Titan sub CEO Stockton Rush ignored safety warnings

Days after 4 high-profile passengers together with OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush and the pilot of the vacationer submersible ‘Titan‘, died after their sub imploded due to extreme pressure deep in the North Atlantic Ocean, it has come to the fore that Stockton Rush repeatedly ignored Titan’s security warnings in not too long ago uncovered emails.

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush is claimed to have ignored warnings from distinguished deep-sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum that he might endanger his purchasers.

Rush responded to certainly one of McCallum’s emails by saying he was “tired of industry players trying to use a safety argument to stop innovation.”

McCallum stated the heated change ended when OceanGate’s attorneys threatened authorized motion.

In March 2018, McCallum wrote to OceanGate’s CEO, “I believe you are potentially putting yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. You are mirroring that famous catch cry, ‘She is unsinkable,’ in your race to [the] Titanic.”

Rush responded by expressing his frustration with the criticism of Titan’s security measures.

“We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” he wrote, “I take this as a serious personal insult.”

McCallum advised the BBC that he consistently requested Oceangate to hunt classification for the sub earlier than it was deployed commercially. 

“Until a sub is classed, tested, and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations,” he wrote in an e-mail.

“I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative. As much as I admire entrepreneurship and innovation, you may be jeopardising an entire industry,” McCallum added.

Stockton Rush responded just a few days later, defending his enterprise and credentials as he wrote, “OceanGate’s engineering focused, innovative approach… flies in the face of submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation.”

Throughout the dialog, Rush questioned the established framework for deep sea explorations. He claimed that “industry players” had been trying to forestall “new entrants from entering their small existing market.”

“I am well qualified to understand the risks and issues associated with subsea exploration in a new vehicle,” Rush acknowledged in his e-mail.

“The industry has been trying for several years to persuade Stockton Rush to discontinue his program for two reasons,” McCallum, who owns his personal ocean expedition firm, advised the BBC on Friday.

McCallum acknowledged that carbon fibre isn’t an acceptable materials and that this was the one unclassified submersible on this planet enterprise business work. It was not licensed by an unbiased company. 

McCallum was certainly one of greater than a dozen high submersible specialists who signed a letter to Rush in 2018 warning that OceanGate’s method might finish in “disaster.”

It is notable that submersibles, specifically, might be licensed or “classed” by marine teams such because the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), DNV (a world accreditation company based mostly in Norway), or Lloyd’s Register.

The Titanic wreckage sits at a depth of round 3800 meters. As per reviews, the implosion at a depth like that causes fast crushing of the vessel and all the pieces inside it. The pilot and the passengers would have died inside just a few milliseconds.

CEO of OceanGate was the pilot, and the 4 passengers included the billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, a British-Pakistani father-son duo named Shahzada Dawood and Suleiman Dawood, and the favored ‘Mr Titanic’ Paul-Henry Nargeolet. Nargeolet, a French Navy veteran, was a part of the primary expedition to go to the wreck in 1987, simply two years after it was discovered. He has earned the moniker ‘Mr. Titanic’ as he has reportedly spent extra time on the wreck than every other explorer.