Why were passengers allowed on OceanGate’s experimental Titan sub? - The Fifth Estate

Titan is a chance to dive the Titanic in this edition of The Fifth Estate. Ocean Gate Titanic experiences a dive on the most stored shipwreck on the planet gone horribly wrong. It was a difficult moment. It's a time when you, as a searcher and rescue professional who you never want to deal with five people were on board, including the controversial owner of the submarines, you are remembered for the rules you break and you know that I have broken some rules so that This was a race against time followed all over the world. rescue mission based here in St John's Newan Land, a town that is no stranger to tragedies in Sea because I immediately got the bad feeling that you know that's not how things are done, we're on the path to finding out how an

experimental

submersible works.

Once

allowed

to take

passengers

to one of the most remote and unforgiving places in the ocean, do you think he regularly misrepresented the safety of the Titan? Oh, it sure was, so you can see that the bottom shouldn't be too far away, right? I've almost made a backup, yes you can see it, but I'm a backup. I'm Mark Kelly, this is the Fifth Estate. Well, more people have traveled to space or to the top of Mount Everest and then visited the remains of the Titanic, but Ocean Gate. Expeditions may be about to change because it's 2017 and Stockton Rush came before a Canadian audience with a bold speech.

Thank you very much for being here. It is a pleasure to be here. He was selling seats on his submarine for a trip to the Titanic. 105,000 ahead, we sold the first 54 positions by May 2018 and have filled two weeks of 2019, what is the danger level with this type of expedition? Well, surprisingly, the safest part of the expedition will be the underwater part. uh, in the last 35 years, uh, there hasn't been any injury on a commercial private submarine, although there have been over 15 million people going to sea, it's inherently a risky activity, um, but we're doing everything we can to make sure . which is as safe and comfortable as possible, Stockton Rush, thank you very much for being here and I suppose we will see you in St John's next year looking forward to it, the Titanic has never rested in peace. -called unsinkable ship that sank in 1912 partly due to design flaws partly due to a captain who ignored warnings and a century later appears stocked in Rush was doomed to repeat history a Princeton aerospace engineering graduate Rush co-founded Ocean Gate in 2009 In Everett, Washington, it's almost impossible to describe what it's like to be underwater, which is why I wanted to launch Ocean Gate.

I would describe Stockton as probably one of the smartest people I've ever met, and by smart I mean he's not just smart. but he is intellectually curious, especially when it comes to engineering, he was always a problem solver. G online co-founded Ocean Gate with Stockton Rush as far as using Titan or a technology to go deep underwater where humans don't normally go and very few humans have been, I'd say he's been dreaming about it since he was a kid. . Rush came from a wealthy family at age 19 he was a trained pilot and was born seemed to explore.

He wasn't going to get to Jupiter or Mars, but I realized that all the interesting things I thought were out there are actually underwater. His wife Wendy is the great-great-granddaughter of a retail giant who, along with his wife, were two of the richest people who perished on the Titanic, as far as you know. Did you dream of using Titan to go to the Titanic? No, I don't think it was a dream of his. It was more of a business decision, I think. Ocean Gate has three submersibles, we have antipodes. which can reach 305 M or 1,000 feet Cyclops 1 which goes to 500 M or 1,600 feet and Titan which goes to 4,000 M or 13,200 feet The jewel of Russia was the Titan and it would be different from all the other deep sea submersibles that had arrived . in front of it, at its core, a spherical hull made of

titan

ium to withstand the relentless pressures of the ocean's depths.

Rush chose to build the Titan's largest five-person hull out of a lighter, cheaper material, about 12cm of carbon fiber. This Ocean Gate video from 2017 shows a

titan

ium ring. by being bonded to carbon fiber The hull of the Titan could be the deepest diving carbon fiber submarine ever built when it reaches 4,000 meters it will be the only one there will be I will be the first in the submarine, it would be the only one for There, for good reason, carbon fiber is mainly used for airplanes, not submersibles, the water pressure exerts an immense force on the hull at 10,000 M, for example, the pressure is almost 1 ton per square in 2018 , Ocean Gates director of marine operations David Lockridge dropped a bombshell. "A 10-page report addressed to Rush and four other company officials describing flaws in the design and construction of Titan that he claimed had been discarded on several occasions.

