This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

In April 2018, a group of engineers and designers

gathered on a dock in the Port of Everett in Washington State.

They were there to hear from a 56-year-old inventor and entrepreneur, the creator of the Titan Submersible. As a child, Stocked in Rush had dreamed of becoming an astronaut. Less than perfect

eyesight quashed those plans and he wasn't interested in simply going along on a rocket ride.

I didn't want to go up into space as a tourist, he told a reporter.

I wanted to be Captain Kirk on the Enterprise.

I wanted to explore.

So he turned his attention to another mysterious realm, the depths of the ocean.

He founded a company, Ocean Gate, with the aim of ferrying passengers

thousands of feet underwater where they could view the wreckage of the Titanic. He led the

design of the Titan, casting himself as an innovator unconstrained by convention.

Instead of encasing his entire vessel in titanium, as was the industry practice for submarines, he built its

hull out of lighter weight carbon fiber.

I think it was General MacArthur who said,

you're remembered for the rules you break break and I've broken some rules to make

this he said in an interview the carbon fiber and titanium there's a rule you don't do that

well I did. When experts outside and inside his company raised concerns

about safety, he brushed them off. Standing on the dock in the port of Everett on that day in April, he boasted,

we know more about what's happening in this hull than anyone has ever known.

The voyage of the Titan, he added, will be one of the great moments of

submersibles he turned to Tony Neeson ocean gates director of engineering who

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