Crime Weekly - S3 Ep320: OceanGate: A Preventable Tragedy (Part 1)
Episode Date: July 11, 2025It was marketed as a voyage for the boldest among us - a ticket to the bottom of the world, where only a handful of humans had ever dared to go. But what began as a high-tech adventure turned into an ...unthinkable tragedy, and at the center of it all was one man: Stockton Rush. He called it innovation. Critics called it recklessness. And five people would pay the ultimate price. In this series, we’re diving deep into the story behind the Titan submersible disaster. From the birth of OceanGate and Stockton Rush’s obsession with rewriting the rules of deep-sea exploration, to ignored warnings, missing safety certifications, and a catastrophic implosion that sent shockwaves across the globe. Who was Stockton Rush- visionary pioneer or dangerous idealist? What happened in the final hours of the Titan’s descent? And how did a vessel built for discovery become a tomb in the dark silence of the Atlantic? This is not just a story about engineering failure; it’s a story about ego, ambition, and the fatal cost of a man with a god complex who gambled with human lives in the name of legacy. We're coming to CrimeCon Denver! Use our code CRIMEWEEKLY for 10% off your tickets! https://www.crimecon.com/CC25 Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. https://www.OneSkin.co - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 15% off! Help support our show and let them know we sent you! 2. https://www.TryFum.com - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY to get a FREE gift with your Journey Pack! 3. https://www.EatIQBAR.com - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products, plus FREE shipping! 4. https://www.HelloFresh.com/CrimeWeekly10FM - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY10FM for 10 FREE meals with a free item FOR LIFE!
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It was marketed as a voyage for the boldest among us.
A ticket to the bottom of the world, where only a handful of humans had ever dared to
go.
But what began as a high-tech adventure turned into an unthinkable
tragedy. And at the center of it all was one man, Stockton Rush. He called it innovation,
critics called it recklessness, and five people would pay the ultimate price.
In this series, we're diving deep into the story behind the Titan submersible disaster.
From the birth of Ocean Gate, and Stockton Rush's obsession with
rewriting the rules of deep sea exploration, to ignored warnings, missing safety certifications,
and a catastrophic implosion that sent shockwaves across the globe. Who was Stockton Rush? Visionary
pioneer or dangerous idealist? What happened in the final hours of the Titan's descent?
And how did a vessel built for discovery become a tomb in the dark silence of the Atlantic.
This is not just a story about engineering failure, it's a story about
ego, ambition, and the fatal cost of a man with a god complex who gambled with
human lives in the name of legacy.
Hello everybody, welcome back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Lavasser. So we are, as you heard from the teaser, talking about the Titan
submersible disaster. This was huge, this was a huge thing.
I remember when the news reports started coming in
and it was all over, it was all,
anyone was talking about and they had a countdown
for how many hours of oxygen
the people in the submersible have left.
And it was so stressful for me.
And I remember thinking, oh my gosh,
these five people have family members, they have friends,
they have loved ones who are out there
watching the same news reports that I'm watching,
seeing this oxygen timer just tick down.
And then things started coming out about Stockton Rush,
about the other passengers, about their partner,
about Ocean Gate, Stockton Rush's company.
And it really started to unravel and it showed how easily this whole tragedy
could have been avoided and then I became very interested in it. I did a
video on it on YouTube. I think I may have done one or two and then the the
documentary came out on Netflix a few weeks ago and I remember I think it was
June 11th or June 12th that it dropped and I was on it as soon as it came out
and I watched it and I was like, whoa,
this is so much worse than we thought.
This is just mistake and mistake and intentional mistake
after mistake and all the people involved
who I think were just too afraid to push
back against this man, Stockton Rush, because of his leadership style, because
of the way he would react, because of the fact that he had a goal, a personal
goal of being this titan of industry, you know, like an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos,
and he wanted to be a trailblazer and he wanted to be the one who did something
that nobody else did and that became so much more important than the safety of humans and
it wasn't just the four other people that he brought down in the Titan
because he brought many people down in the Titan he brought many people down in
his previous submersibles and there was always issues and he always struck them
off and this this could have happened you
know before it actually did happen it could have happened multiple times it's
lucky that it didn't but these these four people in Stockton rush on the
Subversible they really it would have been terrifying to be in their their
situation it would have been absolutely terrifying I mean the ocean is is
terrifying on its own and to be down there and know
Hey, things are going wrong, you know
Scary well, I mean we're gonna get into it because there's from what I'm seeing a lot of people who believe
They didn't even know that something was wrong until it was too late
But what we'll talk about that, but I also think the other reason that the story was so
Captivating was because of what it was surrounding, which was a little known boat called the Titanic.
And that's a story that's fascinated me
and millions of other people since the movie came out
and our boy Leo and...
I have so many books about the Titanic, it's crazy.
Yeah, I mean, it's a crazy story
because that's another example of wanting to be first,
of wanting to be the best and not putting
the proper safety measures in place to prevent tragedy because as we know with the Titanic,
there were engineering designs done that were done for certain reasons, maybe aesthetics.
Aesthetics, I think speed.
Yeah.
And it came at the cost of the integrity of the boat.
So it's the irony of having this situation happen right next to it when they're going down there to look at a boat that
sunk because of its problems to do the same thing it's just it's it's
Mind-boggling, but it kind of brings it full circle. Yeah, really does. Yeah, and there's more
There's more about the Titanic and its connection
And there's more there's more about the Titanic and its connection
To Stockton Rush, which I found out in in my research. So now I'm looking forward to covering it It's I had said a couple weeks ago like oh, it's gonna be a little bit more light. No, it's not like five people lost their lives
But considering what we just covered for seven parts with Darley and her two children
We too, you know people ask how we how we do this all the time, every single week. This is how we do it.
All these cases are tragic,
but this one's a little lighter as far as the specifics of what went down.
And sometimes for us, we need that as well.
So it's enjoyable to talk about the science and the technology behind it and
the backstories. We're not making light of the deaths here,
including Stockton Rush. But yeah, I'm looking forward to this case.
What do you think?
I had a good time researching it because I
got to learn about different metals and their properties
and how they're used and why they might be used in aerospace
but not great to use for underwater vessels.
So I got to learn a lot.
And that really does, for me, buffer the sadness of things
when I feel like I'm learning and kind of getting a better handle on
Things and understanding what happened and are you were you about to ask me how many parts do I think this is gonna be?
Yeah, how dare you I know you hate that. That's why I was doing
Three I would say you hate being constrained you hate being I don't like to I don't like to say something
I can't not be able to keep my word is what I do. No, but I mean listen
We go we went more with Darlie
It's like you do what you have to do to feel like you've covered it all and so if it's got to be for great
If it's only two, that's fine, too. But no looking forward to it. The only thing I'll say before we start
Thank you to everybody who commented crime con on our Apple podcast and some people were having issues with Spotify
You can just leave a comment on there. I'm looking through them. I'm gonna randomly scroll. We're just gonna pick someone
We're gonna do it till next week, we'll announce the winner.
And then I had a lot of people hit me up saying,
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You can buy tickets. CrimeCon Denver, yeah. Yeah, CrimeCon Denver, and use the Crime Weekly code, you'll save 10% if you don't win or you don't want to wait, just go to the CrimeCon website. CrimeCon Denver, yeah.
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All right.
So let's dive into it.
And as always, to understand what happened at the end, we have to go back to the beginning.
So Stockton Rush was born on March 31, 1962 in San Francisco, California, into a world of privilege, pedigree, and power.
He wasn't just a child of wealth. He was actually a descendant of American royalty.
Two of his father's ancestors, Dr. Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton, signed the Declaration
of Independence, anchoring the Rush family name deep into the foundation of the United
States.
On Stockton's mother's side, the legacy continued.
Ellen Davies Rush traced her lineage to Ralph and Louise Davies, a family known for their
immense wealth and influence in the West Coast shipping and oil
industries. Ralph Davies, who was born in 1897, was working for Standard Oil by the time he was
15, and he would eventually become the youngest person in the company's history to earn the rank
of director. During World War II, Davies joined the Department of the Interior at the behest of FDR,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he served as petroleum administrator throughout the war.
After the war, Davy served as chairman of shipping company American President Lines
and lived with his family in Woodside.
His wife Louise was a patron of the art scene in San Francisco and would later donate $4
million for the construction of the city's new music hall that would bear her name.
In 1957, Ralph and Louise's daughter Ellen would meet Richard Stockton
Rush Jr. and within a month they were engaged. Rush, who's Stockton Rush's
father, he served as chairman for the Peregrine Oil Company and notably also
served as president-elect of the infamous Bohemian Club. Now if you're
into the conspiracy theory realm of things, you know the Bohemian club.
I'm gonna give you a quick rundown.
The Bohemian club is one of the most exclusive and secretive private men's clubs in the United States.
Founded in 1872 in San Francisco, its membership includes some of the most powerful men in the world,
US presidents, Fortune 500 CEOs, Titans of Tech, oil barons, media moguls, you name it, former
president, like I said, tons of presidents, politicians, everything.
And every summer these men gather at the Bohemian Grove, which is a remote and heavily guarded
redwood forest in Northern California.
And they engage in some weird stuff.
They got some off the record meetings, lavish ceremonies that include like burning effigies
and kind of running around half naked.
Just strange, theatrical rituals,
far from the eyes and ears of the public.
And who's that guy?
I always forget his name.
He was like big into conspiracy theories.
I think his last name is Jones.
He gets all like really hyped up and wild.
Alex Jones. He was the one, the idiot who said that Sandy Hook wasn't real.
Yeah, well he's got tons of conspiracy theories.
He got sued for like hundreds of millions of dollars.
He actually took like a camera crew and kind of like broke into Bohemian Grove and was able to get the only footage that we know of and that's when we saw these men like dancing around like this big
owl effigy and like burning it and
Chanting things and it's just weird. It's weird to see grown men who hold really high positions of power and influence
turn into I
guess some pagan
Ancient pagan worshippers. It's just a weird thing you don't do
that on your free time I mean I'm not I'm not doing that I are either of us in
like a position to power like power I mean I'm just doing in my backyard by
myself that's absolutely fine I encourage it go feral but yeah it's just
weird it's a really weird thing I have a book about it, too. But anyways, the club's motto is weaving spiders come not here.
In other words, leave business at the door.
But no one really believes that because for decades,
Bohemian Grove has been rumored to be a place where political deals are brokered.
Wars are discussed.
Global strategies are quietly shaped over cigars and scotch.
Like stuff's happening there. It's like a- It's the boys club.
It's like a B and I group on a massive scale
where presidents would be there
and people who are also in positions of power
might have some benefits from a president
making a certain decision about,
I don't know where to go to war,
maybe there's oil there, stuff like that.
They're like, yeah, maybe you should go to war there.
And if you do, let's do this and let's do that.
So it's really weird, it's creepy.
And Stockton Rush's father served as a vice president-elect
of the Bohemian Club.
So the fact that Stockton Rush's father wasn't just a member
but was rising to the highest ranks of the Bohemian Club,
it places the Rush family at the very heart
of American elite power.
They weren't just wealthy, they were connected, insulated,
and influential at levels most people will never see.
This isn't just a story about an ambitious man and a doomed submersible.
It's about legacy, entitlement, and a dynasty that always believed
it was destined to do something extraordinary, no matter the cost.
Now from the beginning, Stockton Rush wasn't just expected to succeed.
He was expected to leave a mark on history,
and he would, just not in the way anyone imagined.
We're gonna take a quick break,
and then we'll be back to talk about
how Stockton kind of got to the place
where he even wanted to start a company called Ocean Gates.
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So by the age of 19, Stockton Rush
had already made headlines
as the youngest jet transport rated pilot in the world.