I must make this report so there is an official record," wrote among the most Lockerd said two dozen security issues needed to be addressed. O-rings designed to connect parts that did not seal properly. place and closed Titan should not be manned during any of the upcoming tests, there are only about two dozen private submarine manufacturers in the world and they meet once a year to discuss best practices for innovation and ensure safety in their growing industry and after the Locker report. the alarm was leaked, the bell rang and it's like this, if this goes wrong, it will not only be bad for the company and the people involved, but for the entire industry.

Conan is a Quebecer who now lives in California designing and building submersibles, he said he tried to convince Rush. rethink your carbon fiber design if you have carbon fiber for example composite materials you have many different techniques to put it together the engineer calculates what each layer does is almost impossible to do that's why I told Stockton on the phone he says Stockton. Doing a dive to 4000m is not a testing program, so in 2018, acting as a member of the Marine Technology Society, Conan drafted a letter to Stockton Rush and wrote that industry members had expressed unanimous concern with regarding the development of Titan and the planned expedition to the Titanic and the possible negative outcomes from minor to catastrophic in the letter you had used the word catastrophic there was fear of a cat the potential for a catastrophic outcome what did you mean by that surely they could kill Someone for sure I want to say that it is dangerous this is heart?

Well, the letter was distributed to dozens of experts, but the board of directors of the Marine Technology Society objected to it being sent. It was finally leaked. Rush, who then called out to Conan. Well, he was angry. I mean, he wasn't happy, you know, but in a way. I was happy he was calling because they wouldn't let me send it properly, so he came back and he's like, well, what is this? Well, you read it, you could see what it is and it says we're really worried, it's like. Well, you know we are ahead of innovation and the rules are just holding us back.

It's like, look Stockton, I have as much desire as you do to be able to innovate and come up with new ideas that maybe there are no rules about, but there are. There is a way to do it and I think it's critical to consider for a minute that if the general public is paying to get into that machine, they have to be held to a higher standard. Patrick Liy, born in Ottawa, signed the letter and designed a submarine that was launched at 11,000 M, almost three times the depth of the Titanic, at 11,000 M, the pressure on that hull, the pressure limit at which we know the people inside, it's equivalent to 292 fully loaded jumbo jets sitting on top of it. and the Titan said it was not designed for safety.

He first saw it while on vacation in the Bahamas, where Ocean Gate was testing it. I walked around him and expressed alarm and concern about many of the things I saw, so. I made a list of some things that I thought they should look at and I didn't think anything about it, in fact I honestly think when I left, I felt like that thing was probably so far from being ready to dive that I probably would never do it, so Indeed it would, but first Rush fired David Lockridge, who then warned us labor investigators about the design flaws in this interview obtained by The Fifth Estate, the sections are an absolute disaster, you can see them as Swiss. cheese, so when you put a torch on the back you can fully see and you can feel the D laminations where the resin hasn't bonded properly.

Ocean Gate sued him the lockage accountant claimed the cases were settled out of court and the Drop Rush labor lawsuit says he then built a new hull here. We are really focused on one thing and that is the pressure vessel and making sure that that component, which is clearly the most critical component of the submarine, is safe and capable of handling depths of up to 4,000 M repeatedly with people on board, but are we really focused on one thing? Was the new hle different in any way from the first? We contacted Ocean Gate and the companies that built the hull declined to comment.

