Ignore all the warnings

Now there’s a surprise.

Warnings over the safety of OceanGate’s Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body.

Mr Rush responded that he was “tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation”.

Right on. Who cares about safety? Full speed ahead.

(I don’t know why the BBC quotes this Rob McCallum fella without saying who he is.)

The tense exchange ended after OceanGate’s lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said.

“I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic,” he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. “In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: ‘She is unsinkable'”.

In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a “catastrophic implosion” on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan’s safety measures. “We have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often,” he wrote. “I take this as a serious personal insult.”

How trumpish. “Dangerous things are dangerous” is not a personal insult. Taking true statements about risk personally is so trumpish.

Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed.

What?!

Throughout the exchange, Mr Rush defended his credentials and questioned the existing framework around deep sea expeditions.

He said “industry players” were trying to stop “new entrants from entering their small existing market”.

Yeah see items like this shouldn’t be a “market” at all.

“The industry has been trying for several years to get Stockton Rush to halt his programme for two reasons,” Mr McCallum, a specialist who runs his own ocean expedition company, told the BBC on Friday.

Whew, we finally learn who he is.

“One is that carbon fibre is not an acceptable material,” he said. “The other is that this was the only submersible in the world doing commercial work that was unclassed. It was not certified by an independent agency.”

Free ennerprise, baby.

“Stockton fancied himself as somewhat of a maverick entrepreneur,” Mr McCallum said. “He liked to think outside the box, didn’t like to be penned in by rules. But there are rules – and then there are sound engineering principles and the laws of physics.”

He maintains that nobody should have travelled in the Titan sub. “If you steer away from sound engineering principles, which are all based on hard won experience, there is a price to pay, and it’s a terrible price,” he said. “So it should never be allowed to happen again. It shouldn’t have been allowed to happen this time.”

It will be allowed to happen again.

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