- OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush admitted in 2021 that his Titanic submersible had "broken some rules."
- Rush created the now-imploded sub with carbon fiber and titanium, deviating from standard designs.
- But he said breaking those rules allowed for innovation, in line with his ambition to be a pioneer.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who died on the Titanic submersible that went missing on Sunday, said two years ago that he knew the vessel's design had "broken some rules."
But that was part of the point of his experimental submersible, the businessman added, describing it as an innovative new way to explore the ocean's depths.
Rush was one of the five people on board the Titan, a submersible that imploded deep in the Atlantic Ocean and instantly killed all passengers. The US Coast Guard confirmed on Thursday that it found debris "consistent with the catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," following a massive search and rescue effort for the vessel.
Years before the tragedy, Rush said in a 2021 interview with Spanish YouTuber alanxelmundo that he hoped to be remembered as an innovator.
"I think it was General MacArthur said: 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said, smiling.
The CEO admitted that he'd "broken some rules" with the Titan's manufacturing, but was confident that his design was sound.
"I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fiber and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that," he told alanxelmundo. "Well, I did."
The Titan's hull, which was made to withstand crushing deep-sea pressure, was constructed with aerospace grade carbon fiber that OceanGate said was designed under an agreement with NASA.
But submersible hulls are typically made out of solid metals like steel or titanium. In 2017, Rush told the magazine CompositesWorld that he elected to use carbon fiber for the Titan — then called the Cyclops 2 — because it would eliminate the need for syntactic foam, an expensive but durable material often used to make submersibles.
In his 2021 interview with alanxelmundo, Rush said the choice of material was more about pioneering ocean exploration.
"It's picking the rules that you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society," Rush said. "And that really to me is about innovation."
Rush expressed excitement over the possibilities that his submersible could offer humanity in the deep ocean.
"Because this is where we're going to find strange new lifeforms, and the future of mankind is underwater. It's not on Mars, we're not going to have a base on Mars or the moon," he said, saying bases on other planets are a "waste" of funds.
Instead, humanity would likely have bases on the ocean floor, Rush said. "If we trash this planet, the best lifeboat for mankind is underwater," he told alanxelmundo.
Rush was warned multiple times about safety, but forged on
The CEO was in 2018 confronted with multiple concerns over the Titan's safety, including one from a now-fired company executive who warned that OceanGate didn't have the right systems to detect weaknesses in the hull.
Any risk of a coming implosion would only be detected "milliseconds" before disaster, the executive warned. But he said in a lawsuit that he was fired immediately after raising these issues in an official report.
The same year, Rush was sent a letter from the Marine Technology Society, a leading group of experts, expressing "unanimous concern" about the "experimental approach" of the Titan.
And in 2017, a consultant for OceanGate told Bloomberg he left the company in its early years because he felt Rush was a "full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes kind of guy" in an industry that required absolute precision.
It's unclear if any of these concerns were addressed by OceanGate later, but Rush has been documented repeatedly complaining about safety measures and regulations.
In 2021, OceanGate launched its first annual expedition for customers to see the Titanic shipwreck, which utilizes the Titan for dives of up to 13,000 feet. Each passenger is typically charged $250,000.
Rush himself was piloting the Titan when it made its final dive on Sunday, during which it lost contact with its mother ship about an hour and 45 minutes into its journey.
Its implosion meant the five people inside, including Rush, would have died instantaneously, likely not knowing anything had gone wrong. Rush was 61 when he died.
OceanGate did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.