He was still a teenager when he started flying DC-8s
in Saudi Arabia during the Hajj pilgrimage, taking semesters off from Princeton
University to log hours in the sky. He actually kept his own private plane at
the Princeton Airport and pursued his aerospace engineering degree with the
same intensity that he brought to the cockpit. So for his senior theses, he
designed a high-speed, ultralight aircraft. He wasn't his senior thesis, he designed a high-speed ultralight aircraft.
He wasn't just book smart, he was fearless. A friend recalled a last-minute
flight through rain and turbulence to witness the launch of the Columbia
Space Shuttle in 1981, piloted by none other than Rush himself. This friend from
Princeton was like, yeah we just decided like oh we're gonna go watch this space
shuttle. We jumped in his plane and then the wind was bad and it was raining, but he was
completely cool as a cucumber. Never rattled, right?
Well, those people have to be like that. Pilots and...
He was like 19 though, dude.
Yeah, but it's something you're born with.
You know, it's just they do things that most of us would be like, yeah, no shot,
but they'll... even this whole Titan submersible
We're not talking about the details yet
But just the balls to go down there personally I wouldn't do it and I consider myself
Someone who will take some risks and wants to make a mark on the world yeah
Yeah, I want to make a mark, but I'm not gonna go that far down under the in the water
I'm claustrophobic to begin with, but I'm not.
I wouldn't do that.
And so it takes a special type of person.
I think about these pilots that hop in these little cockpits
and fly planes at 800 miles per hour,
and they do it like they're driving a car.
Yeah, they're just built different.
It's just the way it is.
They sure are.
I also think with the Titanic and with the Titan,
a lot of it has to do with money, right?
We're gonna talk about that. But it's a business for sure. It's a business
It's a business that don't make dollars that don't make sense. It could be very lucrative could be very financially lucrative
so Stockton Rush was known to be calm poised and
Unnervingly confident and these traits would follow him all the way to the ocean floor now initially Russia dreamed of becoming an astronaut
But he didn't have the best vision his vision wasn't sharp enough to pass the necessary tests
But instead of giving up he pivoted so he ended up meeting
Pete Conrad who was an Apollo 12 commander and a personal friend of Stockton's father
so Stockton's father introduced Stockton to Pete Conrad.
And Conrad was like, hey, you know, you don't have to go to space to make a mark, you know, but I
highly suggest that you look into engineering, because if you're going to do anything in any
kind of craft, you're going to want to know that craft inside and out. And so Pete Conrad encouraged
Stockton to pursue engineering. and this was a move that would
blend Stockton's hunger for exploration with his deep technical curiosity. He wasn't content to
simply be along for the ride. He wanted to be put in control to chart his own course. As he once said,
he didn't want to be a passenger in space. He wanted to be like Captain Kirk. So after graduating
from Princeton in 1984, Rush ended up marrying Wendy Wheel. Now Wendy's family history bore its own dark tie to the sea. Oh my god, not Wendy.
Yep, Wendy was the great-great-granddaughter of Ida and Isidore Strauss.
Incredibly wealthy first-class passengers who died on the Titanic.
So Isidore is crazy. Crazy. Crazy.
on the Titanic. So Isidore is crazy.
Trevor Burrus crazy.
Isidore was a Bavarian-born businessman who jointly owned Macy's Department Store along
with his brother Nathan and in 1871 Isidore married Ida Blune and the couple were considered
to be very much in love and especially close.
Now they've been vacationing in Europe and they plan to take another ship back home to
the states but fate intervened.
Now at that time there were coal strikes in Europe, and coal from other ships had been diverted to the Titanic for its maiden voyage.
So they ended up having to book passage for the Titanic's cursed maiden voyage in April of 1912.
And after the iceberg collision, Ida was offered a spot on a lifeboat, which would have saved her life, but she refused.
According to Jessica Strauss, another great-great-granddaughter,
quote, they were in their 60s, had been together for many, many years,
and had several children together. Ida would not go without her husband.
Isidore was offered a place on another lifeboat, but he chose not to go without her.
He begged her to get on, and she turned and said to him,
Isidore, we've been together for all these years. Where you go, I go." End quote.
Now the couple was last seen arm in arm,
sitting together on a pair of deck chairs.
Isidore's body would eventually be recovered,
but Ida's never would.
And if you remember the movie Titanic,
James Cameron showed an elderly couple
holding each other in bed as the room flooded around them.
And this scene was actually inspired
by the real life love story of Isidore and Ida Strauss great grandparents to Wendy Rush
Whose husband would one day also perish as he attempted to return to the ship that had taken her ancestors lives
So first this is a dumb question
But how do people know what they said on the boat like when she said? Oh, I'm not we've been together all this time
I'm not leaving without you like who reports on this. All right, so I actually know I actually know this
Okay, good. Well, I'm sure there's an answer for it and I'm not disputing it
But I'm like how who came back and said yeah, there was a couple they said this to each other
You know, so Ida had a female servant with her
I forget that servants name and is a door had a male servant with him that male servants name was John
They ended up I I believe, giving
their spot on the lifeboat to the female servant who then reported back what had happened.
Wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's crazy. You remember that scene in Titanic where those two older people are holding each
other in battle? I always remember that scene.
The water's rushing underneath the bed.
Oh, yes. Like I always remember that scene. It was one of the most. The water's rushing underneath the bed. Yes!
Or mine was the part that kills me every time is when she, the mom, puts the babies in bed.
Mine is when she's got her kid's hand and then it's like they're in bed between the grate.
And the kid like she's like holding on and then the kid like lets go and gets pushed away.
I may have to watch the Titanic again for research purposes.
To cry.
What a great movie.
So, I mean, I saw it in the theater over and over again.
And I sobbed like a kid.
We got to do a crime weekly watch party.
Oh, that would be fun.
So yeah, so we got Wendy Stockton's wife, who's got very close ties to the Titanic,
right?
And obviously, Wendy comes from wealth and power and
privilege. I mean her great great great grandparents owned Macy's. So these
families end up all marrying each other to keep the money and the power in one
place. So Stockton Rush, he then began working for aerospace giant McDonald
Douglas in Seattle testing F-15 fighter jets. But it was beneath the waves, not
above the clouds, where his fascination
would take root.
He became an avid scuba diver, exploring the Red Sea,
the Cayman Islands, Tahiti, and the Puget Sound in Seattle,
but he did grow frustrated with the limitations
of scuba-ing, you know, the gear, the-
Scuba-ing.
Scuba-ing, is that a real word?
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha. That stayed in there, scuba-ing. Scuba-ing, is that a real word? That stayed in there, scuba-ing.
Scuba-ing, that's a real word.
It probably is.
You knew what I meant.
It's not, it's definitely not.
It's probably scuba diving, but.
Scuba diving.
You know I'm a certified scuba diver, right?
Did you, are you a certified scuba-er?
Scuba-ing.
Scuba-inger?
No, no I am not.
I didn't know that, really?
You just said you were claustrophobic though, so am I and that would yeah
Patty certified I used to go
Lobstering all the time with my buddy and we'd go down you can catch
Lobsters in the rocks and come back up and I went as deep as like I want to say 25 30 feet not too deep
I never went super down there, but it is crazy at that depth and yeah
Even though I was claustrophobic that didn't bother me for some reason that would have taken me out. I'll tell you what no
It was pretty fun
The only thing that got me nervous is the decompression sickness like you have to come up at different levels
And I'd always be like well whatever my buoyancy is not correct, and I go up too fast. I'm gonna
It's terrifying you know recompression chamber. That's not fun, and you can get embolisms all sorts of things
Yeah, no, but scuba diving is awesome
I'm sure it would be and I'm sure I would love it if I could get around
I'm always afraid that like my oxygen tanks gonna well, that's why I have an octopus. Yeah
Like an actual octopus. No, so it's your secondary host
So whenever you see a scuba diver and they have like the main hose that's black or yellow
There's usually a second one that's like yellow or green and that's a secondary respirator
That's hooked up to that oxygen tank.
And what you're supposed to do is you always have a partner with you.
And part of the reason you always have a partner with you is because they have
an octopus as well.
So if you ever have a malfunction with your primary respirator,
you can switch to your secondary, which is your octopus.
But if there's a problem with the actual tank,
because you're diving with someone else or you're supposed to be,
they'll have their octopus available. So you can both use that same tank to get
you back to the surface.
That's why you're not supposed to dive alone.
But people do.
Well, I mean, I never did.
But yeah, you could actually, in fact, the part of the reason I stopped diving was because
my buddy moved away.
I had met him at diving school and then he moved and I didn't have anybody else to go
with.
You lost your scuba buddy?
My diving buddy. Yeah? Yeah, man. Joe, shout out Joe and I didn't have anybody else to go with. You lost your scuba buddy? My diving buddy?
Yeah?
Yeah, man.
Joe, shout out Joe.
I haven't even talked to him in years.
Now you have to watch Titanic and reach out to your old scuba buddy.
Maybe you'll be my diving buddy.
Yeah, right.
I would never let you be my diving buddy.
Never let you let me.
Sounds like a lot of ways to die there.
You had some freaking panic attack while we're down there and all of a sudden you're holding
on to my flipper.
Yeah, I absolutely would.
I promise you.
And I'd be like scrambling, like I'd be crawling on you trying to get up to the surface, pushing
you down.
A real octopus wouldn't have to come and save you.
When you're underneath, you communicate by clapping.
So you clap, that's what you can hear underwater.
So you clap your hands together, you pound your fist together, and you would just be
clapping the minute we got underneath you.
The whole time.
I would just hear the clicking every five seconds.
Yeah, I'm not gonna do it, I'm sorry.
So Stockton Rush, he was diving like the Puget Sound,
that's in Seattle, I don't know if anyone knows,
it's freezing in there, like freezing,
and he hated the suits you have to wear
when you're diving in cold water,
how like heavy and cumbersome they were,
and he said, quote, Puget Sound is full of nutrients.
So you have sharks and whales and crabs and dolphins
and seals and anemones.
It's an absolutely incredible place to dive,
except that it's freezing.
I loved what I saw, but I thought
there's got to be a better way.
And being in a sub and being nice and cozy
and having a hot chocolate with you
beats the heck out of freezing
and going through two-hour decompression
hanging in deep water, end quote. I agree only about the hot chocolate thing. I like hot chocolate, but...
There's some crazy suits too. Like I had a neoprene suit, but you can actually have suits where
you put the... you put a undergarments on it, but then you put this oversuit on
and the suit fills up with hot water.
So, I had buddies who were divers and what they would do is they do the bridge repairs.
So, it's like 30 degrees outside, right? And the water's freezing.
But what they would do is they'd get into this bigger suit.
It fills up with hot water that's constantly being supplied to the suit and
circulated. So they're underwater, like 50, 60 feet deep, repairing this,
this bridge and they're perfectly warm.
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a lot of work and a lot of money too.
Oh, it's expensive. They get paid. Yeah.
There was a part of me that was like if I left law enforcement I was thinking about going into commercial diving because there's so much money
You could do that stuff where they like go and find try to find missing people and stuff. It's so cool
Dive teams. I wasn't I would have loved to do that, but that's more the fire department for our for our agency
But I was thinking like bridge repair and stuff
They do cement work so much money because it's such a select group of people who do that type of work
There's a lot of money in it, but it's not the most glamorous job. You know you're it's friggin dangerous sounds like it sucks
Yeah, it's it's it you're not looking at tropical fish down there. That's for sure
Dolphins and sea anemones
So stacked in rush he was like listen. I love the ocean
I love exploring the ocean and the water.
But he dreamed of a vessel that could take him deeper
while he was warmer and safer.
So he built one.
By 2006, after earning an MBA from UC Berkeley
and failing to buy an existing submersible,
Stockton completed his own.
