The president of the Explorers Club says the 5 people on the Titan sub should be remembered as explorers, not as wealthy daredevils

• The president of the Explorers Club says private explorers help expand "the frontiers of knowledge."
• Richard Garriott de Cayeux said the Titan sub passengers were explorers, not wealthy daredevils.

The president of the Explorers Club says the passengers on board the Titan submersible were explorers contributing to science, not wealthy daredevils.

Richard Garriott de Cayeux, who has been the head of the Explorers Club since 2021, defended his take in an essay for The Wall Street Journal. He wrote in the essay published Thursday that private explorers like those aboard the Titan submersible "have a crucial role to play in expanding the frontiers of knowledge" even though they were often dismissed as wealthy thrillseekers.

"Critics may label their expedition as 'extreme tourism,' and perhaps it was, but it was their spirit of exploration that propelled them to seek, experience, and learn," de Cayeux wrote.

The five people on board were OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush; Hamish Harding, a British billionaire; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a Titanic expert; Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani multimillionaire; and Dawood's 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood. Harding and Nargeolet were members of the Explorers Club.

In his essay, De Cayeux drew parallels between the Titan's passengers — who each paid $250,000 for the trip — and historic innovators like the Wright Brothers. He said today's private explorations into the deep sea were being criticized the same way early flights were ridiculed as the pastime of the ultrawealthy.

The Titan submersible went missing on June 18. On June 23, the US Coast Guard announced the deaths of the five passengers on board. The submersible was operated by OceanGate Expeditions as part of an eight-day dive to reach the wreckage of the Titanic.

And while de Cayeux defended the Titan submersible as exploration and not tourism, expeditions to space and parts of the deep sea have increasingly become playgrounds for the rich.

Harding also went to space on a Blue Origin flight. Though it's unclear how much he paid for the trip, at least one seat on Blue Origin's inaugural spaceflight was auctioned off for $28 million, according to the Observer.

A week after the Titan sub imploded, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic began selling tickets for commercial spaceflight at $450,000 per passenger. Tickets to go to the International Space Station with Elon Musk's SpaceX cost $55 million.

Wealthy explorers often use science to justify their expensive exploits. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, previously responded to criticism about why he was investing money in space travel rather than solving problems on Earth by saying: "We go to space not to abandon our home, but to protect it."

Last month, Insider's Kelsey Vlamis reported that space and deep-sea tourism was on the rise and that rescuing passengers in space could be even more challenging than the recent Titan sub disaster.

De Cayeux did not immediately respond to a request for comment.