Voting Station

Stockton Rush

Please vote to see the next celebrity.

Entrepreneur

The Resume

    (March 31, 1962-June 18, 2023)
    Born in San Francisco, California
    Birth name was Richard Stockton Rush III
    Founder and CEO of OceanGate
    Died with four other people when the OceanGate submersible Titan imploded while descending to visit the wreck of the Titanic

Why he might be annoying:

    He admitted about the Titan, 'I've broken some rules to make this.'
    He said that 'as a rule' a deep-sea submersible would not be built with carbon fiber and titanium, but those were the materials he used.
    He was able to buy the carbon fiber at a discount from Boeing because it was past its shelf life for use in airplanes.
    CBS reporter David Pogue, who accompanied Rush on a 2019 dive, said about the Titan, 'Some of the ballasts are old, rusty construction pipes. There were certain things that looked like cut corners.'
    A former employee sued, claiming he had been wrongfully terminated for raising safety concerns (2018); the suit was settled out of court.
    One of the employee's allegations was that the Titan's viewport had only been certified to withstand pressures equal to those reached at a depth of 1300 meters. The Titanic wreckage is located at a depth of over 3500 meters.
    He refused to allow independent tests of the safety of OceanGate's submersibles.

Why he might not be annoying:

    As an 18 year old Princeton student, he was also a licensed commercial pilot, flying chartered planes to and from Saudi Arabia: 'It was the coolest summer job.'
    He originally wanted to be an astronaut, but his eyesight was not good enough.
    Travel Weekly editor Arnie Weissmann, who was a passenger on one of his dives, wrote, 'My impression of Stockton Rush's leadership style was that he is calm, patient, inclusive and caring.'
    His wife Wendy is the great-great-granddaughter of Titanic casualties Isidor and Ida Straus.
    He said, '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.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 330 Votes: 44.85% Annoying