OceanGate facts for kids
 |
|
Cyclops 1 submersible on display at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI)
|
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Tourism, expeditions, underwater diving |
| Founded | 2009 |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | Everett, Washington, U.S. |
|
Number of employees
|
47 (2023) |
OceanGate Inc. is a privately owned U.S. company in Everett, Washington, that provides crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research, and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein.
The company acquired a submersible vessel, Antipodes, and later built two of its own: Cyclops 1 and Titan. In 2021, OceanGate began taking paying tourists in the Titan to visit the wreck of the Titanic. As of 2022, the price to be a passenger on an OceanGate expedition to the Titanic shipwreck was US$250,000 per person.
In June 2023, the Titan imploded during a voyage to the Titanic shipwreck site, killing all 5 occupants on board, including the company founder Stockton Rush. Because OceanGate was not equipped to service or recover its vessel, an international search-and-rescue operation was launched. On June 22, the wreckage was found on the seabed near the Titanic wreck site. The company's website is currently not online.
History
.png)
As a teen Stockton Rush's father introduced him to a personal friend, astronaut Pete Conrad. Conrad advised Stockton to get a pilot's license if he wanted to become an astronaut. In 1980, Rush earned a commercial pilot's license at 18 years old, but was told later that his visual acuity would disqualify him from becoming a military pilot. He moved from San Francisco to Seattle to work for McDonnell Douglas as a flight-test engineer for F-15 Eagle jets, building his fortune by investing his inheritance in tech companies. He had an interest in aviation and space travel as a child. As an adult, his interests pivoted to undersea exploration. Because the cold waters of Puget Sound required significant time and technical gear for diving, he thought "being in a sub, (and) being nice and cozy, and having a hot chocolate with you, beats the heck out of freezing and going through a two-hour decompression hanging in deep water".
When he tried to purchase a submarine, he discovered that there were fewer than 100 privately-owned submarines worldwide and was unable to purchase one, instead building one from plans in 2006.
Rush's experience and research led him to believe that submersibles had an unwarranted reputation as dangerous vehicles due to their use in ferrying commercial divers, and that the Passenger Vessel Safety Act of 1993 "needlessly prioritized passenger safety over commercial innovation". Based on a marketing study he commissioned, which concluded there was sufficient demand for underwater ocean tourism which would in turn support the development of new, deep-diving submersibles that would enable further commercial ventures including resource mining and disaster mitigation, he founded OceanGate with Guillermo Söhnlein in 2009. Söhnlein had left the company before 2019.
OceanGate intended to make underwater exploration cheaper and accessible to private citizens, similar to how Blue Origin and SpaceX have attempted to drive down spaceflight costs. Rush said there were two primary obstacles: the perception of danger and the small number of submersible vehicles with human crew, which primarily are built and owned by government agencies. The company was originally based in Seattle and moved in 2015 to the Port of Everett in Everett, Washington.
Submersibles
The OceanGate-designed Cyclops 1 and Titan submersibles are launched and recovered from a dry dock-like "Launch and Recovery Platform" that can be towed behind a commercial vessel. Once the platform and submersible reach the target location, the platform's flotation tanks are flooded and it sinks below the surface turbulence to a depth of 9 m (30 ft). The submersible then lifts off for its underwater mission. Upon the submersible's return to the platform, the flotation tanks are pumped out and the platform can be taken back into tow or brought aboard the host vessel. This allows OceanGate to use vessels without human-rated cranes. The platform is approximately 35 ft (11 m) long and 15 ft (4.6 m) wide and can lift up to 20,000 lb (9,100 kg); it is based on a concept developed by the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory.
RMS Titanic tourism
On September 1, 1985, Robert Ballard with support from Argo and RV Knorr discovered the wreck of RMS Titanic. In 1986, Ballard and two companions conducted detailed photographic surveys and inspections of Titanic wreckage using Alvin, Jason Jr., and the support ship RV Atlantis II. Since then, limited tours of the wreck of the Titanic have been conducted, most notably by the Russian Mir-class submersibles, which had been contracted in the 1990s for that purpose, including the capturing footage for the opening scenes of the eponymous 1997 film.
After carrying tourists to the wreck of the Andrea Doria in 2016, Rush noted "there's only one wreck that everyone knows ... if you ask people to name something underwater, it's going to be sharks, whales, Titanic." OceanGate's Titan was used for several survey expeditions of the Titanic wreckage site, starting in 2021. Rush stated that Titan could be used to explore the debris field and accurate scans could be used to build a 3-D model of the wreck.
When OceanGate's initial plans for the Titanic expeditions were announced in 2017, the first trip was scheduled for 2018, and each tourist's seat was priced at US$105,129, which was the price of the ticket for the Vanderbilt suite on Titanic in 1912, adjusted for inflation. Continued testing of the novel hull precluded operations in 2018. By 2019, the cost of a ticket on Titan to view Titanic had risen to $125,000; 54 tourists had signed up for one of six voyages that were scheduled to begin on June 27, but those plans were delayed until 2020 because permits could not be secured for the surface support vessel. The proposed operation involved MV Havila Harmony (sailing under a non-Canadian flag), and would have violated the Coasting Trade Act, which prohibits foreign-flagged vessels from conducting commercial voyages with origin and destination ports in Canada, analogous to the United States' Jones Act. In January 2020, the original hull was de-rated to 3,000 m (9,800 ft) maximum depth after signs of fatigue were found, and the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States delayed the procurement of carbon fiber filament needed to build a replacement hull. In November 2020, Rush announced the first voyage to Titanic would be delayed to May 2021.
For the 2021 season, OceanGate selected Canadian-flagged AHTS Horizon Arctic as the surface support vessel. The first Titanic survey expedition aboard Titan was scheduled to start in late June 2021; the first dive was completed in mid-July. A second dive followed in early August, and Titan returned to Seattle in November.
By 2022, the cost of a ticket had doubled to $250,000. Horizon Arctic again served as the support vessel for the planned dives. According to OceanGate court filings, 28 persons visited the Titanic on the Titan in 2022, 21 of whom were "mission specialists", i.e., non-staff passengers. In total, OceanGate undertook six dives to Titanic in 2021 and seven in 2022.
For the 2023 survey expedition, OceanGate secured the MV Polar Prince as its support vessel, making plans to begin in May. According to Rush, the cost of leasing Horizon Arctic had increased to $200,000 per week; the switch to Polar Prince meant the launch and recovery platform would need to be towed to the site, rather than carried on board. Challenging weather conditions kept the initial set of dives from occurring in May.
2023 incident and destruction
On June 18, 2023, Titan went missing in the North Atlantic Ocean some 400 nautical miles (740 km) from the coast of Newfoundland. The submersible was carrying an expedition of tourists, including Hamish Harding, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood and his son Suleman, and the founder of OceanGate, Stockton Rush, to view the wreckage of RMS Titanic. The disappearance of the submersible triggered extensive search and rescue efforts. On 22 June 2023 it was announced that Titan had imploded, likely during the descent, killing the five people on board instantly.
See also
In Spanish: OceanGate para niños
