Titanic tourist submersible goes missing with search under way

[namelesstacotruck]

1) They proved that a carbon fiber hull can survive multiple dives. Previous attempts to build something like the Titan were abandoned due to the belief that they could only survive one dive.

No. The opposite. The position was that after 1 dive the Hull was compromised. This will be used as proof that is true. Can it make more dives after being compromised? Yep. This proves that true. But nobody wants to go in a sub that may or may not have hull failures.

 

[Rei is Shit.]

You'd want titanium, not steel, to build something for that kind of crush depth, but the kind of metal is kind of immaterial, Rush's chief issue that led him to go with carbon fiber is that you'd need to either pay a specialized tooling facility to manufacture tubes/domes of the Titan's size, which is a) mega expensive, and b) it's not a guarantee you could even get time at the facility since shops capable of fabbing stuff like that basically operate 24/7, there's a lot of demand for their work. Which means the OTHER alternative is building a facility of your own, which was never viable just because of the scale that OceanGate worked at. Like, their 10 year, best-use-case-ever plan was maybe a fleet of 10 vessels, and that's if billionaires everywhere get super into deep sea tourism.
Much easier to just lay successive strips of carbon fiber over a tube in a warehouse in Everett yourself. No need to spend multiple decades building up the capital doing shallower tourist expeditions with their Antipodes model and then building Titan properly, Rush can get his ass to the Titanic and become the deep sea Elon Musk before he's too old to appreciate it.

The actual logic is this;

A titanium pressure vessel weighs a lot, which in turn requires a very large sub in-order to have enough buoyancy. This not only results in a more expensive sub but greatly increases the size of ship needed to operate it, which results in huge operating costs which dwarf the acquisition costs of the sub.

A CF pressure vessel allowed for a very small sub to carry 5 people. This was not only a much cheaper sub, but one that could be operated off a dinky little barge that was towed by a small vessel, with a proportionally sized crew.

The very low operating costs + 4 paying customers per trip meant $$$$$$$$$$$

 

[Preacher ✝]

The Titan: BANG

Stockton: "Let's dive again and see what happens."

Words to adequately convey how retarded this man was elude me.

The biggest tragedy here is that the final implosion was likely so instantaneous that he never had even a moment to reflect on how his hubris got them all killed.

 

[The Ugly One]

The Navy subs use XBOX Elite controllers for controlling the periscope cameras. Apparently the controllers they originally had from the contractors were cheap pieces of shit and then they realized they were just regular USB controllers and the XBOX controllers worked and were far more robust and precise.

Why aren't they using KB/M? Skill issue.

 

[Unimaginative Username]

Edit: Oh man I just remembered all the dipshits defending using a controller because "zomg they use Xbox controllers on military submarines!" Two things for those: they're not bargain basement logitechs. And they're used for non-critical tertiary systems, not piloting the damn sub.

I don't know about submarines, but I'm sorry to say that outside of them, controllers are actually used for important systems. FN no longer prints catalogs, but we can take a look at one of the last editions they put out and on page 101 see a pair of robotic machine gun turrets:

You got your choice of a traditional joystick and, because the military has apparently stooped to recruiting console peasants, a controller built to military endurance standards. One of those products is still available for sale but it's awfully vague about the controls, presumably because too many people made fun of the gamepad option.

 

[Path Wanderer]

I only feel bad for the University of Washington interns and partners who perhaps unwittingly attached themselves to this embarrassment.

 

[Mr.Bucket]

but I'm sorry to say that outside of them, controllers are actually used for important systems

Still not a $20 wireless controller where if it fails everyone inside dies.

 

[seal]

This report really makes you appreciate the stickler for rules that you normally would want to tell off for being anal about every little dotted

There's a few areas where you absolutely need to be a stickler. If you're not, then you end up like the Indian navy, sinking a nuclear powered ballistic sub because you left the storm window open.. Submarines/submersibles are right under spaceships and nuclear reactors. Submarine wartime casualty rates are astounding. The WW2 German U-boat casualty rate was 75%. The U.S., a country with generally low casualties, was still at 20%ish. Airplanes are up there too. I read a lot about amateur pilots dying because they neglected maintenance, checks, etc.

 

[RacistComputer79]

To this day, I am still amazed that this guy (the CEO) decided to use his own death trap contraption. Like even if you are completely ignorant, you must subconsciously know that you are cutting corners and that what you made is dangerous. Usually CEOs send employees to test their own death traps.

Even if I know nothing of submarines, I would never touch anything labeled as "experimental". Is this what happens when you are surrounded by yes men? You immediately disregard any possibility of recieving a darwin award yourself?

