As I write this at 11am on Thursday June, 22 2023, the lost submersible with five aboard named ‘Titan’, owned by Oceangate, and led by Rush Stockton, has not been found.
A variety of information from the company’s past has surfaced, including warnings by deep sea trade associations, fraudulent business practices on the part of OceanGate, and engineering and certification shortcomings with the submersible constructed by OceanGate.
Alvin, a submersible operated by Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been making deep sea dives since 1964. Woods Hole has an interactive exhibition of the current iteration of the submersible, and the level of detail and complexity of the systems and instrumentation is similar to sophisticated military aircraft. This submersible has made over 5000 dives without a catastrophic loss. Alvin is tasked with such non-tourist activity like retrieving lost nuclear weapons on the sea floor, studying new forms of ocean life and volcanism, and other important missions.
Rush Stockton, the man most responsible for instigating this immature tourist business model, obviously did not buy any sort of insurance policy for rescue; because such policies do not exist. The dangers are too extreme and the rescue costs are too high. He simply was happy to book quarter-million dollar seats for a ‘trip to the Titanic’ – which is similar to selling real estate on the moon. I suppose he thought the taxpayers of the planet would simply cover his rescue costs.
Not only will hundreds of millions of dollars be spent on the rescue or recovery effort, but many people will put their lives on the line engaging in what is inherently a dangerous and risky activity – deep sea rescue.
Assuming the bill for the rescue turns out to be about $200M, a premium for a dive on the ‘Titan’, assuming a failure rate of 1/50 (which is probably about right), has to run at least $6M per dive (assuming proper margins on the policy). That is about $1.5M per passenger for insurance.
The ‘Titan’ is filled with billionaire Darwin Award winners.
Classical Metaphor 