What is clear is that the Titan had survived the maelstrom of its critics, Rush, was ready to dive and was now charging $250,000 for a ticket to the Titanic. When we returned, we dove in to experience what it takes to build and operate a submarine for ocean exploration. This quiet marina in Southern California is a gateway. For people looking for a unique travel experience, the global adventure tourism industry is booming and this Yellow Submarine is just the ticket for amateur explorers. We're here in Rondo Beach, California to meet a couple of Canadians behind a company called Sein that they've now built. submersibles, some are used for search and rescue, others for ocean research and their are toys for the ultra-rich.

They say it's a growing industry, so today we're going to dive in with them and see what the buzz is about the team of Will and Charles Conan. We built this five-person submarine for a private client in Europe. The price is 6 million dollars. After we have equipped the submarine with our cameras and performed pre-dive checks, we are ready to board. I am accompanied by my colleague Julie Duen from the Radio. Canada's onette program, so with the latch closed, today we will only dive to 100m to try the experience that some people are paying dearly to try inside.

Charles Conan tells us about the safety features of submarines. These are automatic breathing devices. Oxygen mass yes There is fire and smoke in the cabin, but there is always a contingency plan, yes, so we have a contingency plan at the moment. That plan includes 4 days of oxygen and 4 days of food and water and a remotely operated vehicle or ROV on the support vessel. to be deployed if necessary the barge takes us out to sea just off the coast is not like that. I know we were talking about this before and it's not really fair to compare this to the Titan because they are completely different vessels built for completely different purposes. different depths, however, it is still five people, it is five people and for you safety is still the priority concern, it has to be recognized and approved so that it is certified so that the owners realize that they have a boat that has been from third parties. approved two standards that recognize international standards, most submarines are inspected and certified by independent and internationally recognized agencies, such as the American Bureau of Shipping or ABS, in 2018 Ocean Gate's director of maritime operations, David Lockridge, was fired, said in court papers that it had strongly encouraged the company to bring in ABS to inspect and certify the Titan, but that never happened in 2019.

Ocean Gate said it was going to another agency rather than seeking Lloyd's Register classification, so The Fifth Estate contacted Lloyds who told us that they rejected a request from Ocean Gate to provide classification following a preliminary observation of Ocean Gate testing a Titan submersible in 2019 and that they never ever classified the Titan, the Ocean Gate sub was not certified, It was an

experimental

ship and as such it should never have carried humans, it was not fit for purpose, frankly, and if you want to use it to transport humans, you should be willing to submit your design, your engineering, your analysis, um, to a third party review, at some point security is pure waste.

I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't do it. don't get out of bed don't get in your car don't do anything at some point you're going to take some risk and it really is a risk reward question I said I think I can do this just as safely breaking the rules, so I don't agree. I agree that this idea that somehow certification is an impediment to innovation or that it somehow hinders progressive thinking is not entirely true. I just think you know, it's a solution and,although the Titan was not independently tested in the ocean.

Gate's promotional videos said that the submarine had been designed with the help of some heavyweight engineers. We partnered with aerospace experts from the University of Washington, NASA and Boeing on the design of our lounge. The Fifth Estate contacted Russia's so-called partners, the University of Washington was not involved in the design engineering or testing of the Titan Boeing was not a partner of the Titan and did not design or build it. NASA only provided virtual consulting. The agency did not conduct any testing or manufacturing through its workforce or facilities. I think he was regularly misrepresenting the safety of the Titan.

Oh, it sure was. The question is whether he knew it right. Our job was to let him know that yes, Conan is a critic and competitor of Ocean Gate, so we wondered why he was listed as a. advisor to the company's Research Foundation. I didn't know he was an advisor to the foundation. You didn't know that he is on their website where they have him listed as an advertisement as an advisor in 2015. Very good, okay, thank you. No, I didn't know. This exemption makes the risk factor very clear for anyone wanting a seat on the Titan.

