A man who pulled out of the ill-fated Titan submersible trip has opened up on a "haunting" moment he shared with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush the day before the journey. Arnie Weissmann, editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, claims the multi-millionaire bragged about buying reduced price expired materials.
The Titanic sub lost communication shortly after going underwater on Sunday, June 18, sparking a huge manhunt. Debris was recovered days later, showing the vessel had imploded, killing the five people on board, including Mr Rush.
Mr Weissmann claims he was due to travel on that deadly trip, but had to postpone due to scheduling clashes. He says he had no regrets about missing that trip after their conversation in which Mr Rush allegedly boasted about how he had bought carbon fibre for the submersible “at a big discount” because “it was past its shelf life use in aeroplanes", reports the Mirror.
Speaking to the Washington Post, he said: “I responded right away, saying, 'Don’t you have any concerns about that?’ He was very dismissive and said: 'No, it’s perfectly fine. Having all these certifications for airplanes is one thing, but the carbon fibre was perfectly sound.'"
Numerous reports after the fate of the sub was discovered have shown tragic Mr Stockton repeatedly and publicly showing off his disdain for safety measures, even going so far as to say they were unnecessary for "innovators," which he considered himself.
In a two-year-old interview, the inventor bragged to the public about how he decided to use carbon fibre - despite there being no safe way to do so, according to experts in the field.
“This carbon fibre hull is a huge thing. Carbon fibre has been used for autonomous underwater vehicles before, but never anything as large as what we’re doing," said Mr Rush in an interview.
He added: "Some work was done by the navy decades ago, but it was determined that you couldn’t use it... but that’s not [factoring in] using aerospace-grade manufacturing, and the kinds of controls that go into making these units that are used in planes… a lot of arguments about using carbon fibre in submersibles were the same as using them in aircraft."
However, aircrafts get rid of their expired parts. Another red flag for Mr Weissmann was that Mr Rush bragged about the Logitech controller he was using to navigate a submersible vessel at an extreme depth underwater.
Despite expressing some concerns, Mr Rush remained steadfast in his belief that the expedition was safe in a candid interview conducted late last year.
The crew, including Mr Rush, legendary French mariner, diver and explorer Paul-Henry Nargeolett, and Brit billionaire and explorer Hamish Harding, embarked on their $250,000-per-person Titanic tour on Sunday, June 18, and were declared dead five days later after an intense oceanic manhunt that cost millions of dollars.
With the wreckage now located and brought to the surface, a spokesperson for the US Coast Guard said: "United States medical professionals will conduct a formal analysis of presumed human remains that have been carefully recovered within the wreckage at the site of the incident."
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