Astronaut, race car driver and property mogul: Meet the billionaire behind the latest Titanic submersible mission

From the vastness of outer space to the depths of the sea.

Larry Connor is known for being a race car driver, property mogul and private astronaut. Now he wants to be known for a new claim to fame – becoming the first person to venture to the Titanic shipwreck site after the submusable disaster that claimed the lives of four sightseeing tourists.

Mr. Connor, a 74-year-old real estate tycoon and billionaire from Dayton, Ohio, recently announced plans to take a submersible to the Atlantic seabed — past the wreckage of the doomed OceanGate expedition — in an effort to prove that safe, manned trips to the wreckage of the Titanic are possible.

But, exactly who is the racecar driving, real estate billionaire from Ohio ?

Mr Connor, 74, is from Albany, New York,is the owner of the Connor Group, which is a real estate investment firm in Dayton, Ohio.

After graduating from Ohio University in 1972, Mr Connor eventually purchased the Orlando Computer Group, which provided software and hardware to companies, and became the second-largest re-seller of IBM microcomputers in the state of Florida.

In 1992, he co-founded Connor, Murphy & Buhrman, which would later be called the Connor Group after he bought out his partners in 2003.

Over the course of nearly two decades, the Connor group’s assets increased from $100m to $4bn.

In addition to the Connor Group, the billionaire also co-founded First Billing Services in 2003 and Heartland Regional Power in 2004. The former company eventually acquired the latter.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Mr Connor tried to help his employees by donating $1.6bn of his own money to be distributed as bonuses to his associates who were making less than $150,000 per year. He also agreed to pay for childcare expenses.

His business success has allowed him to explore increasingly extreme hobbies, some of which have taken him into orbit and to the deepest places on the planet.

Mr Connor’s fascination with dangerous vehicles began in the 80’s when he started racing formula cars. He had a starting position in the 1983 Atlantic Championship, and continued to race at various levels into the 2000s.

In 2003, he was a member of the winning team at that year’s Petit Le Mans, and just over a decade later, his Team C racing outfit won the grueling Baja 1000 after he moved into off-road racing.

Two years later his team won the Baja 500 Trophy Truck series.

In April 2021, he began a journey that would take him to the deepest parts of the ocean and into space within the same 12 month period.

Mr Connor, then 71 years old, teamed up with Triton Submersible founder Patrick Lahey on an expedition to the Mariana Trench region. The men completed three dives; one to an undersea mountain in the Mariana Trench, one to Sirena Deep, the third deepest part of the ocean, and one to Challenger Deep, the deepest known underwater spot on the planet.

“The trip was phenomenal,” Mr Connor told the Dayton Daily News at the time. “It’s a different world down there.”

The Challenger Deep is approximately 23,000 feet deeper than the Titanic’s final resting place.

Almost an exact year later, Mr Connor joined the Axiom Mission 1 as an astronaut. He acted as a pilot in the first all-private space mission, which took the crew to the International Space Station. In doing so, he became the second-oldest person to enter orbit after John Glenn, who entered space at age 77.

“I’ve always encouraged others to dream big, aim high and set impossible goals,” Mr Connor said at the time. “Nothing is impossible unless you think it is impossible. Both of these feats are great challenges that came with great responsibility.”

Mr Connor was reportedly taking heart cells for study at the space station.

Despite his various extreme hobbies and interests, Mr Connor does not consider himself a daredevil.

“First off, I don’t think that I’m a daredevil,” he told Autoweek. “I think there are no old daredevils. Whether it’s in racing, or aerobatic competitions, or going into space or going to the bottom of the ocean, I have never done anything that I thought the risks we couldn’t control or that there was unacceptable risks.”

In addition to his exploring, Mr Connors also does philanthropic work. He began the Connor Group Kids & Community Partners group, which “provides opportunities to disadvantages youth in the communities in which The Connor Group operates.”

Mr Connor also started the Greater Dayton School, which is Ohio’s “first non-religious private school for under-resourced students,” as well as Colin’s Lodge, which is a “recreation and enrichment program for young adults with special needs.”

The billionaire has not yet revealed when the trip to the Titanic will occur.