Billionaire Plans to Prove It's Still Safe to Visit Titanic

Nearly a year after the implosion of an OceanGate submersible en route to the Titanic's final resting place, a tragedy that killed all five people on board, a billionaire is planning another trip to the wreck. Larry Connor, whom the BBC refers to as an Ohio luxury real estate tycoon and adventurer, is planning a trip to the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean with Patrick Lahey, co-founder of Triton Submarines. Neither was involved with the OceanGate expedition, and after the implosion, Triton was among the companies rushing to differentiate between "classed" and "unclassed" subs: Triton uses only classed vessels, which are considered very safe, while the OceanGate vessel that imploded was unclassed, using experimental materials and designs, the Wall Street Journal reports.

With the bad press the OceanGate implosion brought to the submersible industry, Connor got in touch with Lahey and suggested they build a vessel that could repeatedly and safely make the trip to the Titanic, which sits more than 12,400 feet deep, to illustrate that OceanGate's sub was the exception, not the rule. "I want to show people worldwide that while the ocean is extremely powerful, it can be wonderful and enjoyable and really kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way," says Connor, who has previously made trips to the Mariana Trench and the International Space Station. They're working on the vessel now, but no proposed date has been given for their journey. See the full story at the Journal. (More OceanGate stories.)