"The rich are good people deep down"
Seen in Seattle, Washington pic.twitter.com/hJuCQphesY

— Radical Graffiti (@GraffitiRadical) July 2, 2023

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That is a tragic read. I wish Stockton Rush would have survived only to be held accountable for his crimes, hubris and stupidity.
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Yikes, that's a brutal read.

I don't understand the organizational structures, but it's odd that he could just keep going (and would keep going) when all of the experts were telling him that it was a bad idea.

This makes me feel bad for the passengers (errr, "mission specialists"). Every expert knew that this guy was headed for trouble, and those people presumably never heard anything but the ads. I recognize that people were afraid of lawsuits, but geez - at some point send a bunch of anonymous emails to them saying that it's a bad idea to get on a non-certified ship. There were ethical and legal failings to those people, but also moral failings.

This is why government regulation is necessary, even if it chafes us sometimes. This seems like it was handled a lot like the food industry back in the Upton Sinclair era, where the philosphy was that the consumer will take the risk and it's up to them to figure out if they were being sold spoiled food or not. The consumer shouldn't be the one responsible in that situation.
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Good lord, people should read this. Some of the tl:dr...

It hints that there actually was a way to scan the hull for integrity. It sounds like most people were in agreement that carbon fiber and repeated use was just a really bad idea.

It really clears up the weird "mission specialist" titles passengers were given as well. It wasn't just some touristy honorary badge. So, "customers" provided a payment to a foreign entity operating outside of jurisdictions. That foreign entity hires the company who is only set up to operate in international waters to provided you with an opportunity to conduct your own research mission. Killing a "crew member" has different penalties when compared to killing a "passenger". That's quite the set of flaming hoops they're jumping through. Seem odd to go through all those levels of protection if you're one of the people in the damn thing.

Other than the one guy we know who nope'd the fuck out on the deal, I wonder how many other customers put all this together. Where is the footage from one of the earlier customers who had previously survived a complication on the bottom of the ocean and why is it not being blasted everywhere?

It just keeps getting worse and worse as you read. Did the old guy with significant experience actually have a death wish?

Betwixt is a word. Other than nerds, who knew?
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To go a step further, there were plenty of proven companies and vessels that would facilitate the trip:


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wow...What Rush did is beyond criminal. Innocent lives lost because of one man's ego.
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Zoicks. This is kind of scary. I mean, it was good thinking in the moment, but people shouldn't have been participating in this.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rubik-cub...172330364.html

Bill Price, retired from running a family travel business in California, went on a Titan dive in 2021. During the descent, Rush realized that Titan had lost its propulsion system on one side. He aborted the trip, Price said.

But he could not get what he called the “drop-weight mechanism” to release ballast for the ascent, as designed, Price said. (In a video interview with Alan Estrada, a Mexican social media influencer, Rush explained the ballast system, which included six 24-inch sewer pipes that weighed 37 pounds, “and we dump that pipe, one by one.”)

Rush calmly explained that the weights were loaded from the top with no stopper — so if they could rock the submersible enough, they would drop off.

Everyone lined up in a row, rushed to one side, then the other, back and forth, to tip the Titan and dislodge the ballast, the way someone might rock a vending machine to free a candy bar stuck on a spindle.

“After several rolls, we got momentum going,” Price said. “Then, we heard a clunk, and we all collectively knew one had dropped off. So we continued to do that, until the weights were all out.”

None of this prevented Titan from making a dive the next day, with Price aboard. They saw the Titanic and celebrated at the surface with sparkling cider.
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The more I keep reading about this Rush guy the more certain I am of him being a real life cartoon villain.
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Was just going to post something similar; I know it's trendy to hate on regulations, but they exist for a reason.
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Say what you will about the guy, but he paid the ultimate price for his carelessness and hubris. A true villain would have been snorting coke off a hooker's ass in a multi-million dollar penthouse when that thing imploded, not riding inside it along with everybody else.

Should he have known it was unsafe? Sure. But he obviously didn't think it was unsafe.
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He's sort of the personification of "Do your own research"
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He actually tried to get an accounting girl to be a pilot for him, and she freaked out and quit.
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The first page of the OceanGate waiver mentioned the word death three times. It was loud and clear that it was a risky endeavor.
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That he felt the need to install such an unheard of mechanism on his ship spoke volumes in and of itself. That's not normal equipment. He knew it was trash and he did it anyway, thinking he could walk the tightrope and he'd have time to resurface without it imploding. Nargeolet clearly knew otherwise and didn't care, apparently wanting to die at sea.
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He turned around the pitched it as being "safer than crossing the street." He was just trying to avoid litigation with those waivers.
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