Maybe. On the other hand, it might have just been talk for PR purposes. We do know for sure that it wasn't some tatted up, purple haired GenZtard at the controls of the sub, though. The pilot was one of, if not the most, experienced submersible pilot in the world. A White, 50+ ex-military submariner.General Peters wrote: ↑Fri Jun 23, 2023 1:07 pm Stockton Rush, CEO of the OceanGate company responsible for a Titanic exploration submarine currently lost at sea, prioritized diversity over experience when putting together crews. “When I started business… other sub operators [were] out there but they typically [had] gentlemen who are ex-military submariners… a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” he said during a 2020 interview.
“I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational… [A] 25-year-old who’s a sub pilot or a platform operator or one of our techs can be inspirational,” he said while an image of a female crew member showed on screen, adding: “We also want our team to have a variety of different backgrounds.”
CEO Stockton Rush valued diversity over competency and experience.
Let this be (yet another) lesson to everyone to hire based on qualifications, not to check diversity boxes. Of course, we should have learned that from the current administration and the ensuing clusterfukk that it created, but ....gotta keep flying those rainbow and BLM flags to show everyone how diveerrrthhh you are, while imploding beneath the sea.
I understand Rush's point that excessive, onerously expensive testing can stifle innovation at one end of the spectrum. His approach, on the other hand, is at the other end. There should be a happy medium somewhere in the middle. It wasn't Titan's first dive. I haven't been able to find out how many dives it had made, but there does need to be some appropriate materials testing after each cycle particularly when you're dealing with experimental materials.
This is still bleeding edge technology. There aren't a dozen manned submersibles in the world that can reach that depth.