OceanGate CEO compared glue holding Titan sub together to peanut butter

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush once compared the glue holding the doomed Titan submersible together to “peanut butter” – and called the tourist vessel’s carbon-fiber hull design “pretty simple.”

Rush was overseeing the bonding of the sub’s titanium ring and carbon-fiber hull when he made the odd statement in a 2018 video posted on the company’s YouTube channel, Insider reported.

He said the glue used for the task was “very thick, so it’s not like Elmer’s glue,” adding that “it’s like peanut butter.”

Rush admitted elsewhere in the video that “if we mess it up, there’s not a lot of room for recovery.”

The carbon-fiber composite construction has come under heavy scrutiny since the Titan imploded Jan. 18, killing Rush, 61, British billionaire Hamish Harding, 58, French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet, 77, Pakistani tycoon Shahzada Dawood, 48, and his son, Sulaiman, 19.

Rush had insisted that carbon fiber was preferable to alternatives like titanium, but many experts have criticized the hull’s construction and suggested that it was to blame for the disaster.

One of them, Virginia Tech ocean engineering professor Stefano Brizzolara, has told The Post that the carbon fiber is “very prone to possible defects” and “exhibits a more fragile behavior” than other materials that could have been used.

David Lochridge was fired as OceanGate’s head of marine operations and Titan’s head pilot after warning others about the company’s testing methods.

“That sub is Not safe to dive,” Lochridge wrote deep-sea exploration specialist Rob McCallum in 2018, according to a recent article in The New Yorker.

“Titanic” director James Cameron also criticized the hull’s construction, saying that the material likely led to the “critical failure” of the vessel.

“You don’t use composites for vessels that are seeing external pressure,” he told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “They’re great for internal pressure vessels like scuba tanks, for example, but they’re terrible for external pressure.”

The famed director said the sub’s designers relied on aviation engineering rather than submergence technology.

“We all said that it was, you know, a flawed idea and they didn’t go through certification,” Cameron said. “I think that was a critical failure.”

Travel Weekly Editor-in-Chief Arnie Weissmann, who was slated to travel on the Titan, claimed Rush told him the hull was constructed with discounted carbon fiber from Boeing that had passed its airplane shelf life.

In a 2018 Facebook post, OceanGate said it “successfully validated” the carbon fiber and titanium hull to a depth of 13,123 feet.

The company has declined to comment since the tragedy, but Rush said in 2021 that he would “like to be remembered as an innovator.”

“I think it was General MacArthur who said, ‘You’re remembered for the rules you break.’ And I’ve broken some rules to make this,” he said, adding: “The carbon fiber and titanium? There’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.”