A US billionaire is buckling up for a trip to the Titanic crash site in a deep sea submersible following last year's OceanGate tragedy.
Real estate tycoon Larry Connor of Ohio is planning on taking the same fateful voyage which the five men onboard the Titan sub never returned from in June last year.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, British-Pakistani billionaire Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his 19-year-old son Suleman were killed.
The submersible, created by Rush's underwater exploration company OceanGate, had attracted major concern over its design, with several people warning him that it was potentially unsafe and an 'accident waiting to happen'.
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The Titan suffered a catastrophic 'implosion' as a result of both enormous water pressure and failed materials during the group's descent, killing all those onboard and shocking the world.
Despite most people vowing to never touch a submersible with a ten foot pole in wake of the tragedy, Connor, 74, can't wait to dive down the 12,400ft to the infamous Titanic wreckage which lies at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.
He has teamed up with Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey for the bold mission and will make the journey in a $20million two-person submersible, which has been dubbed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer.
The 4000 refers to the 4000m depths it can reportedly dive to, which is deeper than the Titanic at 3,800m.
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According to businessman Connor - who is also a private astronaut certified by NASA - it is capable of making the lengthy voyage repeatedly and he reckons that they have learned a lot from OceanGate's mistakes.
Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, the property mogul explained his reasoning behind the trip: "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.
"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."
Connor revealed that progress on their pipe dream really went up a notch just days after the Titan sub tragedy, as he called his collaborator Lahey and suggested that he should build a better submersible that would survive the trip.
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The pair want to prove that diving down to the Titanic site in a submersible can be done without ending in disaster.
Triton Submarines boss Lahey said his billionaire pal encouraged him to build a vessel which can 'dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely', while dually 'demonstrating to the world' that his firm were capable of doing it.
The pair compared the doomed OceanGate submersible to a 'contraption'.
Lahey - who is the first person to dive the Challenger Deep twice while accompanied by another explorer - has previously completed the world’s deepest ever salvage operation at 10,927 meters below the surface in the Mariana Trench with Connor.
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He was also one of the critics in the submersible industry who voiced their worries about Rush's vessel and his safety standards, branding the late engineer 'quite predatory' in his practice.
Connor and Lahey did not hint about a date for their trip to the Titanic wreckage, but you can bet your bottom dollar that the eyes of the world will be watching if it goes ahead.
Topics: Titan Submersible, Titanic, World News, US News, News
Olivia Burke