Kit Roberts
A 3D model of the submersible which may carry real estate mogul Larry Connor to the wreck of the Titanic has been released.
Following the deaths of five people onboard the Titan submersible in July 2023, another billionaire has now said that he wants to mount an expedition to the wreck.
The previous expedition was met with catastrophe when the submersible imploded, killing OceanGate founder Stockton Rush, father and son Shahzada and Suleman Dawood, UK billionaire Hamish Harding and former French navy commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet.
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But Larry Connor - who has a net worth of $2 billion - is seemingly undeterred by this disaster.
So much so, he called a submersible company just days after the tragedy, asking them to design another sub to prove the Titan disaster was a one-off.
He told the Wall Street Journal: “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.”
The Oceangate submersible was the subject of intense scrutiny after it was revealed that employees at the company had raised concerns about the safety of the design.
These included the shape of the craft, which was a cylinder when the watertight cabin of a submersible is typically formed of a sphere as this is a much stronger structure.
After a 3D model of the sub which may be used in Connor's expedition was released, many people have been left wondering what Titanic director and wreck visitor James Cameron would think of it.
Cameron previously completed a dive to the site in a submersible which was designed to safely operate at immense depths. This design included a metal sphere, rather than a form of carbon fibre, like the Titan, fitted with tiny viewing ports.
The director expressed concern about the Oceangate design at the time, saying: "Many people in the community were very concerned about this sub.
"A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified and so on."
He added: "Warnings went unheeded to take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal."
As for the new sub, it departs from the metal spheres of previous designs and appears to have a clear one.
Nonetheless, the submersible has been designed to dive to the depth of the Titanic wreck at 12,500ft below the surface.
People took to Reddit to share their thoughts, with one joking: "Looks like it makes banger coffee."
Others questioned what the strange obsession with the wreck of the Titanic is all about, with someone else writing: "Why do people wanna go there so much? It's a place of so many dead people, gives me the creeps."
Another commented: "Don't billionaires have anything better to do with their money?"