And if I remember correctly, he got like a kit sort of,
I think from somebody in England.
Like they sent him a kit
And he just had to put it together
But it was a 12 foot long tube
Outfitted with a plexiglass window and a stomach down control position meaning the the driver the operator would be on his stomach
And it wasn't glamorous. It wasn't fast
But on his first dive just 30 feet below the surface, Stockton was hooked.
The silence, the strangeness, the alien quality of the underwater world called to him,
and he believed as fervently as any explorer before him that the future of human discovery
wasn't in the stars, it was in the sea. And when I wrote that, I actually took that from an interview
that he said he was like, it was like being on a different planet when I was down there, you know,
like things that I had never seen before
and things that you don't see every day,
I felt like I was surrounded by aliens and stuff.
Well, I mean, what do they say?
It's like only like 10%.
I'm off on these statistics,
but it's like a very small part of the ocean
has been explored.
There's a reason for that.
I'm just putting it like,
there's a lot down there that could help
with curing illnesses and stuff.
I mean, that's probably the truth
They're looking in space for those things. There's probably stuff in the ocean that could help as well
Well from that moment on rush dedicated himself to deep sea innovation and he was astounded to learn how few
Private submersibles existed and he was even more shocked by the lack of funding and regulatory support for ocean exploration compared to NASA
lack of funding and regulatory support for ocean exploration compared to NASA.
Why, he asked, did we pour billions into space exploration while the majority of Earth's oceans remained unmapped and unexplored? Earth is really a water planet. I think we
probably all appreciate that. But I also was a space person and half our mission specialist
clients who go to the Titanic have either been to space or are going to space.
One of the reasons I started the business
was I didn't understand why we were spending 1,000 times
as much money to explore space as we were to explore Earth
and the oceans.
Sorry, the oceans.
And NASA has come out repeatedly now talking about the fact
that there are more aquatic, more liquid
water in the solar system than they imagined.
Many things, Pluto as well as moons of Jupiter and Saturn have liquid oceans capped over.
The belief is that there's far more aquatic life in our solar system and in the universe.
And I didn't understand why we weren't exploring it.
Part of that gets down to the media, and I'll come back to this, which is appreciated that people are all about emotion.
And we've had such amazing movies about space,
and not as many about the ocean.
The ocean is a scary spot.
And because of that, I think, is one of the big things.
And what I wanted to do with the business
was just move the needle.
Get people excited about the ocean, explore the ocean,
and discover what was out there.
We all get the 3 quarters of the planet is water, but that's really deceiving.
It's actually 98% of the livable volume.
So if you think about livable volume, you have on the surface from the earth to the
dirt to the top of the trees, in the ocean it's the full depth.
People don't appreciate the average depth of the ocean is 4,000 meters. And yet there are only a handful of subs, think about five subs.
Most are owned by governments, run by research institutions.
There is no private access to the deep ocean.
And yet there's all this life to be discovered.
And as we go down to the Titanic, it's amazing the creatures we see on the two and a half hour descent,
the most bizarre things you can imagine.
Before we continue, and I know some people are not very fond of Stockton and maybe I
won't be by the end of the series but can we just stop for a second and acknowledge
this guy's brilliant and he's accomplished.
Yeah I mean he's brilliant.
I mean what he's been able to accomplish just his resume that you've read so far.
I'm not talking about how he overlooks certain things and you don't agree obviously you know more about him but I'm just coming into this cold and without knowing
all the details or the things that he circumvented or ignored that resulted in this tragedy,
just on the surface what we've talked about with his resume so far, his education, his
ambitions, his courage to go and do things that are dangerous to do for the sake of exploration. I don't think it's wrong to say that that's impressive.
I mean you're talking about being 19 years old and flying these planes. I mean
this is an impressive person and someone who has a lot of talent maybe
didn't use it the right way but I think it'd be wrong to not acknowledge that
this is a reality. This guy was, he had a lot of potential.
He had a lot of potential.
And you can hear when he speaks
that he definitely knows what he's talking about.
He had a lot of potential,
but I think potential combined with hubris
is probably the worst combination ever.
Hubris and ego and potential are really-
I don't disagree.
And that's why we're talking about him today.
And that's why we are where we are.
I'm just saying, compartmentalizing the two, we can acknowledge on one hand that this guy was a very impressive person as far
as what he was able to accomplish.
Yeah, I will give you that and we will discuss it more as we go along.
Okay. Like I said, some people will be pissed at me for saying it, but I'm going along with
this and reading his resume as you're speaking it, it's impressive. Well, Stockton Rush said and saw the submersible industry as obscenely safe and woefully stagnant,
choked in his view by decades of government overregulation.
Safety he believed had become the enemy of progress.
And that belief that calculated defiance of convention that Stockton Rush is known for,
that would eventually shape the entire philosophy of Ocean Gate.
Now, the company was founded by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Sonaline in 2009,
and they claimed their mission was to open up the oceans to exploration,
discovery, research, and commercialization. They wanted to build a private sector alternative
to the government-run deep-manned submersible program.
Sondland met Rush in the summer of 2009. The idea behind Ocean Gate was Rush
would put in the money and Sondland would run the business. But Sondland says
they had no intention of building the subs themselves.
Our vision was to create a fleet of four or five deep diving submersibles at the time
we were thinking they'd be 6,000 meters, capable of carrying five people, available for charter
anywhere in the world.
Now in 2010, Ocean Gate did acquire a five-person submersible built in 1973 by the Perry Submarine Company.
The submersible had once operated in the North Sea oil fields as a ferry for commercial divers,
but in 1994 it was modified by Marlin Submarines to be adapted for recreational use such as
tourism and research.
The submersible, which would become known as Antipodes, had a modified hull, was tested
up to 1,000 feet, and was certified
by the American Bureau of Shipping Standards.
When Ocean Gate purchased Antipodes for $295,000, it had already completed 430 dives as deep
as 920 feet, and the company began advertising it as a chartered sub, which would cost between
$15,000 and $20,000 a day to kind of like rent and charter. Antipodes was also certified as an oceanographic research
vehicle with the Coast Guard and Ocean Gate got their first taste of notoriety
and praise in June of 2015 when researchers aboard Antipodes were out
studying artificial reefs off the coast of Miami and they discovered a mostly
Intact wreck of a US Navy World War two fighter plane lying upside down
240 feet deep so let's take a quick break and then we're gonna talk about that
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So Antipodes is being used as kind of research.
And this is where Stockton Russian Ocean Gate started.
And this is where they said they kind of wanted to stay, where they wanted to be able to open
up the oceans and open up bodies of water to better research so they could find things,
you know, like you said, maybe things that could cure diseases, maybe new species and
things that had never been discovered.
And they found this World War II fighter plane.
And Bob Rasmussen, who is the director of the National Aviation Museum in Pensacola,
Florida, he told the Miami Herald that more than 12,000 Hellcats, those are the fighter
jets, they had been delivered to the Navy, but only a handful of them were still around.
And he said, quote, the discovery of one more, even under 240 feet of Atlantic Ocean,
is important to naval aviation history, end quote.
So now Ocean Gate and Stockton Rush,
they're being touted in the media as like,
yeah, they're like, oh, this is huge.
You know, this is so important,
so important for research, so important for history.
And Stockton Rush added to the conversation,
claiming that if someone was willing to pay
possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, Antipodes stood a good chance of finding other planes missing the conversation, claiming that if someone was willing to pay possibly hundreds of millions of dollars, Antipodes stood a good chance of finding other planes missing to history,
such as Flight 19 and even Amelia Earhart's plane. He said, quote, the technology to find
these planes exists, it's really a question of is it worth the investment? End quote.
Isn't that the case in a lot of things, right? All comes down to money. Yeah, of course.
But you know, once again.
You do need manpower, you do need resources,
you do need technology, you do need equipment, I get it.
And it is a good question, is spending all this money,
like let's say, to find what happened to Amelia Hart.
Amelia Hart's plane, yeah.
If you find her, and it cost $200 million,
yeah, it'd be cool to find her at this point,
but does the cost justify the result?
Yeah, and I think like-
We know she's no longer with us.
Yeah, there's obviously a small sector of people,
and specifically in research and history,
that would love this, right?
That would argue it is, yeah.
Yeah, there's a big mystery of like,
where did her plane even go down, really?
Is she still alive, or did she survive it?
There's so many questions out there
in the historical research community
But that's not where the money is the money is in like medical research government research
You know Department of Defense stuff. That's where the government and even private sector companies would pour a lot of money into because the
resulting
Discoveries, let's say if you wanted to send Stockton Rush and his
sub down to find a cure for cancer, well obviously that result would be
beneficial to people like pharmaceutical companies because now they can make a
ton of money so they might be willing to invest but just for historical...
I would argue they wouldn't want you to find a cure but that's a whole different conversation right?
I used it as an example. You know what I mean? I don't have to convince you of that.
I know you don't.
A company that will find something
that they can market and sell for a ton of money,
they might be willing to put money into this,
but just for historical and research purposes,
if I had the money I would.
It's a tough expense to justify.
But yeah, a lot of people don't really care about that.
So in May of 2013, Ocean Gate announced
that it would work in collaboration
with the University of Washington's Applied Physics Lab to build a new five-person submersible
capable of reaching depths of 3,000 meters. This submersible would be named Cyclops and
feature a carbon fiber hull shaped like a bullet that could plunge down to depth in less than 60
minutes. Now this is important. Remember, University of Washington's applied physics labs, the APL,
this is important as well as Stockton Rush's work
with NASA and Boeing,
because after the Titan submersible disaster,
all these people and companies are gonna come out
and be like, no, we weren't as involved
as he made it seem like we were.
So that's gonna be a whole nother layer
that we have to dig into later on.
A new ultra-strong lightweight manned submersible,
born of the partnership between the UW Supply Physics Laboratory and Ocean Gate.
Cyclops was developed with the goal of being a totally new approach to manned submersibles.
Cyclops is designed to take up to five people as deep as 10,000 feet.
It could do both research, environmental assessment work for oil and gas,
mining surveying work, biopharma, and even adventure tourism.
Ocean Gate brings to the table experience in small subs.
APL brings to the table the ability for a company like Ocean Gate
to come into the university and gain access to resources and gain access to
technology that they may not have available to them. gate to come into the university and gain access to resources and gain access to technology
that they may not have available to them.
APL brings in the ability to do computational fluid dynamics, in other words, how much force,
how much power does it require to move this vehicle through the water at a given speed.
Cyclops is aimed at customers who need to charter deep sea access previously the domain
of military submarines or submersibles tethered to support vessels
of a size and cost Cyclops won't need.
We can use an ocean going tug that might be $10,000 a day versus a specialized research
ship that would run say $100,000 a day.
Cyclops will employ carbon fiber reinforced plastic, the same material Boeing uses to
build jetliner wings.
New carbon fiber manufacturing techniques, new high puritypurity glass, as well as new control
systems.
Why risk people where robots can go?
Subs are extremely safe when operated as a research vessel, not as a military sub.
Robots can't do everything.
There's a place for people in the ocean, and we're looking at first commercial operations
in 2016. So you heard Stockton Rush and he's like, hey, this could be big for research,
environmental, biopharma.
He's using all this.
And then last, he's like, and commercial tourism.
And I really think that the commercial tourism was always his main goal,
because that's where the money is.
It's about money.
And you took the words out of my mouth, because not only that, he said things
like, oh, there's a place for humans in the sea or in the ocean. And that he you took the words out of my mouth because not only that he said things like oh
There there's a place for humans in in the sea or in the ocean and there's things that humans can do that robots
Can't I would argue the robots can do mostly everything you do in the ocean
It's just he's trying to ensure that there's a space
Where for paying customers for paying customers to go down in the ocean because if you remove that because he's he is a smart guy
He's around a smart team. They could probably develop a sub. That's
That doesn't need a human being to go down there with it
Which removes any type of safety issues you have as far as the life of a human being and yet no he's like we want that
That's where like you just said that's where the money is he talks about this a lot
And he's always kind of like, you know research and finding new things. Yeah, that's where you're is. He talks about this a lot and he's always kind of like, you know, research and finding new things.
