This developing story is rapidly veering from background noise for a truly horrific accident to “no way that’s possible” to “YGTBFKM, that’s damn near criminal negligence.” All while a 5 people’s lives still – if they’re alive – hang by a thread, and the merest one at that.

My post yesterday addressed truly concerning things with the OceanGate operation that were immediately apparent to me not as a submariner (I only play one at HotAir), but as an individual well versed in safety and safe maintenance practices, mixed with almost your average Joe’s allotment of common sense.

There were enough red flags for a CCCP parade in Beijing and it didn’t take a Coastie to see them. The question it raised was, was it negligence, ignorance or corporate mentality?

This morning, what I consider to be a pretty telling interview with OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush – who is, himself, trapped in that ad hoc submersible at this moment – surfaced.

I mean WOW.

The CEO of OceanGate, which is operating the missing Titanic tourist submarine, explains that the company didn’t want to hire any experienced “50 year old white guys” because they weren’t “inspirational.” pic.twitter.com/kxXkhBn7oL

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) June 21, 2023

There are other businesses out there but they typically have…um…gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and…they…you’ll see a whole bunch of 50 year old white guys. Um…I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational and I’m not going to inspire a 16 year old to go pursue marine technology. But a 25 year old who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational. So we’ve really tried to get..um…very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new. We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry as related to safety and…um…some of the preponderances of checklists, things we do for risk assessment. Things like that that are more aviation related…than…um…ocean related. We can train people to do that. I mean, we can train someone to pilot the sub – we use a game controller…but..so…um..anybody can drive the sub.

There is so much packed into this minute and eight seconds of arrogance I don’t even know where to start, but I’ll give it a shot.

The reason you want 50 year old, ex-military submariners – whatever their skin hue – is due to their experience. Not just fixing subs, and knowing how they work, but also because they are psychologically in tune with being underwater and may have been doing it for decades. Should something go amiss in the briny depths, not only do you have a knowledgeable hand on board, you have a cool-headed one. That beats inspiration all to pieces.

But you know what else? Young and “inspirational” is also a helluva lot cheaper to hire than experience. “Oh, we can train an inspirational monkey – anybody can drive the sub like a MarioKart!” It’s great until the Kart is on fire or caught in a hole in the Titanic.

Then there’s his argle-bargle allusions to aviation. I know he’s a pilot. Whatever. Rare is the pilot who actually knows what actual work makes his bird take wing. If there’s one thing Marine Corps aviation does, it beats safety and the rigor of following procedures into you constantly. As a maintenance controller for a 12 plane Intruder squadron, I was entrusted with something called “safe for flight.” That meant MY signature on the plane’s book released the aircraft as “safe for flight” to the crew for that mission. My signature meant I certified every last thing had been done by the book. GOD FORBID something went awry with that aircraft and crew. They’d be coming to me first for answers if there was a mishap.

Cutting corners on things is not an option, especially things like safety equipment, inspections, and maintenance. He seems to imply in aviation, things are loosier goosier. I beg to differ. It’s precisely how I knew redundant communication methods (in the event of one method failing) and emergency beacons are mandatory.

Particularly when your vehicle has already experienced issues with not having those very things. To ignore them is reprehensible.

It does save money and irritation. Rush was seemingly obsessed with both from the beginning of OceanGate.

…This test “dunk,” in the words of my hosts, from a company called OceanGate, was just a taste of what will happen this summer, when OceanGate will begin taking paying customers to visit the fabled wreckage of the Titanic, which lies some two and a half miles beneath the North Atlantic. The experimental submersible for those trips, named Titan, closely resembles its sibling Cyclops 1. But Titan is the first deep-sea submersible constructed from a carbon-fiber composite, which allows the vessel to withstand enormous pressure at great depths while being far cheaper to build and operate than more traditional subs of equal abilities. Though the average depth of the world’s oceans is 2.3 miles, or a little more than 12,000 feet, until Titan came along only a handful of active submersibles were capable of reaching that depth, and they were all owned by the governments of the United States, France, China and Japan. Then, last December, OceanGate made history: Titan became the first privately owned sub with a human aboard to dive that deep and beyond, finally reaching 4,000 meters, or about 13,000 feet—a little deeper than where the Titanic lies.

The editor’s note at the end of this June 2019 Smithsonian piece is also telling. Checklists tripped OceanGate up.

*Editor’s Note, June 27, 2019: In June 2019, OceanGate postponed its planned Titanic expeditions after failing to secure proper permitting for its contracted research support vessel. The Titanic expeditions are currently being rescheduled for summer 2020.

And do that math: OceanGate didn’t actually manage to get an “expedition” to the Titanic site until 2021.

…OceanGate launched successful expeditions to the Titanic wreckage in 2021 and 2022. On Monday, the US Coast Guard launched a search and rescue operation for a vessel belonging to OceanGate that lost contact during a private tour of the Titanic. The company said it is “exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely.”

In my piece yesterday I said I would have wanted to see all the “Coast Guard and deep water submersible safety certificates and all the nit picky details about crush pressures.”

I would have been disappointed – and for SURE not climbed aboard – as there are none. Why? Mr. Rush despised government regulatory safety chokeholds, especially in the marine industry…

… In a 2019 interview, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush complained that regulations were stifling progress in his industry.

“It’s obscenely safe because they have all these regulations,” Rush said. “But it also hasn’t innovated or grown because they have all these regulations.”

…so the Titan submersible wasn’t “classed” as a vessel within industry standards. Ergo the government couldn’t inspect or require anything of his new and wonderful technological MarioKartish marvel, and besides…

The maker of the lost Titan submersible previously said “innovation” was the reason that the vessel wasn’t classed, a standard practice to ensure seafaring vehicles are up to standards.

In a 2019 blog titled “Why Isn’t Titan Classified?” OceanGate said its submersible had innovative features that were outside preexisting standards.

“By definition, innovation is outside of an already accepted system,” the blog said. “However, this does not mean that OceanGate does meet standards where they apply, but it does mean that innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.”

OceanGate also said “new and innovative designs and ideas” on its vehicle, such as carbon-fiber material and a “real-time hull-health-monitoring system,” would’ve gone through a “multiyear approval cycle due to a lack of preexisting standards.”

…it would have taken too damn long to get it tested and approved.

They wanted to make the money now. The tour price, by the way, went from an initial riff on the original Titanic voyage cost of passage…

…By taking well-heeled tourists to the deep—at first, each seat cost $105,129, the inflation-adjusted price of a first-class ticket on the Titanic, though the rate has increased to a cool $125,000…

…to the $250K his fellow passengers paid to be horribly entombed with him.

…He said there was a “limit” to safety, telling Pogue: “You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.” Rush added that his Titan sub features, and trips to the Titanic wreck, can be done outside of what’s been previously done, saying:

“I think I can do this just as safely while breaking the rules.”

I’m not sure WHAT he was thinking, but it was wrong.

This is only the third OceanGate expedition to Titanic, and they may have managed to kill the passengers.

Losing a third of your tours in your first three years is not remotely “just as safely.”

Perhaps being more concerned with rule breaking than other things breaking was not the wisest choice. It’s not remotely “inspirational.”

Everything about this makes it that much worse.

I hope to God they find these people.