One of the passengers on the submersible that went missing during a dive to the sunken Titanic is the chief executive of the company behind the expedition.
Stockton Rush was on the Titan submersible along with British billionaire Hamish Harding, Shahzada and Suleman Dawood and Paul Henry Nargeolet. The vessel went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic, around 435 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada.
Rush founded OceanGate in 2009 and his firm, based in Everett, Washington, provides crewed submersibles for industry, research and exploration. In 2021, the firm started taking paying customers to the iconic wreck of the Titanic in 2021 at a price tag of up to $250,000 per person for an eight-day expedition.
Eric Moreno, a former U.S. submariner who interviewed Rush two years ago about the expeditions, tells Newsweek he was impressed with the businessman's determination and was confident that he and his passengers would get back to safety. "If anyone can pull it off, he can," Moreno said.
Before plunging the depths of the ocean, Rush's career was in the skies. At 19, he became the youngest jet transport-rated pilot in the world in 1981, according to his biography on the OceanGate website. He joined the McDonnell Douglas Corporation as a flight test engineer on the F-15 program in 1984.
Also in 1984, he obtained a BSE in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University and got an MBA from the U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business in 1989. That same year, Rush personally built a Glasair III experimental aircraft and completed a heavily modified Kittredge K-350 two-man submersible, in which he has conducted over 30 dives.
Over the last two decades, Rush has overseen several IP ventures. He served on the board of directors for Seattle's BlueView Technologies, which makes small, high-frequency sonar systems. In 2012, Rush was involved in the company's acquisition by Teledyne Inc, which provides subsea technologies.
However, his dream was to revolutionize underwater travel and during a 90-minute interview in 2021, he outlined his vision to Moreno, founder of the r/submarines sub-Reddit, who once served on the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Hampton.
"I was totally impressed," Moreno told Newsweek. "There was nobody at that time putting people in a submersible that was going up and down." At the time, after such a descent, the vessel would need to be refurbished.
Moreno said he questioned Rush about the resilience and safety of a submersible being made of carbon fiber and titanium. "He made me really comfortable about it because there hadn't been submersibles going up and down that deep," said Moreno. "He said it had sensors in there that would make sure that if it was going to fail, they could bail out."
Rush has previously revealed the cramped conditions inside the Titan, showing Canadian broadcaster CBC the interior of the vessel which measures just 22 feet by 8.3 feet and requires passengers to sit on the floor.
At the front is a large domed porthole offering a viewing point and the walls are heated to counter the extreme cold at depths of over 13,000 feet.
Time is of the essence, with the U.S. Coast Guard's Rear Adm John Mauger saying on Monday that the vessel had between 70 and 96 hours of oxygen left.
"I feel like they have a really, really good chance to make it back up if they [the rescue operation] can find it," Moreno said, "If anyone can pull it off, he can."