Yeah, that's where you're gonna get your accolades.
That's how people are going to know about you.
But the reason you want people to know about you
is so that eventually they're like,
oh, I want to go in that submersible.
I want to see the ocean and all these species of fish
and all these shipwrecks and, you know,
World War II planes, I want that, what a great experience.
And a lot of people are gonna think
this is safer than going to space.
But is it?
Not really, it's not really.
So at this point, both the University of Washington
and Boeing were contributing to the design of Cyclops,
with Boeing specifically focused on using the carbon fiber
for the hull of this submersible.
Now, Cyclops 1 is widely considered to be the first crude
submersible to use a carbon fiber hull and its creation marked a major departure from traditional
subdesigns. Prior Cyclops 1, most submersibles used to steal titanium or aluminum alloys for their pressure hulls.
And why did they use those? Because these materials are known for their predictable behavior under extreme compression,
which in the water, the deeper you go, the higher and more intense the compression gets.
So Ocean Gate, under Stockton Rush's leadership, wanted to challenge the status quo.
They believed that carbon fiber composites commonly used in aerospace could be applied to deep sea exploration to create a vessel that was lighter, more fuel efficient, and easier to transport.
Now, you heard him say in the clip, he's like, we don't need a specialized ship for this.
All we need is just any ship, basically any large ship that can go out in the ocean and be used as a support vessel.
We don't need these expensive ships
We can just use a regular ship and that's gonna cut down on costs. Why is important to cut down on costs?
Well, because if he's using this for tourism
He's gonna have to rent that boat that brings the sub out to the water
And if he's paying less for that boat then more of the money he gets from the paying customers
Are gonna go in his pocket.
More net. More net.
So...
It's like anything, right? When you can increase margins, it's a more successful business.
The question always becomes, when do you sacrifice quality?
Yeah, when do you sacrifice quality for safety?
Well, safety even more importantly, but like even on just a business level of like with criminal coffee,
we could do a lower a lower costing bean
We could do a bean that's not as from a certain farm that maybe doesn't produce the highest quality
Mm-hmm, and it would be cheaper, which means we would make more per bag. Yeah, we could make our bags cheaper
We could do a lot of things to lower the cost associated with our company
But yet the experience from for the consumer would decrease.
We'd make more money, but the product wouldn't be as good.
And like you said, that's just something you're consuming.
With this, this is about safety,
it's about protecting your consumer.
So when you're cutting corners there,
that's a whole different ballgame.
Especially when you've made it clear from the get
that you want to bring just regular old civilians
down there who are paying you for that experience.
You are responsible for their safety because clearly
they don't know the in and outs.
They're trusting you that you're taking the proper precautions.
Yep. And let's talk about carbon fiber for a minute,
because yes, it's true.
Carbon fiber is used in things like planes and stuff.
And so there's a reason.
I use carbon fiber in my prints, all my 3D prints all the time.
Showing my nerd here, but love carbon fiber filament. Things like carbon fiber in my prints all, my 3D prints all the time, showing my nerd here,
but love carbon fiber filament.
Things like skis, like sports equipment,
stuff like that, very common.
Carbon fiber's high strength to weight ratio
makes it an appealing candidate,
but its performance under repeated compressive loads,
especially let's say in a sub water environment,
that was not well understood at extreme depths
at the time that Stockton Rush and Ocean Gate
were creating these subs.
Cyclops-1 was an experimental prototype
intended as a test platform and a proof of concept
for the carbon fiber hull idea.
Now, carbon fiber is a composite material
made of extremely thin strands of carbon atoms
bonded together in a crystalline formation. And then these strands are bundled together and woven into a
fabric and then they're combined with a resin to create a rigid strong and
lightweight material. Super strong, super lightweight, using cars all the time, used
in a lot of different applications to have speed with durability. Now carbon
fiber is often used in aerospace for planes and spacecraft because it does have many benefits in that sort of environment. It
resists being pulled apart, it's stronger than steel for its weight, it doesn't
rust or degrade like metals, it's very rigid, it doesn't flex much under tension
which makes it ideal for planes because it's strong and lightweight. However, the
pressurization cycles in aircrafts are moderate compared to what deep sea submersibles endure. Now at the time that
Cyclops was being developed, Rush and Robert Miyamoto, the director of the
Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington, they talked about how they
plan to integrate modern control systems into the vehicle. So they were going to
replace the many dials and levers on submersibles with joysticks, like video game joysticks.
PlayStation remotes.
Yeah, and more automated systems that allowed it to operate with a single pilot.
Stockton Rush said it was like going from a Model T to a Tesla.
In June of 2013, Ocean Gate teamed with Nova Southeastern University to study invasive
lionfish in Florida, and then a few months later in August, Ocean Gate announced that the University of Washington
in Boeing had completed a design feasibility study
for the hull design of Cyclops One.
They said that the basic hull design had been validated
as being able to reach depths of 3,000 meters.
That's about 9,800 feet.
And Cyclops One would allow its five members,
their crew members, to observe underwater environments
for up to eight continuous hours.
Jerry Young, who was the head of Boeing Research
and Technology Director of Materials, he said, quote,
"'We're looking forward to bringing our design
and manufacturing knowledge of hybrid materials
to help OceanGate meet this technology challenge.'"
End quote.
Remember, later Boeing and the University of Washington
and NASA, they're all gonna be like,
"'What are you talking about?
We weren't that involved.
It seems like they were all pretty,
pretty deeply involved, all right?
So the following August, Macklemore,
you know who Macklemore is, right?
The artist?
Yeah, like the singer-rapper.
Yeah, yeah.
He joined the crew of Antipodes
on a dive in the Puget Sound
that was filmed for the Discovery Channel's Shark Week.
So once again, Ocean Gate, Stockman Rush,
they're getting some more sort of media attention.
Motoriety.
Yeah.
And then in 2015, Ocean Gate launched Cyclapse One,
the first submersible to be built by the company.
Now according to the founder, Guillermo Sonaline,
who ended up leaving Ocean Gate in 2013,
it had never been in the cards for them
to build their own submersibles. During the Coast Guard's hearing about the Titan implosion, Sonaline said that
they eventually realized they would need to build their own to achieve their
business model of giving humanity greater access to the ocean. He said, quote,
if you think about our business requirements of being able to carry five
people 6,000 meters without a dedicated mothership deployable anywhere in the
world, none of the subbuilders could really do that. Then if you did factor in
the cost, yeah, it was going to be ridiculously expensive." End quote. He said
that both he and Stockton Rush convinced themselves that it would be possible to
build a sub that could meet all their business requirements and that is when
they started looking at carbon fiber as a potential alternate for a pressure haul. So in 2013 as Ocean Gate
shifted to developing its own submersibles, Rush actually took over as
CEO with Guillermo Sona Lane saying that it made sense for Rush to take the reins
because they were transitioning from an operations phase which was Guillermo's
kind of main you know expertise and they were going from an operations phase, which was Guillermo's kind of main expertise,
and they were going into an engineering phase,
which for Stockton Rush,
which is with his degrees and his experience and expertise,
that would be more his wheelhouse
and he should now take over
and then Guillermo Sonaline left the company,
but not under bad terms allegedly.
Yeah, I know we talked a little bit about carbon fiber here
and when I was watching the original documentary on this I forgot what what it was on has been so many
But I know this carbon fiber conversation is a big part of it because in theory you would think okay you have these
Pressurized cabins on planes using carbon fiber and it works great
Maybe the same would be applicable underwater now
We're gonna find out that's not the case but the question question that I'm going to have by the end of the series
as I start to judge Stockton Rush and anybody else he was associated with,
was the decision for this carbon fiber made because of cost effectiveness,
or was it made because they truly believed it could be an alternative underwater and have the same sustainability,
the same durability that it would have in the air.
And that's the big question we have to answer because I think based on that answer, we'll
decide how a lot of people view Stockton.
I mean, we're going to talk about some tests they did and stuff, but...
Right.
That's going to be the great stuff because if it's proven that he knew that this wasn't
going to be a healthy alternative, it wasn't going to support what they want to do.
And yet he still did it.
That's a major problem.
In my opinion, the tests that they did
showed that the carbon fiber would not hold up
on your crusher.
And it just wasn't even a matter of if it would happen.
It was just a matter of when.
And nobody would have the ability to determine that that and we're gonna talk about why?
They wouldn't have the ability to determine that but there's also rumors that I'm gonna talk about
Where they purchased the carbon fiber from Boeing?
but
allegedly just allegedly
The carbon fiber they purchased from Boeing was over its expiration dates
So like the stuff that Boeing was just looking to get rid of they got
It for cheaper because they didn't want to pay full price
For the carbon fiber you can't cut corners with stuff like this you think
I mean, that's putting it lightly can't regardless of the reason behind it
Oh, you know we're just trying to do more with less like you can't even if you still think it's good
Oh, you know carbon fiber still you know 90% effective at that point trying to do more with less, like you can't, even if you still think it's good.
Oh, you know, carbon fiber is still, you know,
90% effective at that point.
You need 100%.
You have people on board that, that's submersible.
You need it to be at the best of its ability at all times.
Yeah, that's crazy.
As an engineer, he should know what happens to carbon fiber
and how easily it does crack and degrade under pressure and how it's really difficult?
To to figure out that that's happening. We're gonna talk about that
But yeah, I'm looking forward to that because I do I know a lot of people are not fans of stockton rush
It sounds like you may be one of them and I'm coming from it
Just looking at this guy who in my opinion was a smart guy and had a lot of talent, a lot of knowledge
that could have been used in a good way,
but it does seem, just as we're like halfway
through this first episode, that he started
to get a little bit of tunnel vision
on the commercial applications of this
and how much money could be made in that venue.
He wasn't as much concerned about exploration
from the standpoint of curing illnesses
or finding things that were missing.
More so, how could I monetize this?
Yeah, and I think that all that other stuff,
like if it happened to be a byproduct,
then he'd be cool with it.
He'd be cool with it because once again,
it's just adding to his legacy.
It's PR.
It's adding to his mark on the world
that he wants to leave.
And I'm not denying he wasn't a smart guy,
but it's that intelligence mixed with the ego
that becomes a problem.
And also how he grew up.
You know, born into a very influential,
a wealthy family, probably told from the moment
he could hear and understand words,
you're gonna do great things, Stockton,
just like your ancestors before you,
and you're gonna make a mark on this world,
and the world is your oyster.
And this entitlement that builds
from being raised in that environment, this entitlement like I have money I have power I know people and you know there influence gives me the ability to do whatever I want that other people,
normal people couldn't do, and I will do it,
because this is my legacy and that's what I care about.
Legacy's a great thing to talk about here,
because you mentioned it earlier,
and I've seen it in places before,
he was someone who admired Elon Musk.
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, yeah.
He wanted to be the Elon Musk of the ocean.
And how do you do that?
You gotta be first.
You gotta take chances because you don't want someone else
to steal your thunder.
And so that can allow you to make mistakes as well.
And I think that is a part of this narrative.
It almost also felt like he kinda didn't think
anybody else was gonna steal his thunder
because most intelligent people who were well versed
in this area of expertise knew that it was dangerous
and not possible and they weren't even trying.
So he was like, oh, this is pretty much an open market, man.
Like, no one's gonna try to, you know,
compete with me here.
This is all mine.
I won't even have the challenge of having somebody,
like, racing with me.
