from lawyer to ex-marine. And someone refused a big discount

Even a strong last-minute discount of $200,000 (out of $500,000) did not sway American businessman Jay Bloom of Las Vegas to accept an invitation to join his son Sean on the Titan mission. Discount after assurances from OceanGate organizers that the mission was certainly “less risky than crossing the street”.

In addition to posting a “correspondence” with the company, which included expressing pain over the tragic end of the mission, he wrote in a Facebook post: “I raised safety concerns and Stockton told me, ‘While obviously a risk, it’s much safer than flying on helicopter or scuba diving.

And at least three more people, by choice or by coincidence – very lucky – did not end up on the bathyscaphe that exploded near the wreckage of the Titanic. And it is likely that in the coming days there will be other wealthy individuals who have paid a deposit for a ticket of 250 thousand dollars each, but then chose to postpone.

Among them was experienced diver Chris Brown, 61, an Englishman friend of the late Hamish Harding who, according to the Mail Online, was hesitant to “go” on an adventure after an inspection on a support ship: better to refuse the $80,000 deposit he However, I asked for a refund. He was not even reassured by the control system for the various stages of the mission.

Instead, fate decided for David Concannon, who was forced to give way to others due to work. In addition, Robert Mester, a former deep-sea rescue specialist, did not trust him after riding the Antipodes, Titan’s predecessor bathyscaphe: in his opinion, there were too many “commercial and ready-to-use” components: “Fiberglass Carbon fiber hull I was not convinced, this is not the material that has ever been successfully used at great depths.

“They used standard equipment,” Mester said, “and frankly, it didn’t feel like it was enough.”

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on Il Mattino