Oceangate CEO wrote about warnings: “I take this as a serious personal insult”

Don’t touch that, it’s hot! If I had to guess, I would say that all of us have at some point been told not to do something, because it was unsafe. Some people told us because they loved us and didn’t want us to be hurt, others because they didn’t want to be responsible if we were hurt. But what happens when we just absolutely refuse to listen to those  who are trying to warn us?

If you have a pulse and an internet connection, you are likely aware of the recent oceangate tragedy that cost five people, including the CEO of the company, their live’s. What’s worse is that almost immediately after the submersible was reported missing, articles started popping up of the warnings they were given for the unsafe methods, tools and more that they were employing. 

Let’s take a look at David Lochridge, who was Onceangate’s director of marine operations. This is someone inside the company, paid to make sure things are done right. In 2018 he wrote a report that  stressed the need for more stress testing of the submersible, especially at the extreme depth that the wreck of the titanic calls home. By all available data, none of these tests were ever completed. 

Much has been made about the controller that was used to control the sub, with some going far as to make photoshopped images of the controller “surviving.” While these memes might be funny, reporter David Pogue talked about how much of the sub appeared to be made from off the shelf materials, stating in 2022 that “Piloting the craft is run with a video game controller.”

Something interesting to note is that the military does this, they even have a term for it, COTS (Commercially available Off-The-Shelf). Where they take products that have been made commercially available, rigorously texted and offered without modification and apply them to military applications. However, a $30 dollar controller with middling reviews (before the tragedy) would not be used. I can only imagine the number of people who took one look at that controller and asked “are you kidding me?”

What I think is most damning of all the ignored warnings, comes directly from the CEO of Oceangate, Stockton Rush, who passed away when the sub imploded. During a tour of the submersible with Mexican actor Alan Estrada, Rush stated “I’ve broken some rules to make this.” Now, let’s pause for a moment and take a deeper look at this man’s words.

Ask yourself, have you ever accidentally broken the rules? Maybe you used the gas station bathroom without making a purchase because you didn’t see the sign. Or maybe you bent the rules a little, used the bathroom before making the purchase. Let’s be honest, most of us at one time or another have broken a rule or two, and we’ve paid the price for it. But it takes a special kind of selfishness to break rules when it comes to safety, and then brag about it. It takes a special kind of person to have a documentary about your submersible canceled because it’s unsafe. 

Let’s not forget that during that same interview, Rush kind of laughed as he talked about the window on the submersible getting “squeezed in.” This reminds me of the movie, periscope down, where they take an old sub down deep. In the engine room the engineer ties a rope from one side to the other and you see the taught rope droop more and more as the entire sub deals with the pressure of the depths. This is true and it happens to anything that goes underwater, even to your body in a pool, only you don’t go deep enough to really feel it. But acknowledging that the window gets squeezed in, makes me wonder, did you think the rest of the sub wouldn’t?

There is one other major warning that everyone on that ship ignored, and that is the cost of going down to the titanic. Yes, being charged only $250,000 dollars is a huge red flag. Now, before you start thinking that I’m taking naps on literal bags of money, when I imply that $250,000 is too cheap to visit the Titanic, I mean it in relation to where you are going and what you are getting.

Ask yourself this, before this whole Oceangate tragedy, if someone had asked you how much it would cost to visit the Titanic how much would you have guessed? I have asked several family, friends, coworkers and even a few people I don’t like. The average seems to be about a cool one million dollars is what people would have expected the cost to be. So, two hundred and fifty thousand is a great deal then right? Wrong!

Have you ever seen a deal that was too good to be true? Hey come sit for a 30 minute presentation and we will buy you dinner? The next thing you know you’re signing a contract to own 1/80th of a timeshare in a country you can’t pronounce the name of.  If something seems like it is too good to be true, it probably is. 

When we are talking about cutting edge technology, to be one of the select few to go down and see the Titanic with your own eyes, you should be expecting to pay through the nose for it. But $250,000 dollars, that’s how much I’d expect people to pay ten years in, when they have a fleet of five or six submersibles taking trips every month. 

So, what is the lesson to take away from all of this? First, it’s that warning signs come in all shapes and sizes, and we need to be on the lookout for them. Ocenagate had forty-seven employees when this tragedy unfolded, and all of them failed, in some way. Second, don’t be the first, second or even third to try something new as you never know what’s going to happen. Finally, third, go watch Down Periscope tonight. It’s a great movie and a great distraction to all the bad news we have been seeing recently.