It's what I wanna do and this is, like,
a pretty much untapped market.
And once again, there's a reason for that.
So the Cyclops 1 submersible was steered with a video game controller.
It used computer air fans in the air filtration system and
showed a sonar data on a consumer grade flat screen.
So once again, we're cutting costs where they think they can.
Ocean Gate announced that they were planning to build two more submersibles,
both with carbon fiber composite hulls.
The Cyclops 2 would be ready by June of 2016 and OceanGate announced that they were planning to build two more submersibles, both with carbon fiber composite hulls.
The Cyclops 2 would be ready by June of 2016, and the Cyclops 3 would be completed by early
2017.
This was very unrealistic.
An ambitious timeline.
The Cyclops 1 had five dives planned as part of its sea trials, and it was reported that
the company expected testing to be completed by June.
In June, investigative reporter Mark Harris met with Stockton Rush to learn more about
his innovative submersible and to take a trip in Cyclops 1 himself.
Harris said that when he met OceanGate's CEO, Stockton Rush was already styling himself
as a sub-aquatic Elon Musk.
And Rush told Harris, quote, I wanted to be the first person on Mars until I realized
there was nothing there. But in the ocean, there are new life forms, things people have never discovered.
My goal is to move the needle. End quote. So the two men went for a test dive in Alley
at Bay in Seattle. And at first everything seemed great, but then things took a turn.
According to Mark Harris, who said, quote, 90 minutes later and 130 meters deeper,
we were totally lost.
First, the thruster software had glitched, leaving us floating just above the seafloor.
Now, the sub's compass was acting up.
The shipwreck we aimed to capture, a rail ferry that had once carried Teddy Roosevelt, was nowhere to be seen.
All I could spy outside the Cyclops 1 forward dome was the occasional salmon dancing in the frigid water.
As I began to fill the chille seeping through the sub's steel hull, Rush asked me to open
my iPhone's Compass app.
He wanted to compare it to the one on his phone.
The headings did not match, but he rebooted the thrusters and we set off in what he was
pretty sure was the right direction.
"'You're heading in exactly the wrong direction,' said a faint voice transmitted
via an acoustic
link from the support ship tracking us on the surface.
We eventually located the sunken ship, its rotting bow emerging into the cyclops' headlight.
Back at the dock, Rush brushed off the problem we had encountered.
This is exactly why Ocean Gate started with the Cyclops One, he said, rather than anything
capable of deeper diving.
I could have built a multi-million dollar version and all of a sudden I've got to figure out really stupid stuff like the magnetic compass
He told me the Cyclops one is getting us ready when we do the Cyclops 2 then all these bugs will be out
Endquote man. Can you imagine? I mean, it's not funny, but can you imagine being on this ocean floor and and and
The thrusters stop working and then he's like open your compass on your iPhone. Yeah, I'm gonna be looking at him like what?
What are you talking about? I just want to end it's like first of all you're under the water
So service ain't gonna be great to begin with get out of the boat. You can't get out of the submarine
Yeah, you can't move around trying to find no and then and then and then he's like hold on I'll get us
going in the right direction and then the support ship is like you're not going in the right
direction and he's like oh let me try this direction you know like completely guessing down there
guessing with an investigative journalist so there's like a lot of a lot of lack of self-awareness
here I think like he doesn't realize that this seems bad because to him he's like yeah this is
experimental we're pushing the boundaries we're breaking this seems bad because to him. He's like, yeah, this is experimental
We're pushing the boundaries. We're breaking the the ceiling but to the guy who's under the water with him
He's like, you know, this is my life, dude
I'm not trying to be a guinea pig. I don't exactly I don't want to be a guinea pig
Like you kind of made it seem like this was all, you know good and perfect
But now I'm down here and you're like, yeah, this is why we started with this and when we do our next version
It's all going to be fine.
Here's where I sit on this.
I mean, listen, these explorers, they're a different breed.
They're pushing the boundaries.
And I think there's two things that can happen.
There's going to be mistakes when you're doing something for the first time, right?
When we went to space for the first time, I mean, there's going to be things that don't
go according to plan.
The problem is the lack of acknowledgement. That's
the issue here, which you're bringing up. It's okay to have those things because when
you're doing something that nobody has ever done before, you're going to have mishaps.
Even with Elon Musk, we see with SpaceX, there's rockets that are landing perfectly. And then
he has some that hit the ground and blow up immediately. And he's like, yeah, that's part
of doing business. But the difference is they're looking at that, they're evaluating the data and they're taking measures to ensure it doesn't happen again
And they're doing that well before they put anyone on the rocket ship right this is different
He's he's risking the lives of others
While quote-unquote working the bugs out that is the problem
Yeah
And the fact that he minimizes all the stuff he always does this
That you come back up to the surface and everybody down there with he was like holy shit. That was crazy That is the problem. Yeah, and the fact that he minimizes all this stuff, and he always does this,
that you come back up to the surface
and everybody down there with you was like,
holy shit, that was crazy.
And he's like, ah, nah, not a big deal.
No, it's a big deal.
Yeah, it is a big deal.
You could have died.
And if you minimize this stuff enough to others,
you'll start to almost mirror that same feeling to yourself.
If you're like lying to others enough,
if you're denying enough,
then you'll start to convince yourself, hey, it's not that big of a deal. And that're lying to others enough, if you're denying enough, then you'll start to
convince yourself, hey, it's not that big of a deal. And that may be what happened here, but
let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.
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All right, we're back from break and just to piggyback on what you said, I also think it
creates culture, right? Like he's the top person in that organization and he's complacent in a lot
of these things and when he's flippant about these quote- quote unquote bugs, the people underneath him could become that way as well.
And now it creates a culture that's dangerous
for everybody that's working on the project,
but also the consumers of that product.
So it's a major issue.
And at the top of the food chain, if you're the boss,
you have to be the most critical
of everything that's being done.
And here's what I think happened also,
not just with the culture of like,
oh, well, the boss thinks it's okay,
and he's the engineer,
and he's the one with this illustrious education
in this field, so if he thinks it's okay, it's okay.
It's also a culture of being afraid to speak up
because there's, you know, he gets upset.
He doesn't like when people kind of push back.
He's like, I'm the smart one here, I'm the boss.
What are you peons even questioning me questioning me for and when enough of that happens
Which as we'll find out happened quite a bit
There's gonna be a culture of silence because people are too afraid to to speak up because they're afraid to be told they're stupid
They're dumb
They don't know what they're talking about or to have him angry at them
Which could put their job in jeopardy and then just start their reputation in general.
So don't like what I'm saying get lost and that's kind of what happened
With the next person we're gonna talk about who's David Lockridge and David Lockridge for anybody who's familiar with this submersible disaster
He was actually considered to be the whistleblower who was one of the earliest people
To start raising concerns about Ocean Gate and the submersibles that they were creating.
So in May of 2015, Ocean Gate hired David Lockridge as their director of marine operations. And Lockridge, originally from Scotland,
he had extensive experience as a submarine pilot. He was trained to recognize flaws and points of failure in subsea equipment.
He'd been in the Royal Navy.
He'd worked as a commercial diver, and he'd been working with submersibles for over 20
years by the time he took this position with Ocean Gate. Now at the time,
Lockridge was running tests with the companies to existing subs, which would
be Antipodes and Cyclops. They were already classed, which means the vessels
had been inspected, tested, and certified by an independent classification society,
in this case the American Bureau of Shipping, or ABS.
So this was done to ensure that they met specific safety,
design, and construction standards for operation.
And Lackridge said when he started with the company,
Ocean Gate was already building their next sub,
which was originally supposed to be called Cyclops 2,
but as we know, that name would be changed to the Titan.
And he was told that the Titan was also set to be classed. Being classed matters
so much for submersibles because in the deep sea conditions pressure increases
by about one atmosphere every 33 feet. So at titanic depths, which is over 12,000
feet, that's over 400 atmospheres of pressure, which is roughly 6,000 pounds per square
inch. So without rigorous engineering and oversight, a submersible can
catastrophically implode. Now being classed doesn't automatically mean that
nothing will go wrong, but it dramatically reduces the risk by
ensuring the vessel has met internationally recognized safety
standards and was built by people who are accountable to those standards.
So when Lockridge came on, he said the Titan was just a concept. So this would
be the Cyclops II. It was just a concept and it was his understanding that he was
supposed to assist with the build and that his experience working with the
classing system was going to be very important in producing a successful
product in the Cyclops 2, aka the Titan.
At the same time, the intention was that once everything was finished with Cyclops 1 and the
company and APL were happy with everything, those systems would be fully not integrated so they
weren't going to get moved from Cyclops, but they would be built, hardier, stronger, more reliable,
and they were going to get built for Titan.
When I moved across, there was nothing.
Nothing was produced, nothing was finalized with APL.
So he's basically saying that the Cyclops one
was sort of a prototype, right?
It was seaworthy and could go down,
but it was a prototype to make another
vessel which would be the Titan that could go deeper and go down for longer. And then
whatever-
Better equipment.
Yeah, whatever systems and equipment they had in Cyclops 1 that were successful with
the depths they wanted to go to, they were going to make those better so that the Titan
could reach lower depths and be under there for longer and withstand more pressure, which
you would need at lower depths.
That's what he's saying.
And he said when he came on, nothing was ready for that
and he was supposed to kind of like help with that
because of his knowledge.
Now in 2016, David Lockridge was aboard the Cyclops I
when it ventured down off the coast of Nantucket
to visit the famed shipwreck, the Andrea Doria.
Now the Andrea Doria went down in 1956
after colliding with another vessel. It's one of the best known shipwrecks in New England. It sits about 200
feet below the ocean surface, making it a popular site for divers who do refer to it as the Mount
Everest of diving. And that's because it's very dangerous. For the past six decades, divers have
used this wreck to test their limits, and more than a dozen lost their lives while trying to navigate the wreck.
Stockton Rush spoke about the shipwreck and the rate at which it was deteriorating,
saying, quote, when the Andrea Doria first went down, it was pristine and you went straight into the hull and through the windows.
Now it's harder to get inside and far more dangerous.
Imagine it as a collapsing cave. Once the cave loses its basic
structure, it deteriorates very quickly." End quote. So Stockton Rush knew how
dangerous this shipwreck was if you got too close. Not only for divers, but for
someone exploring it in a submersible. The purpose of this mission with the
Cyclops One was to capture HD video and 3D sonar images. And they said they wanted to do this because they were like,
hey, we want to get an exact image of how bad this shipwreck
is deteriorating.
And hopefully, this will assist in divers who go down there.
So they'll kind of know which parts to avoid,
which parts are more dangerous.
And so we'll hopefully reduce the risk of life.
From what Ocean Gate reported, you
would have thought this dive was a resounding success. but David Lockridge had other things to say. He
said that the dive was meant to be his. You know, he was going to be piloting
the Cyclops One and he was gonna take four paying clients down with him, but
at the last minute, Stockton Rush decided he was going to be the one to man the
submersible. I also want to mention that although David Lockridge refers to the passengers of the sub as paying
customers, Ocean Gate called them mission specialists, a term borrowed from NASA
and professional exploration, implying that these paying customers were part of
the crew, not just along for the ride. It's all branding, it's all for experience.
And listen, this actually wasn't just some clever branding. It reframed the passengers' legal and operational role aboard the sub.
So Ocean Gate claimed that these individuals were actually contributing to the mission,
such as helping operate sonar, taking photographs, gathering data.
