- An actor and YouTuber was given the controls of the Titan sub and then crashed it into a rock.
- OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush, one of crew members who died on the Titan, allowed the actor to drive the sub.
- The actor said that a later trip to the Titanic wreck on Titan was cut short due to battery issues.
OceanGate CEO, Stockton Rush, allowed a YouTuber to take the controls of the Titan submersible before it crashed into a rock last year.
It was the same vessel that disappeared on Sunday. Officials believe it imploded deep in the Atlantic Ocean, instantly killing all its passengers. Rush was one of the people on board.
A video clip has now emerged of Mexican actor and YouTuber Alan Estrada taking the submersible for a test drive in 2021.
In his YouTube documentary about the Titan, Estrada shows himself on the Titan being taken to depths of 330 feet. Estrada pans back to the crew of the ship and shows Rush piloting the vessel using a remote control.
"The controls resemble a videogame controller, they are so easy to use that Stockton allowed us to give it a try," Estrada said in a voice-over commentary of the video.
"Shit I'm really bad at this," Estrada said as he directed the submersible close to the ocean floor.
Later in the video, the ship is seen scrapping the bottom of the ocean. "Oh shit!" exclaimed one of the crewmembers in English. "What was that?" said another. "A little higher next time, we ran into a rock," another crewmember said.
Estrada returned to the Titan a year later, in July 2022, to visit the Titanic shipwreck. The ship made it to the wreck, but the trip was cut short by four hours when battery levels dropped below 40 percent. The Titan, he said, also experienced a communication blackout for two hours.
Questions have been raised about OceanGate's approach to the safety of the passengers on board. Industry leaders had highlighted red flags about the submersible's design and the company's refusal to seek out industry certification.
The Titan set off to visit the Titanic shipwreck with five passengers on board Sunday morning. While on its descent, the vessel lost communication with its mother ship. A search-and-rescue effort has been ongoing since Monday, but the passengers are now presumed dead after debris was found near the search site.
The leading theory for the vessel's demise is that it suffered a catastrophic implosion. Though it is not clear at what point of the dive this implosion may have happened, the US Navy reported detecting the sounds of an implosion soon after the Titan went missing.