It says in part that the experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified. by any regulatory body and perhaps built with materials that have not been widely used in any human-occupied submersible and if that didn't catch your attention, the possibility of death is mentioned eight times in the fine print. Rob Mallum has led deep SE dives in every ocean on Earth, he said, hurry to pay attention to his critics, diving in a certified carbon fiber helmet was like defying the laws of physics, you know, and in every entity with the one I have worked on or navigated, the culture is the culture of safety, it is essential for anyone. on the team can raise a safety issue and is not ruled out until it is fully investigated and celebrated as a way to try to avoid an incident, but as you will see in the correspondence, Stockton always took it as a personal facade and as a personal offense Russia's response to mallum I am clearly an advocate of a different path a relevant comparison for Ocean Gate is the blue origin of Virgin Galactic and SpaceX who will use uncertified spacecraft with their customers Rush concluded that we have heard the unfounded cries that You're going to kill someone too often.

I take this as a serious personal insult. Over in California, we're ready to dive into a cagin. The certified top has given us permission to dive. He will activate the vertical thrusters right now as you see and push us forward. The water, you see behind it on the right is the vertical propeller pushing you through the water, here we go and here we are, wow, this is on the other side, Roger Roger, we also see 20 m and we have you tracking whatever you want. another series of before we continue, Roger Roger, go ahead with a series of vital signs and I'm going to try to be professional, but at the same time this is something very fun and fun.

I must say that I have never had an experience like this. before, it's not long before we find ourselves engulfed in total darkness 100m in the depths, so you can see the bottom it shouldn't be too far away, I should almost have backed away, back up, yes you can see the bottom, back up all. safety protocols and precautions for a 30-minute dive to the ocean floor, but it would be a very different experience for the Titan crew. It was a clear day on June 16, 2023 when the submarine was towed out of St John's Harbor bound for sight of the Titanic, this would be the Titan's 14th voyage to the bottom of the ocean to view the remains of the Majestic.

It would also be the last one when we return. A firsthand account of what it was like to dive the Titan when you get there, you know? everything falls apart you have that thought about all the things that could go wrong 600km from St John's the Titan team had arrived at their destination in the North Atlantic it was the day of the dive the five

passengers

were bolted to the carbon fiber hull from the submarine Stockton Rush was joined by British billionaire Haish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shazar Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suliman. His guide was the famous French submariner Pauli, a former French naval commander who had made 37 successful dives on the Titanic.

He was incredulous. I didn't believe he was going to get out and I expressed my serious concerns to him as clearly as possible. His friend Patrick Lahi said Naral should have recognized the risk of diving on the Titan. He was not only smart, he was very smart and had a lot of experience, so when I asked pH, why are you doing this? and he said well, because you know maybe if I'm out there I can help them avoid a tragedy, you know, maybe. I can help improve the safety of your operation. I think he really thought he could do that.

Toronto businessman Colin Taylor met with Naral when Taylor dived with his son on the Titan in 2022, so it was a reassurance for you, it was absolutely assured that Taylor had heard a lot of criticism of the Titans, but says that Stockton Rush assured him that he and his son were safe when you're about to go into that submarine and you're screwed when you go in there, you know everything is going down. You're right, you have to think about all the things that could go wrong. Titan is an attempt to dive into the Titanic and if passengers like Taylor had any concerns about the Titan's controversial carbon fibre, Hull Rush had a solution to unlock it. inside the submarine when we were in it uh um there was a counter that counted the number of cracks that were occurring in that submarine and you could see them going all the way up and down, yes, cracks in the lamination, that's right .

How do you feel about that? It's not a primary concern, it is a concern, but you know it's happening and you know it's being monitored and you know it's natural for carbon fiber to go through stresses and have those cracks. a look at Titan Rush took PR in its unconventional approach to it, this was the ultimate innovation and it's all run with this game controller and these touch screens and it's Bluetooth so I can hand it to anyone and it's intended for a 16 year old young man. Throw it in and it's super durable, we have a couple of spares on board just in case for others.

