The Titan sub imploded last June after it started its descent, killing OceanGate chief Stockton Rush, British adventurer Hamish Harding, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, and Frenchman Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
Speaking Monday before a US Coast Guard public hearing looking into the disastrous voyage, Mr. Sohnlein expressed his optimism that enthusiasm in deep-sea exploration will not be dashed by the disaster.
“This can’t be the end of deep ocean exploration,” he stated. “This can’t be the end of deep-diving submersibles, and I don’t believe that it will be.”
He argued for the business, saying that OceanGate intended to build a fleet of four or five deep-diving submersibles.
According to Mr. Sohnlein, the corporation chose to employ carbon fiber since it was a more cost-effective and lightweight material that didn’t require attachment to a particular mother ship.
He stated that “people have looked at that before” and claimed that this was “not a novel idea.”.
He refuted Mr. Rush’s claim that the idea of investigating the Titanic or he were “driven by tourism”; earlier in the hearing, former operations director David Lochridge stated that “the whole idea behind the company was to make money.”
