Billionaire plans trip to Titanic wreckage 11 months after submarine tragedy: Report

Almost a year after the June 18 catastrophic implosion that killed all five people aboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible, including the CEO of OceanGate Stockton Rush, Ohio billionaire Larry Connor has decided to take it upon himself to prove that deep sea tourism is not as unsafe as the OceanGate expedition made it seem.

Connor, a real-estate investor, is planning a trip to the depth of 12,400 feet where the Titanic wreckage is located in a submersible, similar to the previous expedition, and is planning on taking Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey with him. 

The submersible that Connor plans to use on this trip is a $20 million vessel that can carry the voyage in and out repeatedly and has been designed by his partner for the trip, Lahey. It is called the ‘Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer.’

According to the Wall Street Journal, Connor has made this decision so that he can demonstrate that ‘while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing’ if gone about the right way. 

Redefining Deep-Sea Exploration: Towards Safe Voyages Beyond the Titanic Wreckage

“Patrick has been thinking about designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.” 

Last year, OceanGate Expeditions had taken a submersible named Titan to dive deep into the sea and reach the Titanic wreck site. The submersible had imploded approximately 45 minutes since it began the dive and all communication was lost, but the international search and rescue operation had followed for two days after till debris was found near the wreck site and a catastrophic implosion could be confirmed. 

The five people on board including Rush were British businessman Hamish Harding, French diver and Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet and Pakistani nationals Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman Dawood. None of them had survived.

This incident had launched an extensive criticism of capitalism in the field of research, the dangers of impatience and cutting corners and of course, levied direct responsibility of all these deaths on one of the men onboard— Rush. Everything about the design of Titan was volatile.

It was a prototype vessel made of carbon fiber and titanium, materials that could not sustain deep-sea pressure in the longer run and all industry standards and safety protocols were ignored by OceanGate, leading to any critical check-up that could have saved their lives remaining void.

The implosion itself signals to some kind of structural failure in the pressure hull of the submersible, resulting in rapid depressurisation of the vessel and the subsequent implosion.

Rush had reportedly ignored all alarms that former employees and consultants had raised about the vessel’s safety and at a depth of 12,400ft, where the Titanic wreck is located— the pressure falls to be around 5,500 pound per square inch (psi)— you cannot take chances. A submersible must be able to withstand this amount of external pressure and if it can’t, it will be implode.

The shocking incident had let to a prompt re-evaluation of safety standards and all the allowances made for deep-sea exploration, and all the international effort had brought in with it’s tide international scrutiny of the decisions that made the voyage possible. 

This is where Connor and Lahey come in. The need of the hour, according to them, is to show that these voyages are not impossible and can be managed safely.

Submersibles have had the ability to explore such depths, and depths beyond 4,000ft has been managed by abyssal and hadal submersibles. After the tragedy, Connor had apparently called Lahey and asked him to build a better sub. “[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’” Lahey said, quoting Connor’s words to the Journal. 

After the OceanGate tragedy, Lahey had been one of the main critics of OceanGate’s safety standards and Rush, calling Rush’s approach ‘quite predatory.’ He has been one of the main people responsible for developing the DSV Limiting Factor— the only Titanium-hulled submersible certified to navigate ocean depths in the world.

Neither Lahey nor Connor have made any indications as to when the voyage will take place.

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