A billionaire businessman has revealed plans to bring a $20,000,000 submarine to the US Titanic shipwrecked in an attempt to prove it is safe.
Larry Connor, an American billionaire, has promised to take a new submarine to the Titanic – months after the Ocean Gate undersea tragedy that left five people dead.
He wants to prove that the expedition can be carried out safely despite the circumstances Titan disaster in June last year.
Connor takes on the risky adventure with Patrick Lahey, co-founder of Triton Submarine, to show that ocean research can be done safely.
The pair will travel more than 3,779 meters to the Titanic shipwreck in the North Atlantic.
Connor told the Wall Street Journal, “I want to show people around the world that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be beautiful and enjoyable and truly life-changing if you treat it right.”
Now Lahey has designed a $20,000,000 ship called the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer for the risky journey.
The real estate investor said Lahey has been thinking about Triton's design for more than a decade, but its construction has not been possible until now due to a lack of “materials and technology.”
“You couldn't have built this submarine five years ago,” he said, according to the New York Post.
The new expedition plans come almost a year after the Titan submarine imploded underwater on June 18 on its way to the Titanic, which is located about 3,000 meters off the coast of the island. Canada.
All five passengers, including OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, were killed.
The exact cause of the incident remains a mystery, but the OceanGate submarine suffered one 'catastrophic implosion' shortly after losing contact with his support ship.
Connor called Lahey a few days after the tragedy and urged him to build a better one.
'[He said]You know, what we need to do is build a submarine that we can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and show the world that you can do that, and that Titan was a device,” he told the Wall Street Journal.
Critics, including Lahey, accused OceanGate of questionable safety standards after the incident, with some calling Rush's approach “quite predatory,” the New York Post reports.
Former OceanGate employee David Lochridge had previously said Rush would get it himself and others killed on the submarine.
The engineer said in an email: 'I don't want to be seen as a Tattle story, but I'm so afraid he's killing himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.
“I would consider myself quite stubborn when it comes to doing dangerous things, but that submarine is an accident waiting to happen.”
He said nothing could have made him “get into the thing.”
Others who died aboard Titan were billionaire British explorers Hamish Hardingbusinessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19 year old son Suleman and French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Debris was later found in the ocean, including presumably human remainsthe US Coast Guard said a week after the implosion.
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