Titan sub hearings live: OceanGate CEO said he would ‘buy a congressman’ to make problems vanish, witness says

Lieutenant Commander Jonathan Duffett of the Coast Guard Office of Commercial Vessel Compliance has begun his testimony.

He is the final witness of the day.

John Winters, a master marine inspector with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound, has ended his testimony.

The hearing is now on break for lunch and will resume at 1:45 p.m. EDT.

OceanGate “never attempted to circumvent any regulations” even as CEO Stockton Rush complained they were stifling his innovation, according to John Winters, a master marine inspector with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound.

“He did express on multiple occasions that regulations were stifling his innovation process,” Winters said of Rush earlier on Thursday.

OceanGate did not ask the Coast Guard to inspect the doomed Titan submersible, according to John Winters, a master marine inspector with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound.

Winters said he only spoke to former Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush about the sub in passing when he mentioned wanting to take a vessel to the Titanic wreckage.

John Winters, a marine inspector with the Coast Guard, testified that former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush complained about regulatory processes.

“He did express on multiple occasions that regulations were stifling his innovation process,” Winters said of his conversations with Rush.

Winters worked to evaluate the safety of OceanGate’s Antipodes vessel. OceanGate wanted to obtain a small passenger vessel certification from the Coast Guard but did not receive it, Winters testified.

John Winters, a marine inspector with the Coast Guard, interacted directly with former OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, he revealed on Thursday.

Winters worked to evaluate the safety of Antipodes, another vessel made by the company.

“We basically took the submarine apart, put it back together, and tested every single system on the submarine,” Winters said.

OceanGate wanted to obtain a small passenger vessel certification from the Coast Guard but did not receive it, Winters testified. The company had to instead apply for an oceanographic research vessel certification, which they obtained.

John Winters with the Coast Guard Sector Puget Sound has begun his testimony before the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation.

Winters is a master marine inspector and helps train other inspectors.

The OceanGate co-founder has claimed the latest milestone in his quest to colonise Venus as the inquiry into the Titan submersible disaster continues.

Taking to LinkedIn, Guillermo Söhnlein, 58, shared a post about a new “biopod” with its own climate system that could be used to help humans thrive on the otherwise uninhabitable planet.

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Mark Negley, an engineer with Boeing, is now testifying before the Coast Guard Marine Board of Investigation

Negley once sent Rush his safety analysis of Titan’s hull, WIRED reports. He warned that there would be a “high risk of significant failure” if the contraption went to the depth of the Titanic wreckage.

The ongoing public hearing into the Titan submersible disaster has revealed that part of the experimental vessel fell off before it imploded last June.

Better known as the “Titanic tourist sub”, the Oceangate submersible had a controversial design that raised concerns inside and outside of the company before it led to the deaths of five men. Former Oceangate operations director David Lochridge revealed last week that he was actually fired for raising his concerns.

It is believed that the vessel’s carbon fibre hull – considered by experts to be unsuitable for use at depth – was weakened on repeat dives to the Titanic wreck, which lies at around 12,500 feet below the North Atlantic Ocean, as testified by National Transportation Safety Board engineer Don Kramer on Wednesday.

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