Who was Stockton Rush?

Greg Gilbert/The Seattle Times, via Associated Press Stockton Rush, the chief executive and founder of OceanGate and the pilot of the Titan submersible, was declared dead on Thursday after his vessel was found in pieces at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, near the rusting wreck of the R.M.S. Titanic. He was 61.

Why did Stockton Rush launch OceanGate?

Stockton Rush launched the manned submersible operator OceanGate with vast ambition. “Stockton was opening up a new realm for humanity,” said businessman Fred Hagen, who went on two expeditions to the wreck of the Titanic with OceanGate. Yet that vision proved difficult to fund, and ultimately appears to have cost Rush his life.

What happened to rush & Stockton's Titan?

Rush has approached his dream of deep-sea exploration with child-like verve and an antipathy toward regulations — a pattern that has come into sharp relief since Sunday night, when his vessel, the Titan, went missing. “At some point, safety just is pure waste,” Stockton told journalist David Pogue in an interview last year.