Stockton Rush, OceanGate founder who died on Titan submarine: “I broke some rules to make this possible”

the one of Stockton Rush is one of the proper names of fatal history titanic submarine. he was submarine pilot and Alma mater project as executive director and founder Ocean Gate. “Every time I dive, I see something I’ve never seen before, probably no human has ever seen before,” he told the BBC a few years ago. It was not the only means of communication he used to reveal his intentions. His desire to spread the word led him to receive different teams interested in sharing what it was like to dive to the bottom. The wreck of the Titanic.

In 2022, CBS journalist David Pogue took part in the expedition. Mexican YouTuber Alan Estrada did the same, interviewing Rush in an extensive video about this experience that ended in tragedy.

Estrada, known on YouTube as “Alan x the world” (3.45 million subscribers), traveled on Titan for the first time in 2021. On that occasion they did not succeed, the dive was thwarted due to technical problems, but the YouTuber tried again with success in the expedition in 2022. He was one of the first tourists to reach the depth of 3800 meters where the historic wreck is located.

Alan Estrada recounts his experience step by step throughout the program, and the interview with Stockton Rush – “the head and heart of the Titans” – now takes on a special meaning. At their first meeting, the CEO of OceanGate shows him the exterior of the submarine, the platform used when diving and returning to the surface. Also the system with which the device is maintained pressure controlled. “If there is a rupture, the oil comes out of it and the water does not penetrate,” he explains.

Rush, who was 61, specialized in mechanical and aeronautical engineering, following military training that made him the world’s youngest qualified jet transport pilot. However, his dream was under the ocean.

The OceanGate project arrived in 2009, and the company specializes in scientific and industrial underwater research. In 2018, tests began to reach 3,800 meters below the sea where the Titanic is located. «I would like to be remembered as an innovative person. I think General MacArthur said ‘you are remembered by the rules you break’. I broke some rules to make this possible. I think I cracked them with good engineering and logic. And that is that everything on Titan had an “experimental” component, as indicated in the document on conditions that underwater tourists had to sign. «Titanium and carbon fiber, there is a rule not to do it, because I did itsays Rush. “Choosing the rules you want to break and the values ​​they give to society, for me, that’s innovation, not invention. Innovation is when you make an invention widely accepted, and maybe you should think about ocean exploration the same way you think about space, because that’s where we’ll find new and strange life forms. The future of humanity is underwater, not on Mars.”

The American entrepreneur’s involvement in OceanGate and the Titanic project was complete. His widow, Wendy Rush, OceanGate’s director of communications, happens to be a direct descendant of tycoon Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida, the couple who perished on the fateful voyage of the Titanic, and who James Cameron portrayed in his 1998 film about the shipwreck.

For Stockton Rush, the ocean was everything. “If we destroy this planet, the best salvation we have is underwater,” he said in an interview.

In that first attempt in 2021, the expedition in which the Mexican Alan Estrada traveled did not reach the goal, so the YouTuber re-enrolled in the trip in 2022, which they successfully completed.

Fear of capture

In another of his interviews, Stockton Rush also relayed that one of his greatest fears was being captured on Titan. He told journalist David Pogue this in his podcast. He was worried about ledges or fishing nets. “If you want to be safe, don’t get out of bed.”