Missing submersible pilot says he “broke some rules” to build it

Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate and one of five people on the missing submersible in the North Atlantic, has cultivated a reputation as something of a modern Jacques Cousteau – a nature lover, adventurer and visionary.

Rush, 61, has approached his dream of deep-sea exploration with enthusiasm and little regard for regulations – a pattern that has come to the fore since last Sunday night when his submersible, the Titan, went missing.

“At some point, security is pure waste,” Stockton told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed. Don’t get in your car. Do not do anything.”

In another interview, Stockton bragged that he had “broken some rules” in his career.

“I think it was General MacArthur who said you are remembered by the rules you break,” Rush said in a video interview with Youtuber Alan Estrada last year.

“And I broke some rules to do that. I think I broke them with logic and good engineering behind me.”

ocean exploration

Rush said he deeply believes that the sea, not the sky, offers humanity the best chance of survival when the Earth’s surface becomes uninhabitable.

“Humanity’s future is underwater, not on Mars,” he told Estrada.

“We will have an underwater base… If we destroy this planet, the best lifeboat for humanity is underwater.”

The commercial sub-industry is “obscenely safe,” he told Smithsonian Magazine in 2019, “because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn’t innovated or grown – because they have all these regulations.”