OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush, who is aboard the missing submersible, once explained why he preferred not to hire 50-year-old White guys with military experience to pilot his company's vessels.
Rush said he valued captains who were inspirational over experience, noting that anybody can drive the sub, which is controlled with a $30 video game controller.
If you start the business, one of the things youll find, there are other sub operators out there, but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you'll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old White guys, Rush said.
I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational, and I'm not going to inspire a 16-year-old to go pursue marine technology, but a 25-year-old, you know, who's a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational, Rush said. So we've really tried to get very smart, motivated, younger individuals involved because we're doing things that are completely new. We're taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, is related to safety and some of the preponderance of checklists things we do for risk assessment and things like that, that are more aviation related than ocean related, and we can train people to do that, he said. We can train someone to pilot the sub, we use a game controller, so anybody can drive the sub. Rush is one of five crew members on OceanGate's Titan submersible craft, which disappeared in the Atlantic Ocean on Sunday during a dive to the wreckage of the Titanic.
The U.S. and Canadian authorities are conducting rescue efforts, as the crew is sealed inside the craft with a limited oxygen supply. The other passengers are French businessman Paul-Henry Nargeolet, British businessman and explorer Hamish Harding, and Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son Sulaiman Dawood.
The Titan submersible will run out of breathable air by 5 to 6 a.m. Thursday, the Coast Guard said.
The Coast Guard activated three new vessels in the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday to join the search and rescue effort with additional tools to scan the ocean floor as they race against the clock.
OceanGate Expeditions provides a maximum of $250,000 per person for exploration of the ocean depths in a 22-foot-long submersible capable of diving 13120 feet underwater.
Rush revealed that the craft is controlled by a modified Logitech F 710 wireless gamepad, which retails on Amazon for 30 cents.
Rush started OceanGate in 2009 and has several custom-designed submersibles, such as Titan, which was designed to reach depths of 13123 feet needed to inspect the wreck of the Titanic, which is about 12,500 feet deep. When at sea, the Titan uses SpaceX's Starlink satellite communication system.
The Titan's website states that it has enough life support capacity to keep its five-person crew alive for 96 hours. The Coast Guard said the submersible departed the Canadian research vessel Polar Prince on Sunday morning for its trip to the Titanic, and the ship lost contact with the sub after about one hour and 45 minutes.