And under U.S. Coast Guard and international maritime law,
a vessel that carries passengers for hire triggers much stricter safety requirements,
especially under the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993. And this was actually a law that Stockton
Rush often and openly criticized. He was like, this is ridiculous. Their safety concerns are
just really keeping people from seeing the ocean. So by calling their passengers, their paying
passengers, mission specialists, Ocean Gate attempted to sidestep classification as a passenger vessel and by extension the burdens of meeting classing
requirements. This would also later help frame Titan as a non-commercial research or exploratory
craft rather than a tourism vessel even though its clients were paying a lot of money for
each dive.
Lots of money.
Yeah.
No, I mean, and when I say by branding, I think it's more for experience from the consumer's
perspective where, you know, again, if you have aspirations to explore, whether it's,
you know, the stars or the sea, I'd rather be called a mission specialist, personally.
I'd like mine to say mission specialist Lavasser, as opposed to, you know, tourist Lavasser.
I want my jumpsuit to say mission specialist even if I have two doubt you know two weeks
Watching a video on how to run the sonar equipment with the PlayStation controller. Yeah, I'm a certified stud
I want to be a mission specialist. So it reminds do you remember the Challenger the the spaceship? Yeah
So I remember it's like wait, this is a trick question the spaceship
So I remember when I was like, wait, is this a trick question? The spaceship. So I remember when I was a kid in fifth grade,
they brought us to a Challenger thing,
and they were redoing it.
And they put us all in there, and they gave us badges,
and they said mission specialists.
100%.
Yeah, but you're not a fifth grader,
and you're not certified, and you're not trained,
and you don't know what you're doing.
Right.
So the fact that they're running the equipment,
and they're called, like you said,
it was a way of circumventing certain laws, certain safety
measures, and I also think it just built the experience like, hey guys, and I saw
the original documentary where these people are in like suits, they're on the
boat for a little bit, they're doing training. They were all introducing themselves as mission specialists. Yeah, yes, yes, it seemed like a little bit of a
gimmick to me. A gimmick that also made it so that if something happened,
they wouldn't maybe have the same kind of clap back
or blow back that they normally would.
And Ocean Gate also made every mission specialist
sign an extensive liability waiver,
which mentioned death and serious injury multiple times,
even including a statement
that Titan was an experimental vessel,
not approved or certified by any regulatory body. So
on the day that Cyclops One was ready to venture out to the Andrea Doria, David Lackridge said
they'd already done their research and they knew the shipwreck was very dangerous and falling apart.
So he knew they had to keep the sub a good distance away from the wreck and the plan was
all in place when suddenly on the day of Rush decided he would be the one to take the sub down.
Unfortunately, the CEO decided that he wanted to take it down. I objected because I knew sometimes
he could do things to please himself. He told me I was staying out. I objected again. I was sort of reined in at the time, just remember I'm
the CEO, you're just an employee. I eventually persuaded him to let me come
in on the dive, so we reduced the paying passengers down to three and Stockton
said he was taking it down. He had on sonar, clear sonar image, could see the
wreck and boom as I said, it's not very deep
Visibility's not excellent, but it was clear enough, good ambient light that day and
He came straight down hard on the bottom. No, no trimming, no ballast, nothing
smashed straight down on the bottom
Visibility went everywhere
You could see a silhouette and it was the two clients that were sitting in the viewing dome right next to the acrylic
And they were like oh my god. We are right on the wreck
So I said to Stockton please all stop stop telling me what to do Stockton all stop
We have to see what's going on here. We have to look at our surroundings which is standard practice for any competent submersible pilot
and from there visibility cleared which is standard practice for any competent submersible pilot. And from
there visibility cleared, we could see metal plates and we could clearly see
the starboard side of the bow of the Andrea Doria. We could see all the debris,
we could see Hawser lines, we could see panels coming off, it was an absolute
mess. So I said stopped
him please and he just kept arguing with me in the sub very unbecoming of a
submersible pilot I was trying to guide him I'm trying to give the the best
course of action to get him out of it no matter what I'm doing this so he blew
air in the tank and the ballast tank came off
the bottom, motored full stick ahead, unbeknownst to everybody else and I don't
know why, he decided to turn the submersible 180 degrees at speed, still
coming ahead, so he wasn't looking at his surroundings, he could have quite easily
went up into the viewing dome,
he could have went up into the tower, because it's got a clear
acrylic hatch on there, and
he basically drove at full speed into the port side of the bow, and we could hear the
cracking of the fairing as he got us jammed in underneath.
So, I'm not going to say how foul my language was, but it wasn't good.
And at that point, it was unprofessional behaviour of him, he started to panic.
And the first thing was, do we have enough life support on board?
I was like, of course we've got enough life support, we need to get out here. When do
you think the dive team could come to get us out? Stockton, please give me the
controls, I'm gonna get us out of this. We're stuck, we're stuck, we're stuck.
Repeatedly, every time I went to take the controller from him, he pushed it further and further behind him, inside the submersible itself.
I said, I can be quite vocal sometimes.
At that point, it went on and on and on.
I'm looking up inside the upper hatch, I could see where there was fishing line
driving over the top of the sub, all the metal rebar, there was debris everywhere. He never once get out the seat in the back of the
sub to go and look at his surroundings. So I said let's get a communications check,
let's talk to the top side, let them know what's going on, what if there's no comms.
I'm like give me the controls, let me talk to them, let me talk to top side and I'm gonna get us out of this. This went on and on and on for a period of time and
eventually it took one of the pen clients to turn round and
she shouted at Stockton to
give me the effing controller. She had tears in her eyes.
He leaped round behind him. I was, I had my head up inside the tower,
so I'm still looking at the wreck and he clattered it off the right side of my
head. The controller landed on the deck
plate. One of the buttons came off the robust PlayStation controller,
and I picked it up, repaired it and had it out 10-15 minutes.
All right, well, let me let me weigh in first here because this is a different side of Stockton
It is the other side of Stockton
I was complimentary of his accolades leading up to this but this guy sounds like an idiot. Not David
I'm talking about Stockton. He sounds like a child. He sounds like exactly what we were describing earlier, right?
This is a guy who wants to be the first.
He wants, it's me, me, me.
This is about my ego, my hubris.
This is about my credit, right?
I want to be responsible for this.
I'm going to do this.
I'm going to do that.
Then when it goes wrong, now he's pouting.
He's literally pouting in this small tube
with two paid customers in front of his clients.
He's arguing with a guy who clearly knows more than him.
That's what I'm saying, man.
David Lockridge has been manning submersibles for 20 years.
Yeah, he knew his shit.
Stockton Rush can fly a plane, he's an engineer,
but he does not have the same experience with submersibles
that the person he hired for his experience with submersibles has
But he still wants to be this guy
So now you're kicking one paying passenger off so that you can go down you're taking complete control what you just heard was
David convinced them to let him go. Yeah, exactly
Yeah, imagine imagine and what you just heard was a story about a grown man a Princeton graduate with an engineering degree
Throwing what I like to call a baby bitch boy fit.
A tantrum.
He's throwing a tantrum.
He pulled them right into the wreck when that was never the plan.
He then got the submersible stuck in a very dangerous position where something could fall
on it at any time and then you're screwed.
Then he refused to let the train submarine pilot get them to safety because it bruised
his ego.
100%.
And when he was finally told by a paying customer to man up he threw the PlayStation remote at Lockridge risking it getting broken.
It did and thankfully Lockridge was able to fix it but that risked them, all five of them,
never being able to get back to the surface again.
And the ego of Stockton Rush is going to be something that many people who knew him and
worked with him would often talk about.
And like when you said he pouted, yeah. So in the Netflix
documentary they show them coming back up to the surface. He's still pouting. I'm
gonna have to watch this. I'm gonna wait till after our series is over though.
Yeah, he's still pouting when they get back up and when they got the Cyclops
one to the surface, Lackridge said that Stockton didn't speak to him for the
rest of the day and from then on the dynamic between them changed. And this is
important because now Stockton Rush almost has an idea of like I don't know if it's because he
didn't like that Lockridge challenged him or he didn't like that Lockridge saw him in that like
very vulnerable sort of like childish kind of tantrum but he's he's on a mission now to kind of tantrum, but he's, he's on a mission now to kind of phase David
Lockridge out. And that's going to be very important.
This is a critical point in the story because clearly David Lockridge knows
what he's talking about. He's someone who could, who could have potentially
prevented this tragedy, but he, as you had said earlier in this episode,
Stockton surrounded himself with people who were yes men
and who wouldn't challenge him.
And if you weren't that, yeah.
They got booted out and it created a culture
where everyone's just kind of flippin' when things go wrong.
And here's a guy who's willing to step up to him,
challenge him and call him out.
And as soon as he does, he reminds him
that I'm the CEO you're
just an employee he reminds him of that hierarchy and the position of authority
that Stockton's in. I'm the king I'm the king. Yes and that's not good when
you're trying to do something for the first time you need dissenting opinions
you need a collaborative effort you need people to challenge you so that you get
it right and Stockton wasn't willing to do that. But you're right. This is right here, a recipe for disaster.
And when we think about where we're going with this story, this is the type of that
could have prevented it. So break time. We'll be right back.
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So plans to build the new submersible, Cyclops 2 aka Titan, went full speed ahead
with Stockton Rush telling the media that Titan would be one of the safest forms of
transportation in the world and by the time they were done testing it, the sub would be
pretty much invulnerable. Now Ocean Gate did conduct pressure testing
at the University of Washington's Applied Physics Lab. They conducted this testing
on a 1 third scale model of Titan and there was some concerning outcomes.
The first test of a scale model of Cyclops new filament wound carbon fiber hull
designed and manufactured by Spencer Composites in collaboration with Ocean Gate
and APLUW.
We're testing a one-third scale model of the pressure vessel that will be used on Cyclops
2.
Initially when we launched the Cyclops program we planned to have Cyclops 2 go to 3,000 meters
and we found through our engineering that in fact we can achieve at least 4,000 meters
and maybe more.
Cyclops III has been planned to be 6,000.
The pressure at 6,000 meters? About 8,762 pounds per square inch.
By comparison, Navy submarines commonly operate at depths of 180 to 250 meters.
The pressure vessel consists of three parts, a cylinder and two hemispheres.
One of the unique elements of this test will be the hemispheres.
So the hemispheres are also carbon fiber, which has never been done at this size or
to this depth.
The goal of this test, pressure of 6,000 pounds per square inch.
The pressure is raised gradually.
At the 71 minute mark, the pressure increased to 4,000 pounds per square inch.
At 72 minutes, the pressure was turned up to 5,000 psi.
But three minutes later, at a pressure of 4,285 psi, representing a depth of about 3,000
meters, the test was aborted by apparent water intrusion into one of the carbon fiber domes.
Yeah, she's open. That is the most risky part of the test
and the most difficult to analyze.
Since it's never been done, there's no test data
on how carbon fiber in a hemisphere
will respond to the pressures.
So yeah, during these testings,
you heard what was like cracking sounds almost,
snapping sounds. That's the carbon fiber snapping basically.
Cracking, flexing.
Yeah, which is not what you want, right?
Not what you want to hear, especially if you're inside the thing.
Yes, so throughout 2015 and 2016, Ocean Gate in collaboration with the University of Washington's
Applied Physics Lab conducted four tests on this one-third scale model of Titan. In December of 2015, the model failed at 2,943 meters.
In February of 2016, it failed at 4,121 meters. The following month, it failed again, this time at
2,753 meters. And then in July of 2016, it failed at 4,465 meters. So basically the Titan
would be built to have a cylindrical hull like a tube and at each end there
would be two domes that capped the vessel. Now the original plan had been to
use carbon fiber for the cylindrical hull as well as the domes but due to the
test failures Ocean Gate switched to titanium domes. However, they made the
decision to
use grade 3 titanium instead of grade 5 titanium. The most common grades used in
engineering are 1 through 5, with grade 5 being 90% titanium, extremely high
strength with excellent corrosion resistance. Grade 5 titanium is often
used for things like jet engines and deep sea submersible components because
it withstands high stress, high pressure environments. Grade three is obviously a lower strength than grade five
with half the ultimate tensile strength and is not typically used for high pressure structural
components. It's also, surprise price, cheaper and easier to manufacture.
