Founder and then President ocean gate Expeditions, Stockton Rush, rejected a number of internal and external safety recommendations about Titanium submersibleThe BBC said it has access to documents to prove this.

Last Sunday it became known that five Titan passengers, including Stockton Rush, were left without contact with the control center while they were performing exploration of the wreck of the Titaniclocated at a depth of almost 4 thousand meters in the Atlantic Ocean.

OceanGate Expeditions, the company that developed the Titan, was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush.who studied aeronautical engineering and worked for an airline in the Middle East.

“All my life I wanted to be an astronaut. I was part of the crowd that wanted to participate in the (moon trip program) of Apollo (…) Then I had an epiphany. It wasn’t about going into space. It was about research (…) And I realized that the ocean is the universe. That’s where life is.”

This was stated by Stockton Rush in an interview given by chain CBS.

While the Titan was being searched, the American press reported that OceanGate had received internal and external warnings about the submersible’s safety.

Missed warnings from Stockton

BBC indicates that in 2018 OceanGate’s then director of marine operations, David Lochridge, submitted a scathing report claiming that Submarine needs more testing to ensure that it can safely descend to a depth of 4,000 meters for its passengers.

Mentioned criticism cost Lochridge a job and a lawsuit along the waydue to which his report fell into the hands of the courts of the Eastern District of Virginia, USA.

Also in 2018, oceanographers, explorers and underwater industry leaders criticized Stockton Rush for his refusal to subject the Titan to testing by specialized companies this will confirm that it can operate at the depths declared by its developers, the BBC notes.

However, these warnings were ignored by the businessman, who considered them a burden on innovationassured the American newspaper The newspaper “New York Times.

This newspaper also recalled that in 2021, during the first excursion of Titan to the area where the remains of the Titanic are located, an incident was recorded.

“The submarine had a battery problem and had to manually connect to the tail lift,” the paper said, citing a document that OceanGate’s legal counsel filed with the court.

Titan’s last expedition

Last Sunday, the expedition to the remains of the Titanic was the last to be carried out without taking it into account, due to the fact that the underwater vehicle lost contact with the surface, from where They controlled the Titan with a game controller..

From Monday to Thursday, the US, Canada, France and the UK provided submarines, ships and aircraft to search for Titan. The four-day search for the Titan submersible has come to a tragic end.

last Thursday OceanGate believes that all five crew members were killed. “We believe that our CEO, Stockton Rush; Shahzada Dawood and her son Suleman Dawood, Hamish Harding and Paul-Henri Nargeole are missing,” the company said in a statement.