OceanGate Co-Founder Wants To Ship 1,000 People To Venus By 2050: 'Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton.'

Despite the recent Titan submersible tragedy that killed five people, the co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions remains undeterred, and his latest ambitious goal is to establish a floating colony on Venus and have 1,000 humans living there by 2050.

What Happened: Guillermo Söhnlein, who co-founded OceanGate alongside Stockton Rush in 2009 but later stepped away in 2013, told Insider there's a sliver of the Venusian atmosphere about 30 miles from the surface where humans could theoretically survive.

Söhnlein said he envisions developing a floating colony that can withstand Venus' hostile atmosphere, including the sulfuric acids present in the planet's clouds, which are among the elements that currently render it inhospitable to humans, according to the publication.

"Forget OceanGate. Forget Titan. Forget Stockton. Humanity could be on the verge of a big breakthrough and not take advantage of it because we, as a species, are gonna get shut down and pushed back into the status quo," Söhnlein told Insider.

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

Söhnlein said that OceanGate was a dream he sought out when he was young. He added that he and Rush "both saw underwater exploration, and especially using crewed submersibles, as the closest thing that we could do to go into space and further that vision without actually going into space."

In a blog post in February, Söhnlein, who is also the founder and chairman of Humans2Venus, wrote, "I am not an engineer or a scientist, but I have ultimate faith in the abilities of both. Therefore, I always figured that they would be able to overcome the myriad challenges facing us in the extreme space environment." 

However, he did not provide a solution for how this envisaged space station, designed for up to 1,000 colonists, would effectively handle Venus' characteristic hurricane-force winds, which can reach speeds of 224 miles per hour.

"It is aspirational, but I think it's also very doable by 2050," he said.

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

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