OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush described the glue holding the Titan mini-submarine together ‘like peanut butter’

The chief executive of OceanGate Expeditions, whose experimental submersible imploded during a visit to the Titanic wreck, said the glue holding the ship together was like “peanut butter.”

Stockton Rush, in a video posted to the company’s YouTube account years before he and four passengers aboard the Titan submarine died last month, described the glue holding the carbon-fiber submersible together “like butter.” peanuts” and thicker than Elmer’s glue.

The 2018 video showed his team putting the structure together as the CEO described the process as “pretty simple.”

It appears that Rush, who was repeatedly concerned about the Titan’s safety, was supervising the engineering team that outlined the sub’s titanium ring and carbon fiber hull.

The passengers and Rush, who was piloting the ill-fated sub, were thought to have died when the ship imploded after it was unable to withstand the pressure of the ocean depths.

OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush is seen sitting inside the ship in May. Rush was piloting the submersible Titan when she imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic last month.

Earlier in the clip, Rush told the camera that the process is “pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery.”

Experts repeatedly warned Rush that the ship’s design and construction, including the glue and carbon fiber hull, were highly dangerous when under water pressure in the deep ocean.

David Lochridge, OceanGate’s former director of marine operations for the Titan project, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the ship under development needed further testing and that passengers could be in danger when it reached “extreme depths,” according to a lawsuit filed. that year in United States District Court in Seattle.

OceanGate sued Lochridge that year, accusing him of violating a nondisclosure agreement, and filed a countersuit alleging he was wrongfully fired for raising questions about testing and safety.

Lochridge said in the countersuit that OceanGate, which charges up to $250,000 for a seat on the ship, “would expose passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.” He also said that Titan was not equipped to reach depths of around 13,123 feet, where the Titanic’s wreckage rests.

The case was settled on undisclosed terms several months after it was filed.

Lochridge’s concerns disclosed in the lawsuit centered primarily on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring (cracking or popping sounds produced by the hull under pressure) to detect failures, rather than a hull scan.

He said the company told him there was no equipment that could perform such a test on the 5-inch-thick (12.7-centimeter-thick) carbon-fiber hull.

Experts repeatedly warned Rush that the design and construction of the Titan submarine was very dangerous when under the pressure of deep-ocean water.

David Lochridge (pictured), OceanGate’s former director of marine operations for the Titan project, wrote an engineering report in 2018 that said the ship under development needed further testing.

“This was problematic because this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail, often milliseconds before an implosion, and would not detect existing failures before stress was placed on the hull,” Lochridge said.

Additionally, the ship was designed to reach depths of 4,000 meters (13,123 feet). But, according to Lochridge, the passenger window was only certified for depths up to 1,300 meters (4,265 feet) and OceanGate would not pay the manufacturer to build a window certified to 4,000 meters.

OceanGate’s choices “would expose passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible,” the counterclaim said.

But the company said in its complaint that Lochridge “is not an engineer and was not hired or asked to perform engineering services on Titan.”

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush (pictured) defended his company’s approach of not subjecting Titan to an independent inspection process.

File photo of the interior of the OceanGate Expeditions submarine that disappeared near the wreckage of the Titanic. All five died on board.

He was fired after refusing to accept assurances from OceanGate’s lead engineer that the acoustic monitoring and testing protocol was, in fact, better suited to detecting failures than a scan, according to the complaint.

In a 2018 court document, lawyers for the company also said Lochridge’s employment was terminated because he “could not accept” their research and plans, including security protocols.

OceanGate also claimed that Lochridge “wanted to be fired” and had shared confidential information with others and wiped a company hard drive. The company said it “refused to accept the voracity of information” about the safety of Titan’s lead engineer.