny for this ignore security considerations expressed by other experts in the industry. But some who had met Rush said he genuinely seemed to believe his submarine was safe, as evidenced by the fact that he took part in the dives himself.
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CBS reporter David Pogue, who took a dive on the Titan last year and interviewed Rush for a segment, recounted Insider Rush was “cocky” and that he “plucked the opinions of his experts”.
“But I don’t think Rush was a fraud. He honestly believed in his design — enough to trust it many times over with his own life,” Pogue wrote in a story for New York magazine.
Mike Reissa writer and producer for “The Simpsons”, who has made several dives in the Titan, has also said that he believed OceanGate took safety seriously and genuinely believed in their submarine.
“There was one dive we took — as soon as communications went down, we went right back to the surface,” Reiss said, adding, “So they’re not hot dogs. They’re not daredevils here. They’re taking this very seriously.”
Still, Reiss said Rush and every passenger on the Titan understood there were risks, pointing to the waiver he was required to sign in advance. said he could die several times.
“They made it as safe as possible. They trusted their own lives to it,” Reiss said, “but they knew it could end like this.”
Read the original article Insider
