Guillermo Senlein, co-founder of OceanGate Expeditions, urges not to stop after the tragedy with the Titan bathyscaphe and to continue to expand the boundaries of extreme travel. He plans to send 1,000 people to live in a floating colony on Venus by 2050, writes Business Insider on July 28.
"Forget OceanGate. Forget about the Titan. Forget about Stockton [founder of the specialized oceanographic laboratory OceanGate Stockton Rush. — Ed.]. Humanity may be on the verge of a big breakthrough and not take advantage of it only because we as a biological species will be closed and returned to the status quo," he said.
Senlein co-founded OceanGate with Stockton Rush in 2009, but left the company in 2013. He is now the founder and chairman of Humans2Venus, which he describes on LinkedIn as "a private enterprise focused on establishing a permanent human presence on Venus."
The 57-year-old businessman of Argentine origin pointed to the results of NASA research, according to which about 30 miles (48 km) from the surface of Venus there is a section of the atmosphere where theoretically people can survive. He proposes to create a floating colony that could withstand the effects of the only element in the planet's atmosphere that prevents human survival — sulfuric acid in the clouds of Venus.
"I think it's less ambitious than relocating a million people to the surface of Mars by 2050," Senlein said, alluding to Elon Musk's reasoning about human life on Mars.
In February, Senlein wrote on the Human2Venus website that he is neither an engineer nor a scientist, but he has boundless faith in their ability to overcome many problems that people face in extreme space conditions.
"When I was 11 years old, I constantly had a dream in which I was the commander of the first human community on Mars. Since then, I have spent more than four decades doing everything in my power to help humanity become a multi—planetary species," the entrepreneur admitted.
OceanGate was another project where Senlein tried to fulfill a childhood dream.
"Both of us [with Rush] considered underwater exploration — and especially the use of underwater vehicles with a crew — as the closest thing we could do to go into space, actually staying on Earth," he explained.
This dream ended in tragedy when the underwater vehicle "Titan" was subjected to a "catastrophic explosion" while traveling to the shipwreck of the Titanic in June.
On June 19, OceanGate Expeditions announced the disappearance of the Titan bathyscaphe with its crew. He lost contact with the Polar Prince research vessel about 1 hour and 45 minutes after diving on June 18 in the morning.
There were five people on board, including British billionaire and researcher Hamish Harding, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, as well as French scuba diving pilot Paul-Henri Nargole.
On June 21, it was noted that the hull of the bathyscaphe had technical problems, in particular, it showed signs of cyclic fatigue.
At the end of June, it was reported that the bathyscaphe could be assembled from the wreckage to understand the cause of the tragedy. Specialists have already brought to the surface wiring and cables, as well as some other internal systems of the underwater vehicle.
Presumably, human remains were found among the wreckage of the bathyscaphe.
