Billionaire Larry Connor plans to travel to the site of the Titanic wreck in a two-man submersible.
Connor’s voyage comes after the Ocean Gate submersible suffered an explosion in June 2023.
Connor is a thrill-seeker who set a world record for jumping from a hot air balloon.
After flying in space and exploring the Mariana Trench, an Ohio billionaire is setting his sights on a new adventure: the sinking of the Titanic.
Real estate investor Larry Conner, 74, is sailing with Patrick Lahey, co-founder and CEO of Triton Submarines, a collaboration the submarine maker confirmed in an Instagram post in May, calling it “groundbreaking.”
The pair told The Wall Street Journal in May that they planned to visit the Titanic wreck site to prove they could carry out the work safely following last year’s Ocean Gate disaster.
Oceangate CEO Stockton Rush and four other passengers died when the company’s submersible, Titan, imploded on the way to the Titanic’s wreck site.
“I want to show the world that the ocean is incredibly powerful but if approached in the right way, it can also be an amazing, fun and truly life-changing thing,” Connor told the media.
Even before he announced his ambitions for deep-sea exploration, Connor was seeking thrills on land and in Earth’s orbit.
Here’s what we know about Connor.
Conner is a real estate investor who founded the Conner Group, which has assets of $5 billion.
An aerial view of Miami, Florida, where the Connor Group owns real estate. Cliff Hawkins – FIFA/Getty Images
According to his company profile, Conner’s entrepreneurial spirit led him into real estate in 1991, when he founded Conner Murphy & Berman with just one investor.
He then bought out his partners and founded the Ohio-based luxury real estate investment firm The Connor Group in 2003.
According to Forbes magazine, his net worth is $2 billion.
Connor Group specializes in luxury apartment communities with more than $5 billion in assets across 18 U.S. markets, according to the company’s website.
With more than 1,300 investors, Connor Group owns properties in Atlanta, Chicago, Charlotte, Miami, Phoenix and Louisville, among other locations.
He founded the Greater Dayton Schools.
Greater Dayton Schools educates students from kindergarten through eighth grade. Phat Camera/Getty Images
The Greater Dayton School is described on the Connor Group website as “Ohio’s first private, secular school for underserved students.” Its official campus is scheduled to open to students in November 2023, according to the school’s website.
According to the school’s website, as of October 2023, there are 105 students enrolled in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Connor is also an avid racer, with over 70 wins to his name.
Larry Conner is an accomplished racer. Robert Laberge/Getty Images
According to Connor’s biography, he is a “two-time Baja 1000 and Baja 500 winner in the Trophy Truck Spec class.”
According to his biography, he won the Formula Atlantic National Championship in 2001 and 2002, and won Petit Le Mans in 2003.
In April 2021, Connor visited the Mariana Trench, known as the deepest place on Earth.
Mariana Trench. Dimitrios Karamitros/Getty Images
This voyage to the Titanic’s wreck site is not Connor’s first time traveling with Lahey.
According to the Connor Group, the pair completed five-day dives in April 2021 to the Sirena Deep, Challenger Deep and seamounts of the Mariana Trench.
Connor and Lahey used a Triton 36000/2 designed by Triton Submarines, Inc. According to a Triton Submarines press release, Connor and Lahey “collected high-quality video footage and samples in the ‘ultra-deep ocean’ – the final frontier of Earth exploration, below 20,000 feet of water.”
The scientists planned to study the information Connor and Lahey gathered during their travels for medical, commercial and evolutionary research.
He piloted a flight to the International Space Station a year later.
International Space Station (ISS). NASA/Reuters
According to his company, Conner will become the first private astronaut pilot to fly Axiom Mission 1 to the International Space Station in April 2022. The four-person crew blasted off aboard SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft on April 8 and returned to Earth on April 25.
NASA and aerospace startup Axiom Space first announced the flight in May 2021.
“During their time aboard the ISS, the crew completed 25 different experiments and logged more than 100 hours of research,” a Connor Group press release stated. “Larry collaborated with renowned medical experts from the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic to conduct four different experiments studying the heart, brain, spine and aging.”
He set a world record for jumping from a hot air balloon in September 2023.
Larry Connor breaks HALO skydiving world record. AscentXMedia/Getty Images
Connor and four other men hold the Guinness World Record for the highest HALO (high altitude, low altitude) formation skydive at 38,139 ft. The crew set the record in September 2023.
“Larry and the Alpha 5 team have been preparing for over a year for their HALO formation skydive. They jumped from a hot air balloon in support of the Special Operations Warfare Foundation (SOWF) charity,” the Guinness World Records website states.
