(NewsNation) — Almost a year after the OceanGate submersible imploded, killing five passengers on its way to attempt to explore the wreckage from the Titanic, an Ohio man wants to make a similar journey.
Ohio real estate investor Larry Connor called Patrick Lahey, the co-founder and CEO of Triton Submarines, and said he wanted to build a sub that can dive to “Titanic-level depths” a few days after OceanGate imploded, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Lahey said Connor, who according to Forbes is worth $2 billion, aimed to “demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that.”
“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 WSJ.
Now, Lahey and Connor are planning to make their journey in a two-person vessel called the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, named because it can dive to 4,000 meters in depth. It is listed at $20 million on the company’s website.
OceanGate fallout
OceanGate’s journey to the spot where the Titanic’s remains rest started early June 18. However, the sub lost communication with its support system an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, setting off a days-long coordinated search. Altogether, the search and recovery costs an estimated $1.2 million, with a team looking for the five men from the air, water’s surface and ocean itself. Still, the presumed amount of oxygen that the passengers had kept going down with each day.
Authorities later announced that the submersible had imploded that killed all people onboard instantly. Researchers, writing a paper for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, conducted computer simulations that they say suggest it was the submersible’s shape and material used to build it that caused the implosion.
Safety concerns surrounding the Titan had been expressed by engineers working for the company and deep-sea diving experts. A reporter for The New Yorker, Ben Taub,poke to several people who warned the Titan wasn’t safe.
“There’s no way on Earth you could have paid me to dive the thing,” David Lochridge, former chief pilot of Titan owner OceanGate, said in the New Yorker. “I don’t want to be seen as a tattletale but I’m so worried he (Stockton Rush, who was piloting the sub) kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.”
However, other submersible companies such as Triton are trying to “differentiate” their vessels from OceanGate, the Wall Street Journal reports.
While Titan was “unclassed,” and used experimental designs and materials prone to cracking after repeat dives, Triton and others say they use third-party maritime-classification societies, making them “exceptionally safe modes of transportation” because of rigorous testing, the WSJ wrote.
“(Lahey) has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said of the Triton. “You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”