the Logitech F710 is a solid controller to get if you’re on a tight budget, but perhaps not exactly the type of equipment you want to stake your life on. […] Reviewers on sites like Amazon frequently mention issues with the wireless device’s connection.
The reporter, who followed an expedition of the Titan from the launch ship, wrote that “it seems like this submersible has elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness.”
There’s nothing wrong with using a game controller to steer the thing, I think the issue is more the lack of backup or failsafes.
Also, I’m very much a layperson in this field, but would it have not made sense to tether this thing to a ship on the surface? They could have kept in contact with the surface via the tether and had them reel the thing back in if there were problems with its propulsion or steering.
Also, there’s no way to open it from the inside, they’re bolted in.
So even if they surfaced, they’ll still run out of air if they’re not found soon.
I very much doubt that such a tether would be physically possible at the depths they were diving to.
I agree completely with the controller, it doesn’t really matter what is used to steer the ship, just that it has fail-safes.
I don’t think resurfacing is the most important part here. Bathyscaphes are normally designed to jettison iron or steel ballasts attached by electromagnet, which allows them to surface due to their natural buoyancy. It’s impossible to say for the Titan though, it was a specialty one-off design without much public detail about it’s design.
This is a really interesting video to get a take from an experienced submariner that I found really informative - https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac
Thanks for sharing that video link. It was very insightful.
The next version will use a Mad Catz controller
The sub’s older brother always gets to use the good controller.
Budget cuts smh
aa
Personally I think the best case scenario is for it to have imploded and they all died instantly. Any other option seems like torture to me.
aa
Well the sub can’t be opened from the inside, so if they’re floating on the surface they’ll still run out of air if not found. And people really underestimate how hard it is to find small craft in the ocean. You’re looking for a needle in a haystack, with the added twist that the ocean currents move stuff around so the search area grows
Yeah I think they mentioned it was the area the size of Connecticut…
Floating on the surface is only barely better than stranded deep underwater, there’s no hatch for them to open so they’ll still be limited by oxygen and there’s no locator beacon that might help rescuers find them.
No locator beacon?? Like… why the hell not??? Was this whole thing an exercise in seeing how stupid they could be?
That’s my fear in this case, and it can be occurring at the surface or down below - not sure which is worse.
I hope the best for them as well, but even if they make it to the surface, they can still suffocate because they’re bolted in from the outside.
It seems like a really bad idea to use a wireless controller instead of a wired one. But I guess it shouldn’t matter as long as they have a backup wired controller in case the wireless one dies.
I think there’s more to it than that.
When working at industrial factories if I catch a glimpse of something run off a cheap consumer alternative to the standard industry equipment I immediately question everything. If they’re willing to skimp on that item, where else have they skimped?
Check out this video where the owner shows off the sub.
He bought parts from Camper World!
They navigated by getting text messages from the ship…
That’s fucking insane when you’re going miles under the sea
You take that back! Camper World is a hallmark of quality, I bought all my kidney extraction equipment from there!
Username checks out and concerns me.
I’m curious what the popsicle tray looks like. Does it fit with the ice trays in that little compartment at the top of the freezer or do you need a custom setup?
Submarines have got to be insanely expensive right? It seems kinda silly to even cheap out on components like this, when their cost of probably going to be a tiny fraction of the cost of the vehicle anyway.
I take it you haven’t heard about what happened to this sub.
Laugh now but when it comes out that the Logitech controller was the only thing to survive the implosion, you’ll look pretty foolish.
The new nokia
Hopefully they at least have some spare AA batteries to swap in when it dies in the middle of a match.
Water and an X-Box controller. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, if there’s water inside the sub you probably have more serious problems to deal with.
To be fair at that depth if there’s water inside the sub you have 0 problems to deal with because you are dead
Man. That’s the control you give to your little brother because you don’t want him to get the good control all sticky.
https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-19-us-navy-high-tech-submarine-xbox-controller.html
Granted the evaluated this for periscope controls not steering but still. The leap isn’t huge and if you got some backup options that’s probably a pretty sensible path to take.
The x-box controller has a much higher build quality and uses xinput so there is far less likely to be software issues.
Also of interest via this blog is this statement from OceanGate about why their subs aren’t classed.
innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.
Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.
If I wanted to can and sell hubris, I know where to source it from now.
innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.
Lol, the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Just say regulations. You know, honesty, with a touch of bullshit at the end.
Something like:
"Regulations are too difficult to deal with when you’ve got a substandard machine which wouldn’t pass any of the requisite safety tests.
If someone happens to die, we’ve determined this to be acceptable collateral.
This is also known as innovation."
The good news is, the hubris is already in a can. The bad news is, the can is several thousand feet under the North Atlantic.
