A billionaire plans to take a $20 million sub to see the wreckage of the Titanic to show that the industry is safe after the OceanGate implosion.
As you probably remember, the sub operated by OceanGate and known as Titan, went missing on June 18 2023 as it ventured to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.
After an hour and 45 minutes, it stopped sending signals back to its mothership, the Polar Prince, but the alarm wasn’t raised until hours later.
Following this, a worldwide rescue operation was launched led by the Coast Guard, and despite finding banging sounds being picked up, the search proved unsuccessful, as it was later discovered that the sub had already succumbed to an implosion.
Despite the catastrophe that occurred last year, a billionaire is set on exploring the wreckage of the Titanic in a sub.
Larry Connor, a real estate investor from Dayton, will be accompanied by Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey.
The duo will descend over 12,400 feet to the Titanic site in a two-person submersible.
“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
The $20 million submersible, named Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, is Lahey’s creation. According to Connor, the vessel is designed for repeated voyages to such extreme depths.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
Their mission aims to prove that deep-sea expeditions can be conducted safely, even after the OceanGate tragedy which claimed the lives of five people.
The victims of the Titan implosion included OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, and his 19-year-old son, Sulaiman.
In the wake of this incident, Connor contacted Lahey, urging him to develop a more reliable submersible.
“[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’” Lahey said.
Lahey has been a vocal critic of OceanGate’s safety practices, describing Rush’s approach as “quite predatory.”
