- OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush once compared the glue holding his sub's hull together to peanut butter.
- In a 2018 video, he called the design between the carbon-fiber hull and titanium ring "pretty simple."
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush once said the glue holding the ill-fated Titan submersible's carbon-fiber hull together was "like peanut butter," calling it thicker than Elmer's glue and "pretty simple."
In a 2018 video on OceanGate's YouTube channel, Rush oversaw the bonding of the Titanic-bound sub's titanium ring and carbon-fiber hull.
He said the glue affixing the titanium ring to the hull was "very thick, so it's not like Elmer's glue." He added: "It's like peanut butter."
Earlier in the video, Rush said the design was "pretty simple, but if we mess it up, there's not a lot of room for recovery."
Experts and former OceanGate employees told Rush that the Titan submersible — including its glue and carbon-fiber hull — could be dangerous and might collapse under the deep ocean's pressure. Rush previously cited "innovation" as the reason behind the sub's experimental design and said that was why it was never checked to see whether it met industry standards.
The Titan sub imploded last month during a trip to the wreck of the Titanic, killing all five people aboard, including Rush.
Based on photos of the submersible's wreckage, an expert told Insider that it appeared the experimental carbon-fiber hull failed first, which resulted in the catastrophic implosion.