On Wednesday, we reported that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush had beforehand dismissed security considerations relating to the Titan submersible, saying, “You know, there’s a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. I mean if you just want to be safe, 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 think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules.” We now know that he couldn’t, the truth is, do it safely, however new info reveals that he was much more reckless than beforehand recognized.
CBS experiences that in a video interview from 2021, Rush advised vlogger Alan Estrada, “I’d like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break. And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me.”
From there it solely will get worse:
The carbon fiber and titanium – there’s a rule you don’t try this,” Rush stated, talking of the supplies used to assemble the sub. “Well, I did. It’s picking the rules that you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society, and that really to me is about innovation.
It is very difficult to test and verify. …Metallic hulls have elasticity to them. We know how they behave. … But carbon fiber – very, very strong in tension. They’re not so strong in compression. And we know that. But it is how do they react under extreme pressure that leaves a lot of research.
Rush was also definitely warned that this approach was, at best, incredibly risky. The BBC obtained emails from 2018 between deepsea submersible expert Rob McCallum where McCallum begged him to hold off on using the Titan until it was thoroughly tested and independently classified. Rush’s response was that he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation.” According to McCallum, the e-mail trade stopped as a result of OceanGate’s attorneys threatened to take authorized motion in opposition to him.
“I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic,” McCallum advised Rush. “In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable.’” In one other message, Rush advised McCallum, “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult.”
As it seems, he didn’t simply kill somebody. Five persons are lifeless, together with himself. Could he not have a minimum of taken his rinky-dink toy sub down by himself so nobody else’s households needed to endure the lack of their family members?
Source: jalopnik.com