 

[JustKiwiPosting]

Amidst all the finger pointing, the marveling at carbon fiber even lasting that long, and the sheer sociopath level of hubris from Rush, I have to say that unless you're on a really specific and critical scientific mission, having a desire to physically go to the bottom of the ocean yourself is retard level hubris in general. I can't feel a lick of sympathy for anyone who died during this because it sounds like a retarded idea from the get-go.

 

[big pauper]

Still not a $20 wireless controller where if it fails everyone inside dies.

it's actually not unreasonable at all to use a logitech gamepad in testing or as a stand-in, or even use a modified gamepad in pre-production to have the features or robustness needed because you dont want to drop for the expensive hardware. that's kind of standard practice for prototyping things. key word prototyping. but knowing what we know now it's pretty obvious they weren't like flashing a custom firmware to the usb gamepad or anything, they were running all of the software on the submarine off of a laptop hidden under the floorboards and thought that 3d printed extenders for the analog sticks were good enough to make it look like they had come up with a custom solution

it's so deeply indian coded its insane

 

[seal]

All of the rules you see in place both for pilots and maintenance have made it so this kind of stuff is very, very rare to see.

I was writing a post about how we need to abolish the rules to get more air crash investigations episodes, but it looks like it's actually still running

 

[I was a Teenage “JA”-man]

Any discussion of this automatically becomes
“Hmhm, rich people are dead! Why can’t they all die!?”
“Now if you excuse me I will consoom more rich people media”

 

[Rancid Xylitol]

everything about that sub was quintessentially indian and I'm very surprised that the guy wasn't a jeet

Ah, but jeetness transcends racial boundaries. Anyone can embrace the philosophy if sufficiently determined. He lived by the jeet and died by the jeet.

 

[Metatron]

Hubris and bad braincells/cash ratio.

 

[The Ugly One]

Compared to airline negligence, this was a success.

1. Just a few people died. Tragic, but the 737 MAX killed way more people

2. The CEO who is at fault for everything died with them. Dennis Muilenberg, the CEO who led Boeing to kill hundreds of people, got a golden parachute worth tens of millions and now runs a PE company dedicated to looting employee retirement funds. Stockton Rush is no longer a danger to anybody.

 

[Mr.Bucket]

Wyświetl załącznik 9242670

it's actually not unreasonable at all to use a logitech gamepad in testing or as a stand-in, or even use a modified gamepad in pre-production to have the features or robustness needed because you dont want to drop for the expensive hardware. that's kind of standard practice for prototyping things. key word prototyping. but knowing what we know now it's pretty obvious they weren't like flashing a custom firmware to the usb gamepad or anything, they were running all of the software on the submarine off of a laptop hidden under the floorboards and thought that 3d printed extenders for the analog sticks were good enough to make it look like they had come up with a custom solution

it's so deeply indian coded its insane

That's the thing I think a lot of people are missing when I make fun of them using a cheap logitech controller.

I'm not against using controllers in certain situations. I'm not even against using cheap controllers in certain situations.

But using a cheap controller as the only means of controlling the vehicle you're trusting your life in at the bottom of the ocean with no backups (if anything a cheap wired controller COULD BE THE BACKUP) is where I have my issue.

 

[DenseDeerFather]

Emergency Preparedness

• "OceanGate’s rescue plan for an emergency at deep-ocean depths where the Titan could not resurface using its own capabilities relied on emergency contacts with remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) coming to assist.
  • "When conducting diving operations, OceanGate also did not have any contracts in place with these ROV operators."
    • THERE WAS NO EXACT EMERGENCY PLAN IN PLACE IF SOMETHING WENT WRONG.
    • THERE WERE NO VERIFIED CONTACTS OF WHO WOULD HELP IN AN EMERGENCY.
    • THERE WAS NO TESTING TO SEE IF ANY OF THE REMOTE CREWS COULD ACTUALLY HELP IN AN EMERGENCY.

I think this part is what gets to me the most from this report. The sheer amount of arrogance and disregard for people's safety and delusion to not implement what are basic procedures in case something goes wrong. Even if you think you're God's gift to engineering, there had to be a moment where something akin to basic common sense would shine through.

Not even from a place of goodwill because clearly the fucker didn't give a shit about that but at least to protect his own image.

At the same time his ego appears to have been the barrier for any amount of positive progress and development. So he can't even stroke his own ego by putting a failsafe feature in because that would require he acknowledged his vision wasn't perfect.

It's a tale as old as time so I don't even know why it gets to me this much.

I suppose it's because he died under the weight of his own hubris unlike many of his ilk. Poetic really although I echo the sentiment that I too would have liked to watch him get a porcupine rimjob in court as everyone and their mother and the state sues his ass.

Oh well I'll take nature course correcting itself instead. Just a shame it had to include an innocent kid

 

[Nibbles]

The only positive is that it was physically impossible for them to feel any pain or be aware that they were dying.

How is that a positive?

 

[auto5]

Spoiler: IMAGE