There you go. There's your reason why. Because everything you just said here, other than
the price, why would you choose three over five? You wouldn said here other than the price why would you choose three over five you wouldn't other than the price other than
the price so nobody no can nobody can say in hindsight well we went with three
because the properties of three were better in certain areas that no five is
better across the board there's no reason you would use it other than cost
efficiency that's it you're cutting costs. Simple.
And OceanGate did start with grade 5 titanium, but then substituted grade 3 in later builds,
which would have dramatically reduced the strength of the titanium to carbon fiber joints,
which was already the most vulnerable points of the vessel.
So in an April 2016 newsletter, OceanGate announced that since the testing of the scale
model had been concluded, their engineering team was moving forward with construction of a full-sized pressure hall capable of reaching depths of 4000 meters or 13,000 feet, which is just about where the Titanic sits.
OK, but like there needed to be a lot more testing.
There's literally no wiggle room here.
lot more testing. There's literally no wiggle room here. There needed to be a lot more testing. For me, just going back over some of the numbers that you were relaying, and I know they switched
over to a titanium end cap there, but you have 4,000 meters, 2,900 meters, 2,700 meters,
to me that screams inconsistency. It does. It's unpredictable. And I will say I'm not
an expert by any means in carbon fiber, but like I was saying earlier, I use it a lot in my 3D prints and carbon fiber is not all created equal.
And I would even say that the same manufacturer producing that carbon fiber, depending on how it's woven together,
depending on how it's created, there could be variants in that carbon fiber weave that makes it less strong than the version before it and after it. So that human element that goes into it there may be factors that even though
it's on the surface on the label the exact same carbon fiber there is a
variance there and with something like this where these centimeters can be the
difference in life or death you can't have that. So just from the just from a
layman's perspective the inconsistencies in the unpredictability of the carbon fiber itself
Would be a reason not to use it the titanium 5 seems like a great alternative
It's also it's a little heavier, but they just used it for the cylindrical caps not but they could use it for everything
Maybe they could have yeah, it would have been a lot more expensive
But my point being there's a lot more predictability with the titanium 5
It's been using other applications that are similar to other submarines. The only
problem being to make that cyclops, this would be cyclops 2 or 3.
This would be cyclops 2, which would become the titanium, yes.
So cyclops 2, the only difference being is that it would have been a lot more expensive
to produce it. But they could have done testing with an entire titanium tube
under that pressurized setting,
and I would believe that the amount of pressure
it would have been able to handle,
PSI would have been a lot higher.
And it's interesting that you say that
because they did say that during the trials.
They were like, hey,
whoever you have winding your carbon fiber for your model
should be the same person you have winding your carbon fiber
for the full-sized hull. They need to be the same person you have winding your carbon fiber for the full-sized hole.
They need to be the same people using the same materials
from the same manufacturer.
That's how a testing procedure would be done
because otherwise, like you said, there's risk of,
maybe this guy winds the carbon fiber
different than this guy, exactly.
But also what you said at the end there
before I just went on that whole tangent,
even if everything's perfect,
even if it's exactly what it should be the same person, all that good stuff,
right? The maximum was 4,000 meters or 13,000 feet,
which is right at the distance of Titanic. When you're doing something,
anything like this,
you don't want your maximum to be right where you're trying to go.
You want your maximum to be in this case,
two or 3000 meters more than where you're trying
to go to. Like you said, there's no margin for error there. They're basically, they have
this maximum amount of pressure that can be applied or distanced to 44,000 meters, and
they're going to push it to the absolute limit. That's what the best, when you've had variances
in the testing.
When you've had it fail far before that.
Correct.
In all their testing.
That's the problem.
That's important.
And what you're talking about is,
it's called a target testing margin,
basically a target safety margin.
So in March of 2017, OceanGate actually announced
that they would be bringing paying passengers
to the wreckage of the Titanic.
And the price to ride would be $105,129,
which would be the inflation adjusted cost
of a first class ticket on the maiden voyage of Titanic.
So right there, it feels like you're trying to curse people.
But while it's true.
They're selling a story.
Yeah, they're selling an experience, yeah.
These people had an obsession with the Titanic.
And you see the documentaries,
they wanted to go to the Titanic.
It wasn't necessarily they wanted to be in a submersible,
they wanted to visit the Titanic.
Yes, exactly, the paying passengers, you mean.
That's it, yes.
They wanted to go to the Titanic.
And now while it is true that the scale model of Titan
did not fail until over 4,000 meters in some tests,
and the Titanic is technically only 3800 meters
under the Atlantic, it was obviously still a bit premature
to be announcing that this submersible, which wasn't even built yet, would be ready to
take actual people to such depths. The tests done at the University of
Washington showed the scale model imploded at about 6,500 psi, which was
close to the water pressure at 3,800 meters, the depth of the Titanic, but
thousands of meters short of Ocean Gate Gates target safety margin, right?
Because the target safety margin is going to be significantly like,
yeah, probably eight, probably 8,000 PSI, 9,000 PSI.
You want to have some margin there where you're like, Hey guys, don't worry.
We could go another 2000 meters and still be fine. You don't want to be right on,
you don't want to be living on the edge.
That's not where you want to be.
In fact, Cyclops 2, AKA Titan,
the prototypes never survived
the targeted safety margin pressure in testing.
And the company never tested the titanium components
of the final submersible.
OceanGate instead made the decision to thicken the hull
from four and a half inches to 5 inches, which
is going to turn out to be too thick for portable ultrasonic testing equipment to detect minuscule
flaws or weak points in the final product.
And we're going to talk about that in a minute because we have to hear about Tony Niesen's
testimony.
Tony Niesen was hired by OceanGate to be their director of engineering in March of 2016.
And he said he was originally asked to finish the Titan, which was then still known as the Cyclops 2, and he was
under the impression that this would take about a year. And during his testimony in front of the
U.S. Coast Guard, Neeson was clearly emotional and stressed. I know up to June of 2019,
and there's some things that I saw in this presentation
that are disturbing. I didn't think I'd need a break but I wasn't kidding when I
said I might need one later on. There's some things that bother me professionally
and personally so I apologize for some of my pauses.
So I was, I was pitched by Ocean Gate that the Cyclops 2 craft was nearly complete in the sense
that all the items were in place.
They just needed somebody to take it over the finish line.
And they wanted somebody with an extensive marine background.
Talk about that in my calls. Taught sailing and yachting. I have a Coast Guard
Master's license, 50 ton. In their mind's eye, I was gonna put together the parts
and then just start executing it. And so I was... My my apologies that's my watch telling me I've been
abnormally high heart rate I was originally asked to to just finish this
it was gonna be a year and that's it I wasn't asked to design sub poor guys
about to have a heart attack
I'm about to pass out
Exactly. Oh my god. So Tony Neeson he said when he was hired he had no idea They planned on going to the Titanic
But he felt he was a good fit for Ocean Gate because he had brought experience complying with regulatory requirements
and he thought outside the box, right? But by the second week, he started questioning,
like, what am I even doing here? Because he felt like he could never catch up. He said
by the time he started at Ocean Gate, a lot of Titan was complete. Dave Dyer at APL, which
is the University of Washington Applied Physics Lab, had done a mechanical systems drawing.
UW engineer Peter Brodsky had already done
the control system on Cyclops I.
Everything external to the hull,
mechanical and electrical from Cyclops I
had already been done by APL.
Brian Spencer of Spencer Composites had the hull figured out
and a design analysis report claimed Titan
would go well beyond what the target depth was.
Neeson said they were supposed to get the same parts from Cyclops 1,
put them on Cyclops 2, test it and certify it, and then be done.
But it ended up not being so caught in dry. Neeson claimed that Cyclops 1 had power for the thrusters internally,
which with a big battery under the floor, but they couldn't do that with Cyclops 2 aka Titan.
Additionally, Ocean Gate had been promised thrusters from Interspace,
which they had used on Cyclops-1, only to eventually be told that they would not
be provided with the same thrusters from Cyclops-1, making everything that Peter
Brodsky had done at the Applied Physics Lab irrelevant. So when the team at the
APL began to move
with Ocean Gate from Cyclops Wanda Titan,
Stockton Rush began butting heads with Peter Brodsky.
Pete wasn't okay with using glass spheres on the outside
and decided to remove himself from the project
for that reason.
And respectfully,
Stockton didn't make a big issue of it when to Pete at all.
But he was mattered and I'll get out for sure.
He was not happy about that because we were losing Pete.
And so the University of Washington Applied Physical
Lab said that utilizing glass spheres in the
Atmosphere on the app in the outside so not in the pressure hall wasn't was a no
It was a no starter for them
for Pete Brodsky
For sure he and you wouldn't put glass spheres in the inside one as you could
It'd be overkill but for the for the outside. No and even
Even oil filling them Pete was not
He was not okay with it
And so personally he didn't want to be part of it and that was the point at which ocean gate the cease the engineering
With Pete with Pete yep, man red flag after red flag not good. You got multiple people telling you you're gonna crash
this is gonna crash and burn and
not good. You got multiple people telling you you're gonna crash. This is gonna crash and burn." And Stockton say, nope, full steam ahead. So at this point
Ocean Gate broke from APL and then Tony Neeson hired in-house engineers and
Neeson testified that Stockton Rush was not the best at accepting constructive
criticism or releasing control. So Neeson did the best he could with both hands
tied behind his back
most times.
And as the director of engineering, did you make all engineering decisions?
No.
Did you make any engineering decisions?
Yes.
And who would make the majority of the engineering decisions?
It was Stockton.
If I could control it, or if I did control it, it was a significant problem or a significant issue,
which maybe we'll talk about.
That's how 18 strain gauges got on the whole.
I wasn't going to settle for anything else.
So an engineering decision like that, I made it.
And Stockton and I argued about it a lot.
Well, I'll say the technical decisions for the case itself,
the carbon fiber structure, that's Brian Spencer.
I could raise the alarms all I want, but it's Brian Spencer
and look at Stockton and you know, he's sad.
This is what we got.
This is what we're going with.
To the extent that I was uncomfortable really with the fact that we weren't going
to have witness panels.
I couldn't understand that about Brian.
How would you build this without a witness panel?
That's so basic.
Seems so basic.
But I couldn't stop that.
To get the witness panels, the mandrel was already done and Saughton wanted to go with
that.
So this is just a couple of examples of how I could influence it and some things that
if it mattered enough, then I'd fight for it.
And if it didn't matter enough,
I'd find a way I can mitigate it.
And was that Mr. Rush's management technique just to you
or was that employed throughout others
that you witnessed at ocean gate?
Yeah, Stockton, I don't
I'm struggling to find the professional words to be able to put it
I'm an old Navy diver, right? There's a bunch of words I could use but
Stockton would fight for
He would fight for what he wanted
and what he wanted, even if it changed from day to day,
he would fight for what he wanted
and he wouldn't give an inch much at all.
So the fights that I had with Stockton,
most of it behind closed doors,
because as the director of engineering, let's keep continuity in the crew and they can't really know that
The two people on top are in solid disagreement
Most people would just eventually back down from Stockton like it it was almost death by a thousand cuts
most of the things I
Hope that answers answers that question.
I don't know a really good professional to organize that in my brain right now.
Yeah, that's what we've been saying all episode, right?
Like he just he had Stockton had it in his mind how things were going to go.
He tried to surround himself with people that would eventually concede to what he
wanted. And he had these people on board because he needed them.
He wanted them, but he was only hiring them
to affirm what he wanted.