“Move fast and break things” maybe doesn’t apply too well to submarine design.
At my old job the director of my department had a poster up that said “move fast and break things”, but he also demanded 99.9999% uptime.
I relate a bit too much to this… agile when convenient as well.
Especially when the previous smaller version of the same design, with the same materials, had problems with it coming apart a few years back.
That’s a hard agree. I work in a highly regulated industry and literally every new dude who joins the company says some version of “I don’t see why we can’t just…” and proceeds to describe some moderately to highly illegal shit. Every single one.
It’s wild. I think they honestly believe they’re the first person to think up these completely obvious and simple “solutions” to problems that require some degree of control and complexity.
If you can’t imagine why someone built the fence then leave it alone until you do.
I was about to defend this (the US military uses XBox controllers for subs & drones), but then I saw that it was off-brand. No excuse for that.
Same, we use XBox controllers to operate remote cameras for pipeline inspections and they usually survive far longer than is reasonable considering some of the abuse we put them through. That being said, I have no idea about the quality of Logitech, but at the very least they should have had a backup controller available as it would have a small footprint and be a huge failsafe.
2 AA batteries required. (included)
They forgot to change the batteries before sending the sub out 💀
Or they accidently packed AAA instead.
Can’t rely on the batteries they include, they’re usually cheap with maybe 40% charge.
UK billionaire Hamish Harding, who holds three Guinness World Records and was both in space and in the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench, is one of the people currently on board the Titan.
Yikes, that’ll be some big trouble for them
And yet, probably second to the billionaire CEO also being in it.
Lets hope the company stays afloat after this one. Hopefully they can get more billionaires to sign on
oh no not a billionaire how sad
Yayyyy
deleted by creator
They could afford to pay $250k for a vacation, and they voluntarily rode this deathtrap?!
Proof positive that being rich doesn’t make you smart.
Where they get to watch the Titanic oh a fricking TV! It could as well just have been a simulation with a small robot that actually goes and films the Titanic.
What weirded me out was it was being cast as a joint exploration effort when one of the members was charging the others. Would seem like a total grift, given the cost-cutting steps, if not for the owner/‘designer’ putting their own life on the line too.
Such deep sea submersibles are inherently a bit of an experimental industry, but even a cursory scan of opinions from others in that community seems to suggest it’s seen as extremely not-kosher to put others’ lives on the line with your experimental craft. Dude just seems to have been a bit nutty, and not altogether considerate enough of his own wellbeing or others’.
Especially when you have to sign a waiver that literally reads:
“This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death.” Source
deleted by creator
I just hope this destroys the entire extreme vacationing fad… but it probably wont
It will just get more expensive.
I saw a video of this submersible. The view was through a TV. Imagine going to the bottom of the damned ocean to look at the Titanic on a TV.
Ah, look at the titanic while shitting in an outhouse sized tube with 4 other people… What an experience
What an absolute shit way to die: freeze to death from hypothermia due to the electric heaters running out of battery, crushed to death by water pressure compressing you inside a compartment, or drown to death in a dark unforgiving cold that strips you completely from all hope as it slowly rises and takes your precious air.
The sub has seven different ways to re-surface and went silent during the descent phase, so there’s only really one likely option — crushed in an instant. It could get stuck at depth if it got tangled but that seems unlikely during the descent.___
Long ago, I was a midshipman on a submarine. The crew LOVED to watch submarine disaster films - with water spraying in all frothy and fire-hosey. But the reality would be a flooding time measured in fractions of a second, in most cases - people are not used to dealing with pressures in the tons per square inch except at the nozzle of pressure washers where the flow is tiny. So, on the bright side, most submarine failure deaths are quick ones.
It’s barely a consolation but I read that during the Thresher submarine disaster the men would have been killed in 1/20th of a second, too fast for their nervous systems to process the implosion.
Will the resulting scandal be known as OceanGategate?
Nah, titan-ic
So is everyone else thinking they accidentally fucking plowed into the Titanic because a controller input got stuck?
Pretty unlikely. It’s easy to dunk on them for the controller, but they apparently carried backups, and it’s nowhere near the most concerning thing about their operations. It’s much more likely that their extremely brittle carbon-fiber hull fatigued (again) and the ship was crushed in a fraction of a second.
That or lost connection/battery.
The only wireless controller I ever owned would continue any repeating input active when connection dropped, if batteries or wifi died; they could just be cruising at max speed off in whatever direction they were facing, until the motor batteries run dry.
You’d like to think they’d carry backup interface, or even just use a wired controller, but this whole op sounds pretty McGuyver top to bottom.
Honestly, if they actually did ram the Titanic, it would be kind of funny in a fucked up way.
Like, the “joke” would be: what do an iceberg and a claustrophobic submarine have in common?
