OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush had boasted that his company has its ability to monitor any issue with its Titan submersible’s carbon fibre hull. He praised the vessel’s technology as “one of the great moments of submersibles.”
In a video posted to OceanGate’s YouTube channel in 2018, Stockton opened up about the “incredible electronics inside of the sub,” with acoustic and strain monitoring systems for the carbon fibre hull.
He said, “We know more about what’s happening in this hull than anyone has ever known, adding: “This will be one of the great moments of submersibles, in that this technology is what we need to explore the ocean depth.”
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. Stockton once said the glue holding the Titan’s carbon-fibre hull together was “like peanut butter,” adding that it was thicker than Elmer’s glue. He also described it as being “pretty simple.” The design, Stockton said, was “pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery.”
Several emails and messages between experts and Stockton went viral after his death, revealing that he dismissed repeated warnings that the submersible was not safe. It has also been reported that Stockton employed college-aged interns to design the electrical systems for the Titan.
Stockton once said that the doomed Titan submersible was struck by lightning, getting severely damaged in the process. The incident took place during a test dive in the Bahamas in 2018. “Fortunately, it was not a direct strike. A direct strike to the carbon fibre probably would have taken us totally out,” Stockton said in the interview. According to an OceanGate post, the vessel had “sustained lightning damage that affected over 70% of its internal systems.”
Stockton, along with British billionaire Hamish Harding, French diver Paul Henry Nargeolet, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman, after as a result of a catastrophic implosion of the Titan submersible.
