Titan: The OceanGate Disaster, the new Netflix documentary about the fatal 2023 attempt to reach the Titanic in a carbon-fiber submersible, is at least as much about Stockton Rush as it is about his company

New Netflix documentary Titan : The OceanGate Disaster is at least as much about Stockton Rush as it is about his company.

It's not clear if Rush had a gift for convincing people that they were involved in something groundbreaking.

The excitement of building a sub out of a relatively cheap and lightweight material was so thrilling that it overrode other concerns.

David Pogue accompanied Stockton Rush on a voyage to the Titanic for a segment that looks in retrospect like a puff piece on a death trap.

Pogue was unknowingly risking his own life, but CBS ’s underlying assumption was that if Rush was out looking for media coverage, he must be the real deal.

The idea that wealthy men with a bent for skirting regulations are disrupters and not scofflaws didn’t originate with Rush .