Yeah, and I feel like almost for looks, right?
Like, oh, I have this expert here
and I have this expert here,
but if you're not listening to them,
it doesn't matter who you surround yourself with.
He was looking for their endorsements
and when they didn't give them just easily,
and he would push back and say,
well, you know what, if you're not with me
or against me, you gotta go.
And he was open to hearing other opinions,
but in reality, he wasn't receptive to them
to the point where he would make changes.
It was more like, I understand what you're saying,
thank you for bringing that to our attention.
Now we're going to do exactly what I've already
planned on doing.
Exactly.
So it's not the way you operate.
And you heard Tony Neeson talk about something
called witness panels and the carbon fiber hull of the Titan
being designed without them.
And I was like, what the hell are witness panels?
I had no idea.
So I looked it up and this is what I'm talking about,
really liking doing these cases because I learned things.
But he would eventually explain,
and then I did some more research,
witness panels are small sample pieces
of the exact same materials used to build
the submersibles pressure hulls.
So they're gonna be manufactured at the same time,
using the same process and the same basically material,
and they're gonna do this
for monitoring and testing purposes.
Having witness panels would allow engineers
to regularly inspect how the material was aging
without having to cut into the actual hull. They could also detect early signs of fatigue, delamination,
cracking or water damage in the material and run lab tests on the panels after a certain
number of dives or years to see if the carbon fiber was weakening. Witness panels are like
check engine lights, only more precise and science-based.
So if a witness panel starts to show signs of degradation,
then obviously it can be a warning sign
that the actual hull might be experiencing
that same degradation.
Peter Brodsky, former Ocean Gate consultant
from the University of Washington APL,
he criticized the decision to exclude witness panels
from Titan's carbon fiber hull.
And obviously this probably had something
to do with why Peter Brodsky and Stockton Rush
started butting heads and Peter Brodsky
eventually decided to not work on the project anymore.
Without witness panels, there was no non-destructive way
to monitor the long-term health of the material.
And this is especially dangerous
because carbon fiber can look fine on the outside,
even when it's deteriorating internally and stress from each dive can build up invisibly.
No witness panels means there was really no early warning system.
Now Tony Neeson did say that he and Rush were concerned about the possibility of voids,
which they had seen in the carbon fiber during the 1 third scale testing.
Voids are tiny pockets of air, gas, or empty space that get trapped inside carbon fiber composites during the manufacturing
process. Like we talked about, carbon fiber is made by layering sheets of
fiber and bonding them with resin. So if that process is not done perfectly, if
there's too little resin, if air gets trapped inside, or if the layers aren't
properly pressed together, you can end up with voids. Carbon fiber is only strong when it's dense, solid, and uniformly bonded,
and voids obviously weaken that structure. They create points of stress concentration,
where pressure can focus and begin to cause cracks. They can also grow over time under
repeated stress, like multiple deep sea dives, eventually leading to something called delamination,
where layers of carbon fiber peel apart. Under extreme pressure, like at titanic
depths, those tiny imperfections can become catastrophic failure points. Even
a void the size of a grain of sand can become a huge problem under 6,000 PSI of
ocean pressure. So not only did OceanGate not use witness panels or
conduct thorough post-dive inspections to look for internal damage, not only did they
not do any third-party inspections or bring in classing agencies to rigorously
check for voids or other imperfections, but there's also been reports from
whistleblowers and former employees that the carbon fiber used for Titan was way
past its shelf life and may have had quality control issues and
We'll be talking more about that later. I just want to say just to me
It just seems like carbon fiber wasn't the right material
Even there was just too many variables in it way too much like unknown
And we know that it's used in airplanes and all that stuff and it has a lot of
Applications that it's incredible at the carbon fibers are great a great material for a lot of different
things. It just here there's the unpredictability of it when you talk
about a great avoid the size of a grain of sand being a stress point that could
result in death. If the material affords for anything like that it's probably not
the right material.
There were better substances out there
that they could have used like a titanium
that would have removed these variables,
these variances that could have led to catastrophic failure.
And again, I think it was based on cost effectiveness.
It was cost and also the lightness,
like how fast could it get to depth?
How much time would they have at the ocean floor?
Cause you got to depth quicker the vessel that can?
assist in
The submersible doesn't have to be as yeah
Yeah, it'd be easier to move because it's lighter, but the trade-off is it's weaker and that's a trade-off. You can't make
Like if it's an extra half hour to get to depth, but you're I'm gonna pro. I'm gonna guarantee you get there
I think that's a trade-off most people would make So yeah, it's a problem. I think that's a trade off most people would make.
So yeah, it's a problem.
I think what it really came down to is cost.
Well, basically, because there was no witness panels
and because Ocean Gate had not conducted
any third party testing or certification of Titan's hull,
the company implemented something they called
the real time monitoring system.
And this was an acoustic system that Stockton Rush
had invented and then got a patent on so the RTM
The real-time monitoring it included acoustic emission sensors
which are basically underwater microphones that would be mounted on the inside of
the submersible and then on the surface of the carbon fiber hull and
They would listen for high-frequency signals that would suggest the carbon fiber was cracking or stressed.
And you can see these microphones working
in the Netflix documentary,
because you can see them doing the test
on the 1 third scale hull.
And you can see on a screen,
every time there's a spike,
that means that there's a sound
the microphones are detecting. and the sound would be,
once again, that carbon fiber snapping, cracking.
It sounds like a rubber band, like pew.
And you could see how much it was doing that.
So Stockton's like, oh yeah, don't worry.
We have these microphones that's gonna detect
if the carbon fiber is having issues or is stressed.
So in interviews and in a patent filing, Rush explained that the idea was to detect the
smallest sound of structural failure, something like a snap of fiber under stress, before
it turned catastrophic.
And there's a lot of obvious problems with this system because it would only detect a
problem as it was happening
and under crushing pressure,
a structural failure in carbon fiber can go from first crack
to full implosion in micro seconds.
We talked earlier about how the decision
to make the carbon fiber hall five inches.
Remember, they were doing the test
with the 1 3rd scale model and it kept like failing.
So they were like, oh, we'll just make the-
Just make it thicker. We'll make it thicker right and that
made it impossible to test for flaws with portable ultrasonic equipment so
couldn't penetrate deep enough you could do testing with a stationary ultrasonic
rig but Stockton Rush decided that transporting and testing the Titan to
one of these stationary rigs would be too expensive so ultrasonic equipment was never used to test the submersible.
They have portable ones you can bring with you on the ship that the Titan would be pulled
out to sea with.
And then you could test after the dives, before the dives, to see if there's issues with this
ultrasonic.
Like, it's basically looking inside of it.
But because the hull was too thick they couldn't use that and he just decided against using an actual
Stationary ultrasonic rig. He said no, we don't need to do that. It's too expensive
It doesn't matter while you're using carbon fiber and you're just depending on these little microphones to be the the thing that tells you
That there's an issue which is crazy to me
So Tony and Eason and Stockton Rush would talk
about classing Titan, but ultimately that never happened
because carbon fiber was not an approved material
to be used at the depths that they wanted
the Titan to go to.
Stockton's first issue was, it was time and cost,
like to go through their plan.
And I think he really wanted them to be part of
it
But I think the plan that they came up with
If I remember right one of the days he was crying on my shoulder
It's gonna take too long and way way too expensive. He's ridiculous and in his words
It stifles innovation
Well, you know, you could still be innovative.
Might take a little bit longer,
but there was a divorcing, so to speak,
over the idea when he couldn't get traction
on what he wanted.
And it was in 2017 when Ocean Gate
was promising the trip of a lifetime to the bottom of the
sea to view the holy grail of shipwrecks, that tension started to really build within
the company's ranks.
And when those outside and inside the company began expressing their concern about the construction
of Titan and how safe it would be during dive to extreme depths.
And this is when, reportedly reportedly Stockton Rush went full steam
ahead ignoring the red flags and scoffing at the warnings. He just pretty
much was like, and this wasn't just people in the company this was like
experts like I think even James Cameron was like this is weird you know like
people were coming out and because Ocean Gate was getting caught at traction in
the media and people were coming out His his peers his colleagues people who worked for him people who had worked with him in the past
Just people in the submersible industry who knew better and they were like, hey, we suggest you don't do this and he's like
It's a problem. Yeah, he's like no
I mean, how do you how do you blaze a trail if you're not willing to set stuff on fire?
He didn't say that but it sounds like something he would say and yeah, that's pretty much when he was like, I'm doing this. I've put a lot of time and effort into this. I feel that
this is very safe. I feel that it cannot fail. And so we're doing this.
Yeah, no, I started off the episode given Stockton and compliment. I probably won't
have many for the remainder of this series. I mean, listen, you can be talented and I
mean, you hit the nail right on the head talent, but with hubris could be a dangerous combination.
And you have what it appears to be a situation here where Stockton felt that he was the
smartest guy in the room. Couple that with trying to expedite this process to start
turning a profit. He was blinded by his own ambitions and his own greed.
At least it's what it sounds like so far.
And any time he was given an opportunity
to make a course correction by someone who was smarter,
at least more knowledgeable in a specific area than him,
he would disguise his rationale
behind the need for exploration, right?
And knowing that there were gonna be risks
that needed to be taken in order to do new things.
But in reality, I think at the core,
a lot of his decision-making process
was based
on the bottom line as far as money.
So that's an issue.
I also think not even just future money,
but he had put so much of his own money
and investors' money and stuff into this
and they'd gotten so far.
And before this thing's even built,
he's going on TV shows, talking to the media,
like, oh yeah, we're gonna do this, we're gonna do this.
So he had basically gone out to the world
and said this is happening, and so how now
could he turn back?
Promise them he would do it under this price point, yeah.
Dude, he'd even taken money from people
who were booking passage on this Titan submersible
to the Titanic far before it was even ready.
So he'd taken hundreds of thousands of dollars
from paying passengers that he probably spent, okay,
and then couldn't reimburse them.
He's taking all this money from investors
and he's using his own money
and he cannot reimburse this money.
So it's like, what choice do I have?
I have to go full speed ahead at this point.
No, it's terrible.
We're gonna have to wait to watch this,
I'm gonna have to wait to watch this documentary
until we're done with the series,
but maybe we'll do like a crime weekly watch party
or something, that'd be kinda cool.
Cause I'd like to watch the documentary,
but I wanna wait until after we complete the series,
cause it wouldn't make a lot of sense to do it now
when you've watched it and you're telling everyone
the story, including me.
So yeah, looking forward to part two.
Any final words from you before we wrap this one up No, I I'm excited to get to next week and start telling more of the story and getting into really you know
Some really shocking stuff honestly. I think yeah, I think I'm already I've already heard a few shocking things
Yeah, I don't think you're gonna have much nice to say about Stockton going on. Yeah, I'm done with it
Listen two things can be true. You can be you can be a smart guy you can have talent but again
promise versus actual execution
is two different things, and at this point,
the takeaway from episode number one is it was preventable.
100%.
It was preventable, so that's a problem,
because people's lives were lost, not just Stockton's,
and that's a big issue,
because they were not aware of these things.
Yeah, playing with your own life is one thing.
If you want to be the only guy down there testing these things out
It was still socks. I don't be like hey, we talked about Amelia Earhart. Mm-hmm
Sure, she knew the risks right she knew there was gonna be some issues, but she risked her own life
Not the lives of others, so she did have a co-pilot, but did she yeah did not know that well
The co-pilot risked their life as well. They knew what they were getting their hands into right?
We don't know. Yeah, we don't know where he's at either
Did not know that there was something going on. Maybe we got to do that series at some point
Have you ever covered that on your channel? No, I mean that'd be a cool one to cover
Yeah, let us know if you want us to do that. Yeah, I love history. So I'm always down. Okay, cool guys
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