OceanGate's Titanic sub once had a battery go 'kaput' on a dive to the wreck, and Stockton Rush suggested sleeping in the sub overnight

• OceanGate's Titanic sub once had a battery die when passengers were almost at the wreck.
• Stockton Rush suggested the team sleep in the sub, which was stuck near the ocean floor.

OceanGate's Titan submersible once had a battery die during a dive to the Titanic — and CEO Stockton Rush suggested the crew sleep in the vessel as it stayed on the ocean floor overnight, according to a BBC documentary.

In a 2022 episode of the BBC's "The Travel Show," Jaden Pan, one of the customers who took the Titan sub to the wreck, said his 2021 expedition was cut short when a battery "went kaput."

At the time, the sub was over two hours into its descent.

Pan said they were within two football fields' distance of the RMS Titanic wreckage when Rush said the submersible needed to return to the surface.

"At first, I thought he was joking because we were over two hours into our expedition and so close to the bottom," Pan said. "But then he explained that one of the batteries went kaput and we were having trouble using the electronic drops for the weights, so it would be hard for us to get back up to the surface."

One of the solutions Rush offered was for the crew to stay and sleep in the sub as it sunk to the ocean floor.

"We're down here for another 16 to 24 hours," Rush said in a video shown on the BBC show. "We will drift down. We'll hit the bottom. We'll have communications. We can talk to them."

Pan said the weights would have dissolved after 24 hours, allowing the vessel to rise to the surface. Half the crew, including Rush, were OK with sleeping under the ocean.

But the other passengers on the expedition didn't want to spend the night in the sub. Eventually, Rush managed to use hydraulics to drop the weights, allowing the vessel to float back up.

Before the Titan sub's ill-fated trip to the RMS Titanic last month, former OceanGate workers and industry professionals were worried about the vessel's safety, including a lack of testing for the carbon-fiber hull. Rush had previously said "innovation" was why the vessel wasn't checked to see whether it was up to industry standards.

Rush also said in the past that he wouldn't operate an unsafe sub and took issue with a former advisor who warned him about the Titan's issues.