As the one-year anniversary of the implosion of the OceanGate submersible approaches, a billionaire from Ohio says he wants to attempt the same journey that the Titan tragically failed to complete.
Larry Connor, a Dayton real estate investor, co-founded Triton Submarines with Patrick Lahey, and the pair are planning to take a two-person submersible more than two miles down into the ocean to pay the site of the Titanic wreckage a visit.
“I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
The duo will make the journey in a $20 million submersible called the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer that Lahey designed with the intention of making the dive multiple times.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade. But we didn’t have the materials and technology,” Connor said.
“You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
The OceanGate Titan made its tragically fateful trip last June and suffered a “catastrophic implosion” on June 18, leaving no survivors among its five passengers, which included OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush.
The five are said to have died instantly upon the submersive’s implosion.