OceanGate CEO: 'You're Remembered For The Rules You Break'

On Wednesday, we reported that OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush had previously dismissed safety concerns regarding 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 could not, in fact, do it safely, but new information reveals that he was even more reckless than previously known.

CBS reports that in a video interview from 2021, Rush told 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 only gets worse:

The carbon fiber and titanium – there’s a rule you don’t do that,” Rush said, speaking of the materials used to construct 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 email exchange stopped because OceanGate’s lawyers threatened to take legal action against him.

“I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic,” McCallum told Rush. “In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable.’” In another message, Rush told 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 turns out, he didn’t just kill someone. Five people are dead, including himself. Could he not have at least taken his rinky-dink toy sub down by himself so no one else’s families had to suffer the loss of their loved ones?