Oceangate's CEO Stockton Rush Was Trying To Be The Elon Musk Of The Deep, His Former Colleagues Say

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who was among the five passengers who died in the Titan submersible on June 18, was an ambitious entrepreneur with "a fatal flaw," according to Insider.

Rush's vision of establishing a "SpaceX for the oceans" reflected Silicon Valley's "move fast and break things" approach, pushing the boundaries of innovation, often risking safety, the outlet reported. 

Like Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Rush displayed the typical confidence and hubris often seen in entrepreneurs who believe the world fails to grasp the full scope of their endeavors, sources told Insider.

"Few of us ever have a fatal flaw, and Rush did," Arnie Weissmann, the editor-in-chief of Travel Weekly, told Insider. "He thought he was right or he wouldn't have gotten in [the submersible] and piloted it, but that was a fatal flaw."

"Rush was the local version of Elon Musk," John Lundin, a friend of Rush, told the The Everett Herald last month.

Also Read: Here Are The 5 Red Flags OceanGate Ignored Prior To The Implosion Of Its Titanic Submersible

According to Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate with Rush in 2009 but left in 2013, the company's initial vision was centered on helping to establish underwater cities in the future.

In order to achieve this, the company wanted to create submersibles the size of "little buses" that could carry several people to the depths of the oceans, Söhnlein told Insider.

"That's another reason we kind of called ourselves internally SpaceX for the oceans," he added. "We were solving the transportation problem for these future underwater communities."

Now Read: MrBeast Says He Was Invited To The Titanic Submarine: 'Kind Of Scary I Could Have Been On It'

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