E-Paper
‘You are putting an entire industry at risk’: Viral email shows Stockton Rush dismissing expert's warning as ‘baseless’
“In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: 'She is unsinkable,” Rob McCallum told Stockton Rush
Experts have claimed that the Titan submersible tragedy could have been prevented had the company and the CEO been more serious about safety measures. OceanGate says that the Titan is a 23,000-pound submersible made of carbon fibre and titanium. The vessel uses a “proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system,” and any time an issue is detected, an “early warning” would be sent to the pilot, to leave “enough time to … safely return to the surface.”
Amid the criticism, email exchanges between expert Rob McCallum and Stockton Rush have gone viral on social media, revealing how the OceanGate CEO dismissed safety concerns raised by the deep-sea exploration expert. In the conversation, Rob urged Stockton to get a safety certificate for the submersible before offering rides to customers.
"You are wanting to use a prototype un-classed technology in a very hostile place,” Rob told Stockton. "As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk.” Stockton replied that his "engineering focused, innovative approach flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy - but that is the nature of innovation".
"We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult,” Stockton said. Rob wrote, "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: 'She is unsinkable.'”
What was meant to be an exciting 10-hour journey to the Titanic wreckage ended in the deaths of five people who had boarded the vessel. All the passengers were killed in a catastrophic implosion – an underwater implosion that led to the vessel suddenly collapsing.
The five deceased passengers were OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul Henry Nargeolet, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada is now launching an investigation into the implosion of the Titan, CNN has reported. The National Transportation Safety Board has also said that the US Coast Guard will lead the investigation into the incident.
