Almost a year after the Titan submersible imploded in the sea during an expedition to view the wreckage of the Titanic ship in the North Atlantic Ocean, an Ohio-based billionaire is planning to attempt the dangerous mission. Larry Connor, one of America’s biggest real estate developers, plans to plunge more than 12,400 feet (2.3 miles) with Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey.
“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Larry Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer is a vessel worth $20 million designed by Patrick Lahey. Conner claimed that the two-person submersible can make repeated voyages in the deep ocean. “Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago,” Conner said.
All five people, mostly billionaires, were killed onboard OceanGate’s Titan submersible, which took the deep plunge last June. The dead included OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
Criticism of OceanGate’s approach
Patrick Lahey was among those who criticised the deep-sea adventure industry, including OceanGate. He said that Stockton Rush’s approach is “quite predatory.” Lahey joined other critics who questioned why the OceanGate CEO is not taking enough safeguards, like certifying the mission through a credible safety group or organisation.
But, after the OceanGate disaster, Larry Conner called Patrick Lahey and urged him to build a better submersible.
“[He said], you know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,'” Larry Conner told the Wall Street Journal.
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