An Ohio billionaire is planning to take a deep-sea submersible to Titanic depths to prove the industry is safer in the wake of the doomed OceanGate vessel that imploded last year.
Real estate investor Larry Connor, of Dayton, said he and Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey will plunge more than 12,400 feet (2.3 miles) to the shipwreck site in a two-person submersible. “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,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
Lahey has designed a $20 million vessel dubbed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, which Connor said can carry out the voyage repeatedly.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
The duo said they want to prove that the trek can be done without disaster — despite the implosion of the Titan submersible in June, which killed all five people on board, including OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
The Titan had been headed to the Titanic site when it suddenly had a “catastrophic implosion” on June 18.
