The now-missing CEO of a company that takes passengers onboard a submersible to see the site of the Titanic wreckage once told how he refused to hire ’50-year-old white guys’ with military expertise because they are not ‘inspirational.’
Stockton Rush added in that interview with Teledyne Marine that expertise is not necessary because ‘anybody can drive the sub’ with just a $30 video game controller.
In another interview, Rush insisted the Cyclops vessel he designed before the doomed Titan was ‘invulnerable,’ saying he was willing to ‘put my money where my mouth is.’
Rush, the 61-year-old CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, is now missing onboard his Titan ship along with four other passengers, including British billionaire Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henry Nargeolet and Shahzada Dawood, a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, along with his son Sulaiman Dawood.
The vessel had not been heard from since early Sunday morning, and officials fear those on board now have less than a day of oxygen left.
It has since been revealed that OceanGate refused to put the Titan through independent testing and fired a director who asked for more rigorous safety testing.
Stockton Rush insisted in a CBS interview that his Cyclops submersible was ‘invulnerable’
The OceanGate CEO also told in another interview how he refused to hire ’50-year-old white guys’ with military expertise because they were not ‘inspirational’
In the undated Zoom interview with Teledyne Marine, Rush brazenly dismissed the expertise of ex-military submariners.
‘When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub-operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners and they — you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,’ he said.
‘I wanted our team to be younger to be inspirational, and I’m not going to inspire a 16 year old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25 year old, you know, who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational.
‘So we’ve really tried to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new.’
Rush explained: ‘We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, is related to safety and some of the preponderance of checklists, things we do for risk assessments and things like that are more aviation-related than ocean-related and we can train people to do that.
‘We can train people to pilot the sub, we use a game controller, so anybody can drive the sub.’
But in another interview with CBS News in 2017, Rush insisted that the Cyclops submersible was safe. It was a precursor to the Titan — which was originally called the Cyclops II.
‘By the time we’re done testing it, I believe it’s pretty much invulnerable,’ he said of the ship he was still developing at the time.’
The interviewer then pointed out that people said ‘pretty much’ the same thing about the Titanic — which famously sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in 1912 after it hit an iceberg.
‘That’s right,’ Stockton acknowledged, ‘and I will go all out and put my money where my mouth is.’
Rush is now one of five passengers onboard the missing Titan submersible
Rush is seen here showing off how the vessel uses a PlayStation controller to navigate
The Titan submersible has been missing since early Sunday morning when it lost contact with its mother ship
But DailyMail.com revealed on Tuesday that OceanGate refused to have Titan independently inspected and even fired a director who raised concerns about its safety.
The company has said said seeking classification for the ship would not ‘ensure that operators adhere to proper operating procedures and decision-making processes – two areas that are much more important for mitigating risks at sea’.
Classification involves recruiting an independent organization to ensure vessels like ships and submersibles meet industry-wide technical standards. It is a crucial way of ensuring a vessel is fit to operate.
In a blog post titled ‘Why Isn’t Titan Classed?’ OceanGate suggested classification would take too long.
The post said: ‘While classing agencies are willing to pursue the certification of new and innovative designs and ideas, they often have a multi-year approval cycle due to a lack of pre-existing standards…
‘Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.’
The company said its ‘innovations’ included a real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring system which is ‘not currently covered by any classing agency’.
It also suggested its own in-house safety protocols were sufficient. The blog concluded that ‘by itself, classing is not sufficient to ensure safety’.
OceanGate bosses fired David Lochridge, who was Director of Marine operations for the Titan project, in 2018 after it disagreed with his demand for more rigorous safety checks on the submersible
Lochridge had urged bosses to conduct more testing on the submersible (pictured here in 2021)
OceanGate bosses had also fired David Lochridge, whose role included overseeing safety on the Titan project, after he urged OceanGate to seek classification.
Lochridge said he wanted the company to carry out a scan of Titan’s hull to ‘detect potential flaws’ rather than ‘relying on acoustic monitoring’ – which would only detect an issue ‘milliseconds before an implosion’.
OceanGate, though, claimed that Lochridge ‘desired to be fired’ and had shared confidential information with others and wiped a company hard drive.
The company said he ‘refused to accept the voracity of information’ about safety from Titan’s lead engineer.
But leaders in the submersible industry had also sent a letter to Rush urging him to take caution.
The letter, obtained by the New York Times, warned that ‘the current ‘experimental’ approach’ of the company could result in problems ‘from minor to catastrophic.’
It was sent by the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, a 60-year-old trade group that aims to promote ocean technology and educate the public about it.
It is unclear if any employee or Rush himself responded to the letter, and there was no further detail on why the approach was considered dangerous.
Among those taking part in the expedition is billionaire Hamish Harding (pictured), CEO of Action Aviation in Dubai. He excitedly posted to social media about being there on Sunday
Shahzada Dawood, 48, (pictured with his wife Christine) a UK-based board member of the Prince’s Trust charity, and his son Sulaiman Dawood, 19, are also onboard
Still, Rush continued to insist in interviews that his ship was safe.
In a longform interview given late last year, Rush repeatedly said that explorers onboard the Titan would be safe and had the oxygen necessary to survive.
‘I don’t think it’s very dangerous. If you look at submersible activity over the last three decades, there hasn’t even been a major injury, let alone a fatality,’ Rush told CBS News.
‘What worries us is not once you’re underwater. What worries me is when I’m getting you there, when you’re on the ship in icy states with big doors that can crush your hands and people who may not have the best balance who fall down, bang their head. That’s, to me, the dangerous part,’ he added.
The CEO also said he worries about ‘things that will stop me from being able to get to the surface’ like ‘overhangs, fish nets, entanglement hazards.’
But, he said, piloting technique ‘can avoid those if you are just slow and steady.’
This image shared by the US Coast Guard is the first from the search site, some 900 miles off the coast of the US. It shows Deep Energy, a rescue ship that has deployed remote operated subs to go looking for the Titan underwater
Rescue equipment was seen arriving in St John’s, Newfoundland, on US military planes last night
Crews are now frantically searching for the missing submersible, as oxygen onboard has dwindled to less than 20 hours.
A glimmer of hope lit up the bleak search yesterday when the Coast Guard announced that ‘banging’ sounds had been detected underwater.
It remains unclear if the banging came from the submersible, but it has now become the ‘focus’ of the mission.
Some experts say the fact the sounds were even detected could suggest that the sub is closer to the surface than initially feared.
Submarine search and rescue expert Frank Owen told the BBC his hopes for a recovery increased ‘by some magnitude’ when he heard the noises had been detected.
‘There’s a couple of reasons for that. Firstly, on board this craft is a retired French Navy diver. He would know the protocol for trying to alert searching forces… on the hour and the half hour you bang like hell for three minutes.
‘Below about 180 meters, the water temperature drops very rapidly.
‘That creates a layer that the [sonar signal] bounces off.
‘But if you’re in the same depth water it tends to go quite straight,’ he said.
The Explorers Club, of which Harding was a member and which is heavily involved in the ongoing search, said the banging provided ’cause for hope’.
‘We have much greater confidence that there is cause for hope, based on data from the field, we understand that likely signs of life have been detected at the site,’ the club said yesterday.
Deep Energy’s role is to deploy remote operated subs to dive underwater and try to find the Titan.
So far, they have not yet been able to detect any sign of it or where the banging came from.
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Read more at DailyMail.co.uk