Rush was simply cutting corners to save money for two summers. Ocean Gate chartered the Horizon Arctic for FY the submersible from St John's Harbor to the aforementioned Titanic, but in 2023, Ocean Gate went in a new direction by chartering the smaller, cheaper polar Prince. Check it out. There are many people working on the submarine. It doesn't break down. YouTuber Jake Kler was on an expedition to the Titanic in 2023. I'm so excited that his video shows how the submarine was towed 36 hours out to sea and back instead of being stored safely in the stern of the ship. The iceburgs come down from Greenland and come through New FL via St John's and head there on the Titanic.

Larry Daly is a veteran logistics coordinator at St John's who helped Expeditions dive the Titanic. He was in port in the spring of 2023 and was stunned by what he saw. I loved it when I saw the Polar Prince towing the platform with the submersible on it. and a little Zodiac towing behind that with a guy sitting on it coming through the Narrows right behind us, where we are now, you know, the first thing I said, you know, I won't repeat it, but you know what the hell they're doing, right? You know? Is this how they are going to take you to the Titanic site 350 miles from St John?

You know, this is what they're doing. This will end the cop according to the data on the website. Maritime traffic in the spring of 2023, the Titan was towed. twice to the Titan T anic and back on Coler's voyage the Titan's computer system that controls the submarine failed we have to find out what this control problem is that is something important controlling the submarine is up there on life support, okay, we are in and sealed in the sub days later, the crew attempted a test dive, yes, yes we are doing it, they made it about 10m before resurfacing, yes that means they will probably bail us out, so yes, now You know, because we've had no communications for a while, these critical Mission problems plagued the Titan just 2 weeks before its ill-fated dive, but rather than question the safety of the Titan, St John's was busy getting on board in May 2023 from New Finland and Labrador posted his tour of the Polar Prince with Rush on social media Joe Singleton is the acting director of Ocean Technology at the Institute and joins us this morning.

One of Canada's leading ocean research schools. The Marine Institute in St John's has partnered with Ocean Gate to have students join the Expeditions. What is going to happen on the dives that your students will be a part of to make them part of this really poor team? I guess if maybe one of the members of the Expedition regretted it and felt that he didn't want to do it. go and there was an empty seat you never know, they might get a real seat in the uh in diving Mr. Csuri teaches ocean biology at the Institute said the school was giving scientific legitimacy to what he considered a pampered tourist trip.

I don't know what his exploration plan was, his scientific plan, they can call themselves explorers. Okay, okay, but why are you going to explore a tomb that has been visited 200 times by other people? Cier says that no one at the Institute was doing due diligence on him. About the Ocean Gate Expedition, we are proud of the University and the Marine Fisheries Institute and Memorial University Marine Institute, in particular, for being certified to international standards for education, training and research. Did anyone ask questions? I don't know. You are asking questions well. I'm asking questions after the fact, right?

I wasn't doing them before. Did anyone question the risk of putting students on these expeditions? The Marine Institute declined our request for an interview when it comes to maritime safety, there is nothing more welcoming or convenient. In addition to the port of St John, all the agencies responsible for maritime safety are here, the Canadian Coast Guard, Transport Canada, the port authority and all those agencies would have seen the Titan towed out to sea and back again and again , so was anyone at those agencies prepared? to stop the expedition and save lives, we asked all those agencies for an interview, they all declined, we're not actually filming anything in particular, the Titan went in and out of St John Harbor for 3 years, no questions asked, but After Just a couple hours into filming at the port, the Port Authority called Larry Daly to ask what we were doing.

Yeah, don't worry, it sounds good, you're welcome. Alright. Goodbye, they are not Slicker. Catch this on camera. Who is it? the Port Authority, so, yeah, they want, they want, they would make a call, just, it's supposed to be like a full forum, they fill the port, okay, so they control this whole area here, so it's the first time it's happened . It happened instead of calling the Port Authority. I showed up at his office with my colleague from Onette. If they were watching us. Were they watching the Titan? We had questions for the port authority about what they saw.

