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‘Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid’: Ex-OceanGate consultant details casual attitude despite glaring problems with sub
"Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation," former consultant to OceanGate Rob McCallum said
Former consultant to OceanGate Rob McCallum has revealed that everyone appeared to be on board with the operations before a workshop of OceanGate Expeditions, although there were glaring problems with the Titan submersible. The catastrophic implosion of the Titan killed OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul Henry Nargeolet, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
"Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation," the deep-sea exploration expert told the New Yorker's Ben Taub. The Sony PlayStation refers to a video game controller used in the submersibles. It was also used in the doomed Titan vessel.
During the visit, which was disturbing for Rob, he examined the submersible called Cyclops I. At the time, the company’s next iteration – Cyclops II – was being planned. Cyclops II was later renamed the Titan.
"And I said at the time, 'Does Sony know that it's been used for this application? Because, you know, this is not what it was designed for.' And now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub's thrusters," Rob said. "There were multiple points of failure."
Rob said that he was also worried when he learned that the system ran on Bluetooth. He said that “every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason — that if the signal drops out, you're not fu****.”
Rob recently also revealed that the passengers on board the Titan were not referred to as “passengers,” but as “mission specialists” to avoid legal trouble if anyone died. These customers reportedly paid $250,000 for a place on the submersible. But "there were no passengers — the word 'passenger' was never used," Rob said. He added that it is not legal to transport passengers in an "unclassed, experimental submersible" under US regulations.
The Titan’s hull was constructed with aerospace-grade carbon fibre, even though submersible hulls are typically made with solid metals like steel or titanium. Several emails and messages between experts and CEO Stockton went viral after his death, revealing that he dismissed repeated warnings that the submersible was not safe.
