OceanGate Co-Founder Defends Against James Cameron Criticism: ‘Impossible for Anyone to Really Speculate From the Outside’ (Video)

thewrap.com:

recent criticism that the Titan submersible was “too experimental to carry passengers.”“In this kind of community, there are completely different opinions and views about how to do things, how to design submersibles, how to engineer them, build them, how to operate in the dives,” Söhnlein told the U.K.’s Times Radio on Friday. “But one thing that’s true of me and the other experts, is none of us were involved in the design, engineering, building, testing or even diving of the subs.

So it’s impossible for anyone to really speculate from the outside. I was involved in the early phases of the overall development program during our predecessor subs to Titan, and I know from firsthand experience that we were extremely committed to safety and risk mitigation was a key part of the company culture.”Söhnlein co-founded the deep-sea diving company with Titan passenger and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush in 2009.

After serving as CEO and COO, he stepped down in 2013 but still retains a minority stake.When asked about regulations for submersibles, he acknowledged that they are “pretty sparse” and “antiquated or designed for specific instances” due to the limited amount of deep dive attempts.

He emphasized that the intent of the missions is “not to conduct joyrides down to this wreck.”“One of the risks that the community takes every time it operates is that if there is some sort of catastrophic failure the general public will backlash against the entire community and basically say it shouldn’t occur,” Söhnlein added.