Titanic sub CEO was on a 'predatory' mission to convince influential people to support his unsafe vessel, says expert

floofloof@lemmy.ca to World News@beehaw.org – 80 points –
Titanic sub CEO was on a 'predatory' mission to convince influential people to support his unsafe vessel, says expert
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Not sure how much of it is "predatory" behavior and how much of it is just a combination of being a masterful salesman + being really, really dumb, "drinking his own Kool-aid"... The dude was piloting the sub on every expedition after all

The thing that struck me is he maybe favored, and maybe only had young inexperienced people working on the project. This can only mean that older people would not work with him, or he did not want people that actually know something asking hard questions. The same would be true for not having a good non-destructive testing campaign and a destructive one too. If true this is a huge organizational issue. He may have been short of money too, so he presumably cut corners for this reason as well. Exactly where was the money coming from for example.

He specifically stated he didn't want to hire older and experienced employees.

https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/why-stockton-rush-didnt-hire-50-year-old-white-guys-for-titanic-sub-tours/

Translation: He cannot act as a visionary genious when there are qualified people around that know something and ask hard questions.

The OceanGate CEO ... once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.”

Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller.

Each thing that comes out about this guy makes him look a little worse.