Billionaire real estate developer Larry Connor has announced plans to explore the wreckage of the Titanic in a deep-sea submersible, a dramatic gesture intended to prove the safety of the ocean exploration industry one year after the fatal implosion of the OceanGate Titan sub.
Connor, a lifelong thrill-seeker from Dayton, Ohio, will make the voyage 12,000 feet below the ocean’s surface in a two-person submersible accompanied by Triton Submarines co-founder Patrick Lahey. The specially-built vessel, dubbed the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer, was designed over the course of a decade to make the perilous trip multiple times.
Connor plans to use his trip to the Titanic wreckage as a way to show the world that similar trips can be accomplished without disasters.
“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,” Connor told the Wall Street Journal.
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His bold venture to the ocean floor comes less than a year after the Titan submersible, piloted by OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, suffered a catastrophic implosion while descending to the Titanic. All five passengers, including Rush, were killed instantly when the vessel collapsed.
The Titan’s failure spurred Connor to find a way to make the journey safely, and he in turn urged Lahey to develop a new submarine for the purpose.
“He called me up and said, ‘You know, what we need to do is build a sub that can dive to [Titanic-level depths] repeatedly and safely and demonstrate to the world that you guys can do that, and that Titan was a contraption,’” Lahey said.
“Patrick has been thinking about and designing this for over a decade,” Connor continued. “But we didn’t have the materials and technology. You couldn’t have built this sub five years ago.”
Construction on the Triton 4000/2 Abyssal Explorer cost roughly $20 million, but Lahey considered the additional precautions well worth the cost. Following the OceanGate disaster, he criticized the company’s lax safety standards and called Rush’s approach to the submersible industry “quite predatory.”
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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