OceanGate founder Stockton Rush was a risk-taker and spoke about it often 
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OceanGate founder Stockton Rush was a risk-taker and spoke about it often Stockton Rush, founder of OceanGate Inc that owns the submersible that has gone missing during its trip to view the Titanic wreckage, had once boasted that he has taken a lot of risks and broken some rules in his career. Rush is one of the five people who were onboard the Titan that went missing five days ago. The missing founder had, in many interviews, spoken about the safety and regulations in the commercial sub industry.
In an interview with CBS Sunday Morning in December 2022, Rush had said that his biggest fear was that things would stop him from getting back to the surface. He had said that there is a limit to how safe they could make the operations despite introducing safety procedures
“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. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules," Rush told David Pogue.
In yet another interview to Smithsonian Magazine in June 2019, Rush had said that the commercial sub industry is “obscenely safe”. “There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown—because they have all these regulations,” he said.
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Rush had, furthermore, told Mexican YouTuber Alan Estrada that he has broken some rules in his career. “I think it was General MacArthur who said you’re remembered for the rules you break. And I’ve broken some rules to make this. I think I’ve broken them with logic and good engineering behind me,” he said.
Stockton Rush’s thought process has come into focus now after a multinational search team looks for the missing submersible Titan that had begun its descent at 8 am on Sunday. It lost contact with its surface support ship near the end of its two-hour dive to the Titanic wreckage, in a remote corner of the North Atlantic. The tourist submersible had five people in it, along with Rush.
The submersible set off with 96 hours of air, meaning that its oxygen is nearing its end.
On Wednesday, Canadian search planes had recorded undersea noises using sonar buoys. The US Coast Guard said that remote-controlled underwater search vehicles were redirected to the vicinity where the noises were detected.
The submersible went missing despite experts raising concerns in 2018 about its safety. OceanGate opted against certifying the Titan through third parties such as the American Bureau of Shipping, a leading classifier of submersibles, or the European group DNV, an independent quality assurance and risk management company that sets standards for the design safety of underwater vehicles.
OceanGate employee David Lochridge had forwarded an engineering report to the company’s leaders that was critical of the company’s research and development process for the Titan. In particular, Lochridge was concerned about the materials used in the hull and a lack of testing performed on the hull to measure its ability to withstand the intense pressures of deep waters.
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