Ask about any concerns you had. You may have had about the Titan about the Titan's safety, the Titan's movements, all of that, yes, and clearly you, if you're looking at us, must have been aware of how we were in a sense, however, it didn't happen in our property. it happened on private property, but you're getting to it's being towed well, it got to yes, the P, so that's when we saw that on camera while the Port Authority was watching the Titan, there's no indication that they questioned Rush. The ship was uncertified, which meant there was no certification standard to hold it, it was like a ghost ship with paying passengers on board, and as the YouTuber's video shows, the pilot ships even guided the polar tracks to the sea ​​with the Titan in tow, there were no secrets in St John's.

Port back in the North Atlantic on June 18 there was a problem one hour and 45 minutes after the dive the Polar Prince lost contact with the sub-millionaire businessman John Rizley is co-owner of the Polar Prince this is his first television interview about the sick Predestined expedition , when did you find out that in this particular case something had gone terribly wrong on Sunday afternoon, when the ship made its final dive into the sea? Lee, the CEO of the company, the CEO of Horizon, called me and told me that we had lost communications with a submersible. Then I asked: what is our protocol?

If you like it, what do we do in these situations? Because it wasn't the first time and the protocol was that you wait a certain amount of time and after a certain amount of time that's it. I have not been able to establish communication. Then notify the Coast Guard. You said it wasn't the first time. It wasn't the first time we had lost Cons to the ship. Do you know in the previous caseshow long do they last? I would have gone with you, yeah, I can't tell you, I just don't know, but I know Stockton's wife who was on board the ship and she wasn't worried about the fact that they had lost communication because it had happened several times. before how many times I can't tell you and then within a reasonable period communications were reestablished but this time communications were lost and the Polar Prince did not have an ROV or robotic submarine on board to search for the Titan what was the backup plan which What What if things go terribly wrong?

What could you do? Call the Coast Guard. I mean, that's what you know when when you're in trouble at sea, there's really no backup plan that you call for help. Was there ever an argument about when? When did this company start? What do we do if things go wrong? Do we need to be equipped with some type of search and rescue equipment at a nearby site? That would have been a decision for, in this case, our client, not us, over 7 hours after losing contact with the submarine, they finally contacted the US Coast Guard when we returned.

I received a call on Sunday afternoon, it was June 18, that there was a delayed submersible with five people on board in the tight spot of the Titanic. 96 hours of oxygen to keep the crew alive, so if the Ocean Gate contingency plan called for the Coast Guard, help was a long way off now, of course, we will get the planes to the scene sooner, but for the ships arrive on the scene, we're talking about days, not hours, okay? I'm far away, there was a glimmer of hope this morning in the search for Titan when a Canadian plane detected an underwater noise in the search area, however crews have not yet been able to identify the source of that noise as the clock ticks.

In the search for Titan, it is expected that there will be less than 24 hours of oxygen left for the five on board and with every hour that passes the hope of finding the Titan crew alive is fading. As these data from Marine Traffic show, A small armada of planes and ships from the US, Canada, France and Britain searched thousands of square kilometers in the North Atlantic 3 days after the Titan disappeared. The Horizon Arctic once the support ship Titan left St John's with a deep sea ROV brought in from the US it only took the submarine a couple of hours to confirm.

The Rescuer fears that this is an incredibly unforgiving environment down there at sea. Flower, and debris are consistent with a catastrophe, implosion. The St John's ship was once again the backdrop to a disaster at sea, shortly after the Horizon Arctic returned with pieces salvaged from the Titan, questions began, including why so many hours had passed before Ocean Gate alerted For the first time to the Coast Guard that they had lost communications with El Titan, the big question that many people have been asking is why 7 hours passed before the captain finally issued a distress signal about the fact that they had lost contact with the Titan, so let me ask or answer. the question with another question would have made a difference what difference would it have made if we had notified the Coast Guard five minutes after we lost communication and what was the Coast Guard going to do and there was no Here's a magic wand, uh, I mean , now we don't know if the moment communications were lost was also the moment the submarine you know suffered some kind of structural failure, right, we don't know, in other words.

