Billionaire shares plan for $20 million sub voyage to Titanic site to prove industry is safer after OceanGate disaster
A year on from the catastrophic Titan sub implosion, a billionaire is determined to send another sub to the wreck of the Titanic to prove it can be done safely.
Real estate mogul Larry Connor - who has a net worth of $2 billion - phoned up a submersible company just days after the tragedy, asking them to design another sub to prove the Titan disaster was a one-off.
On Sunday June 18 2023, OceanGate submersible Titan lost contact with its mothership the Polar Prince one hour and 45 minutes into an expedition to the wreckage of the Titanic, 12,500 feet below the surface.
Onboard were OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, UK billionaire Hamish Harding and former French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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The sub’s disappearance dominated headlines in the week that followed, until it emerged on Thursday June 22 that the sub had suffered a catastrophic implosion, killing everyone onboard instantly.
After the tragedy, OceanGate ceased all expeditions to the Titanic, but now Connor looks to follow in their footsteps.
He told the Wall Street Journal: “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.”
He’s planning to do this with the help of Patrick Lahey, CEO of Triton Submarines, one of the foremost makers of personal submersibles, and someone who went on the record to slam Stockton Rush as ‘predatory’ in the wake of the Titan disaster.
The pair plan to make the trip together at an unspecified date in a cutting edge, two-person vessel, dubbed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer.
It costs around $20 million according to the company’s website, and 4000 refers to the 4000m depths it can reportedly dive to, deeper than the Titanic at 3,800m.
Connor said: “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
Connor wasn’t waiting around, as he called Lahey up days after the tragedy.
Lahey said: “He called me up and 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.”
Their expedition is sure to be mired in controversy following the Titan explosion, as the public question whether expeditions to the Titanic wreck should continue at all.
Topics: Titanic, Technology
Simon Fearn