The story of OceanGate and Stockton Rush
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.4 • 116 Ratings
🗓️ 24 June 2023
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Our rule is, we risk capital — we don't risk people." That was the guiding principle for Everett-Wash.-based OceanGate, as described by its CEO, Stockton Rush, at the GeekWire Summit in October 2022.
Rush's engineering decisions, and his tolerance for risk, as reflected in his comments at our event, are getting new scrutiny after the apparent implosion of OceanGate's Titan submersible, near the site of the Titanic wreck deep under the North Atlantic Ocean this week, killing Rush and four others on board.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Alan Boyle, GeekWire contributing editor, who has been covering OceanGate for the past seven years. He tells the story of Stockton Rush and the company, discusses the tragedy of the past week, and contemplates what's next for OceanGate and the larger world of ocean and space exploration.
- Now what? OceanGate sub tragedy sets off a torrent of questions without answers
- OceanGate submersible and crew declared lost after discovery of debris near Titanic
- Watch the full video: Stockton Rush at the 2022 GeekWire Summit
- Read an archived version of Rush's OceanGate bio, and a New York Times obituary.
With GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | One of the reasons I started the business was I didn't understand why we were spending |
| 0:04.1 | 1,000 times as much money to explore space as we were to explore Earth and the oceans. |
| 0:10.4 | We're listening back to Stockton Rush, the CEO of Everett Washington-based |
| 0:15.1 | Ocean Gate, speaking in October 2022 at the GeekWire Summit. People are all |
| 0:21.2 | about emotion and we've had such amazing movies about space and not as many about the ocean. |
| 0:27.2 | The ocean is a scary spot and what I wanted to do with the business was just move the needle. |
| 0:31.4 | Get people excited about the ocean, |
| 0:33.1 | explore the ocean, and discover what was what was out there. |
| 0:35.7 | Stockton Russia's engineering decisions and his tolerance for risk, as reflected |
| 0:41.0 | in his comments at our event, |
| 0:43.0 | are getting new scrutiny after the apparent implosion of Ocean Gate's Titan submersible |
| 0:48.5 | near the site of the Titanic wreck |
| 0:50.8 | deep under the North Atlantic Ocean this week, killing Stockton Rush and four others on board. |
| 0:56.2 | If we were going to stretch this new material in a new environment with people inside, |
| 1:00.1 | we needed to know well before it failed that it failed. Our rule is we risk capital. We don't risk people. |
| 1:06.0 | On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we're joined by Alan Boyle, GeekWire Contributing Editor, |
| 1:12.0 | who has been covering Ocean Gate for the past seven years. |
| 1:15.6 | He tells the story of Stockton Rush and the company discusses the tragedy of the past week |
| 1:21.1 | and contemplates what's next for Ocean Gate and the larger world of |
| 1:25.1 | ocean and space exploration. From GeekWire.com in Seattle I'm Todd Bishop. I'm joined this week by |
| 1:34.7 | Alan Boyle, GeekWire Contributing Editor. Alan, it's good to see you. |
| 1:38.3 | Same year. Do you remember when you first heard of Oceangate and started covering this company as a reporter and what drew you to this company as a subject of your coverage? |
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