Did the Titan implode before reaching the ocean floor while the Canadian Coast Guard rejected our interview request? The U.S. Coast Guard agreed to talk. It was a difficult moment. It is a time that you, as a search and rescue professional, will never want to deal with. We always want to bring people home safely, that's what we do. The submarine was just over halfway to the Titanic when the sonar detected an unusual underwater sound. We received that information early in the United States Navy's efforts that they detected an anomaly that may have been consistent with an implosion, um, but they couldn't tell us with 100% certainty that that's what it was and, frankly, In the search and rescue business we work with certainties, only you say you operate with certainty, so what was the certainty that was conveyed to them so that they knew that this was no longer a rescue mission but a recovery mission, yes So when the pelagic ROV, the Odesus, reached the bottom of the ocean on Thursday morning, they first detected a tail cone on one of the next pieces of debris they found were the large capsule, the door, the glass window and at that point it was obvious that there had been a complete failure of the pressure capsule and at that point we knew that the ship was lost.

The Titanic filmmaker, James Cameron, is also a discreet designer and critic of Ocean Gate, I would say that there is a terrible irony here, we have in the recreation of the Titanic, now we have another shipwreck that, unfortunately, is based on the same principles of not listening to warnings. Speculation immediately turned to the Titans' design. and that carbon fiber hull, you know the community, our deep ocean engineering community, they spoke very loudly and the warnings were that the surface was not heated, it's clear that you're fine to surface on Rog , we are at 10 min, we are going up.

We'll get there right by the Boe, come on, we're back, look, Ocean Gate clearly didn't help the cause here, so between the ambiguity and the deliberate intention to avoid things, it was just the perfect storm after a noteworthy event. year marked by the Ocean Gate tragedy, we, an industry, have been dragged into the public. Focus, the private sub-industry's safety record is now in tatters, leaving experts who warned Stockton Rush about the Titan in 2018 wondering if they could have done more. had sounded the alarm with the US Coast Guard and Canada with other authorities using his experience his experience his voice to say enough of this we tried we tried seriously and it was done with the best of intentions and love and we care and we have We have overcome the cliché of the Brotherhood in this industry and we know that we can do something good for the planet and we invite everyone to be a part of it, but it is a two-way street and it makes us sad because that's how it was, this didn't have to happen.

Ocean Gate declined to be interviewed for this article. The U.S. Coast Guard Maritime Investigation Board and the Transportation Safety Board of Canada are now reviewing what went wrong, but the Titan's implosion was so violent that it may be impossible to identify the precise cause of the tragedy. I would like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General MacArthur. He said you are remembered for the rules you break and you know I have broken some rules to do this. I think I have broken them logically and well. Engineering behind me, carbon fiber and titanium, there is a rule: you don't do it that well.

I did it. I will always regret exposing my son to that risk like Shazada Dawood, who died with her son on the Titan. Colin Taylor wanted to share an epic adventure. with his son was confident that Stockton Rush could safely get them to the Titanic and back, so I think um and what you knew and what I think many of you know, many people who are familiar with carbon fiber and the stresses and The cycles that ran were there was a shelf life and so there was a certain number of cycles that that was capable of performing and you knew it had a shelf life, so given that, do you feel lucky?

Yes, yes, we do and I think the difference between our dive and the fatal dive was two dives, which was the difference between life and death. Yes, although the Titan was a preventable tragedy, today there is nothing to prevent it all from happening again. Adventure tourism is in high demand and sub-certification is not mandatory. But even with more supervision, danger will always be part of the package when exploring the depths of the ocean. I think there's something very human about wanting to explore and I think the people who participated in that, including us, knew that we were test pilots, you don't know. getting on a ship like that for oil platform service and going out by motor to the middle of the North Atlantic and getting into a carbon fiber tube and going down 4 kilometers to the bottom of the ocean and not knowing that there is some risk involved for