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Stockton Rush, the owner of the Titan submersible that imploded and killed the five people on board, offered cut-price $150,000 tickets to a millionaire who turned them down after raising safety concerns.
Jay Bloom, a Las Vegas financier, published text messages on Facebook between himself and Rush, the CEO of the deep-sea-tourism company OceanGate who was killed when the vessel imploded Sunday.
The remains of the vessel were found Thursday after a huge search-and-rescue operation in a perilous region in the North Atlantic around 700 miles from Newfoundland.
Rush sold tickets to view the wreck of the Titanic on the Titan sub for up to $250,000.
Bloom said in a Facebook post that Rush had asked him and his son Sean to go on a dive to the Titanic wreck site after two planned expeditions had been canceled over bad weather. MailOnline first reported the text exchange.
Before the Sunday expedition, Bloom said he expressed safety concerns to Rush about the trip. In a text, Rush tried to convince him it was “safer than crossing the street.”
Rush said: “While there’s obviously risk it’s way safer than flying in a helicopter or even scuba diving. There hasn’t been even an injury in 35 years in a non-military subs.”
Bloom, a managing partner at investment firm Trimaran Capital Partners, wrote in the post: “I am sure he really believed what he was saying. But he was very wrong. He passionately believed in what he was doing.”
He said the last time he saw Rush in person was at a Titanic exhibition in Las Vegas on March 1, where Rush again tried to convince him of the safety of the trips.
“At lunch in the Luxor food court we talked about the dive, including safety. He was absolutely convinced that it was safer than crossing the street,” Bloom wrote.
“I told him that due to scheduling we couldn’t go until next year,” he added. “Our seats went to Shahzada Dawood and his 19 year old son, Suleman Dawood, two of the other three who lost their lives on this excursion (the fifth being Hamish Harding).
“One last time.. RIP Stockton and crew.”
Here are some of the texts Bloom shared between himself and Rush:
In the post, Bloom said: “We are going to take a minute to stop and smell the roses. Tomorrow is never promised. Make the most of today.”
The Titan went missing Sunday, triggering a huge search-and-rescue mission that ended Thursday when deep-sea drones found fragments of the Titan, which indicated it had imploded.
After the sub went missing, reports said that experts had flagged concerns to Rush over the experimental design of the sub, and customers described to news outlets pulling out of planned trips over safety fears.
Rush had defended the design of the Titan and said that regulations to ensure vessel safety hindered innovation.
“At some point, safety is just pure waste,” he told CBS last year. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.”
Correction: June 23, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the city Jay Bloom is from. Bloom is from Las Vegas, not Los Angeles.
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