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Originally Posted by Otto Harkaman

I am curious about the Rush's personal finances and the companies. Seems such a shoe string operation with a lot of hype, con job? The number of failures and return to base launches with non-refundable payment from passengers raises a flag in my mind.

https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/w...7768b45ff.html

A Las Vegas billionaire has exposed OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush's attempt to sell him discounted tickets for the ill-fated Titanic dive, claiming it would be safer than crossing the street. Jay Bloom, a property financing tycoon and former business partner of actor Treat Williams, shared text messages revealing Rush's sales pitch for the spots that were ultimately filled by Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman.
As early as April, Rush began offering a last-minute price of $150,000, a significant $100,000 reduction from the usual cost of $250,000. Bloom and his son had expressed concerns about the sub's safety, prompting the discount. In a text exchange with the CEO, Bloom revealed that his son had researched potential risks and expressed unease about the dangers involved. I 100% knew this was going to happen," said Brian Weed, a camera operator for the Discovery Channel's "Expedition Unknown" show, who has felt sick to his stomach since the sub's disappearance Sunday. Weed went on a Titan test dive in May 2021 in Washington state's Puget Sound as it prepared for its first expeditions to the sunken Titanic. Weed and his colleagues were preparing to join OceanGate Expeditions to film the famous shipwreck later that summer. They quickly encountered problems: The propulsion system stopped working. The computers failed to respond. Communications shut down. Rush, the OceanGate CEO, tried rebooting and troubleshooting the vessel on its touch screens.
"You could tell that he was flustered and not really happy with the performance," Weed said. "But he was trying to make light of it, trying to make excuses."
They were barely 100 feet (30 meters) deep in calm water, which begged the question: "How is this thing going to go to 12,500 feet - and do we want to be on board?" Weed said.
Following the aborted trip, the production company hired a consultant with the U.S. Navy to vet the Titan.
>He provided a mostly favorable report, but warned that there wasn't enough research on the Titan's carbon-fiber hull, Weed said. There also was an engineering concern that the hull would not maintain its effectiveness over the course of multiple dives. <
Weed said Rush was a charismatic salesman who really believed in the submersible's technology - and was willing to put his life on the line for it.
"It was looking more and more like we weren't going to be the first guys down to film the Titanic - we were going to be maybe the 10th," Weed said of the possible Titan expedition. "I felt like every time (the vessel) goes down, it's going to get weaker and weaker. And that's a little bit like playing Russian roulette."

BOTTOM LINE: its not the Carbon Fiber submarine so much as it's the thrill seekers mindset: FlyingWing suits, climbs up to Everest's Summit ( 300+-with an atrocious death (17) toll this year alone); Hang Gliging (4 a year Base cliff jumpers; Rock wall climbers (30 deaths a year) https://blog.gitnux.com/rock-climbing-death-statistics/ ;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ingsuit_flying We're a little hung up at 'cause it's a submarine thrill-seek failure which is actually somewhat warping a proper perspective of the whole sitiuation.