For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
I’m a bit confused that this is receiving so much attention. What’s so special about this case compared to all the other cases of people being lost at sea every year, besides them being rich?
Honestly, this case is somewhat extraordinary, in a deeply disturbing way.
First there was this amazing quote from the CEO who is missing on the craft right now
“You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste,” Rush told CBS’ David Pogue during an episode of his “Unsung Science” podcast. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.”
Second, aside from being made from questionable experimental materials, the sub was being controlled by an old, off brand xbox controller. There were numerous design and safety issues that were known at the time of departure. They kinda just did whatever in the F they wanted to. It’s a millionaire game of Fuck Around and Find Out and they’re not used to finding out.
Third, the damage waiver
The disclaimer, read out by CBS correspondent David Pogue, read: “This experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.”
A nervous-looking Pogue makes a face and says, “Where do I sign?” in the footage recorded when he went on the $250,000 (£195,000) trip to see the Titanic at the end of last year.
I get that it’s just some rich idiots (and one of their kids) crossing the river styx, but it’s not very often you see such amazing disregard for basic safety.
I don’t get why the Logitech controller is so focused on. I get that it’s probably not the right controller due to it’s age and wireless only nature but COTS parts are often more reliable than in-house ones. The lack of certification as you mentioned is a much larger issue.
Any game controller, would be insufficient to put 5 peoples lives in danger.
If you were going to use a game controller to do so anyway, you’d use one that can be easily replaced, maybe something manufactured in the past decade. That F710 is old (2011) and honestly didn’t rate all that well compared to other controllers of it’s time. It’s wireless, adding needless risk.
The certification is all part of it. The control systems need to have backups. The gamepad aspect is interesting because it’s blatantly spitting in the face of safety which seemed to be the CEO’s style anyway.
Would it have been better than a new xbox controller? I’m not sure, perhaps not if it the new one was at least wired.
dear God just think if the part that failed was the controllers batteries
I wouldn’t trust that controller for a dungeon run in the Elder Scrolls Online and here’s this dude visiting the Titanic in person with one. They did say he has backups on board, though.
I work on robotics and drones for the military and we use game controllers for teleoperation all the time. There are some times we use more rugged and robust controllers, but they are essentially just expensive, yellow Playstation controllers with e-stop buttons on the bottom (look up Fort robotics controller).
I think you’d be surprised at how often the military uses game controllers for mission critical tech. The convergent design of game controllers has kind of solved the problem of minimal, handheld, input-output machines that are capable of commanding difficult procedures.
Do you think it’s fun killing people and pretending it’s a video game?
What? They don’t pretend it’s a game, they just use game controllers. Killing people is the game for them.
I don’t operate anything in the field but I design and build the stuff. Fortunately, I haven’t had to build any weapon systems or combat vehicles yet because I also have some moral apprehension to that as well, but I try not to shame those who do work on that stuff if I can avoid it. It’s a pretty standard meme that wide-eyed aerospace engineers with dreams of space travel get stuck designing missiles to pay the bills. I’m sure there’s not that many engineers in weapons tech that wouldn’t switch to rockets or self driving cars in a heartbeat if they could afford to and had an in.
Hey I appreciate the honest response. I was being a bit of a dick and I feel bad now. Peace.
No it’s okay. I completely understand the sentiment and it’s the reason I tried my damnedest to avoid defense entirely in my job search, but with my skillset and the absolute cutthroat competitiveness of the space exploration industry, I had to broaden my search eventually. A lot of people that design the death machines also have similar reservations (I have met some that think explosions and death are cool but they are the minority…), but it’s usually those far outside the industry that hold such vitriol to those that work in the military industrial complex.
The problem isn’t the people, it’s the system and I try to remind people that when I see them attack me or others for working in defense (hopefully I can transfer out to space flight soon). Be mad at your representatives and politicians for voting for the ever expanding defense budget. Be mad at the CEOs and shareholder boards that push war for their war profiteering. Be mad at capitalism that forces the labourers into jobs they’d rather not have. Don’t be mad at the 23 year old fresh engineering grad that couldn’t land the job at NASA and Raytheon handed them a fat check to pay their loans back with.
flying any passengers with em?
Rarely in my line of work but we do do it sometimes. To your point, outside of what I do I’m not sure how often game controllers are used in situations like passenger flight or submarines where you can’t just mash the e-stop button and bail out.
The safety comment reminds me of some of the more irritating things I’ve been told in life about illness. Many people make remarks like “Well it’s not cancer” or “It isn’t going to kill you” as if things are black and white. An illness either kills you or you’re fine, right? Uh, no. The thing this brilliant CEO is missing is that obviously there are degrees of danger. Getting out of bed or getting in my car are measured risks. Taking a rinky-dink submersible to 2 miles underneath the ocean with a cavalier imbecile is a very different class of risk.
Wait, so they’ve done this dive before? For some reason I thought it was the first time
They have money
It being so completely ridiculous. If a boat sinks, it just sinks… bad luck.
But this was some crazy person using some jerry-rigged submarine and then rich people actually trusting that.
the quality of the sub really triggers my schadenfreude
More mysterious. Spookier. Generally more novel. Like you said, people get lost at sea all the time. People rarely get lost thousands of miles below sea.
One thing I can say is if they ever do find the sub intact, its very likely these guys recorded their last hours on their phones and we are very likely to see that at some point… talk about nightmare fuel.
Nah, it’s only 4km. If they weren’t lazy billionaires, they’d get out and walk home.
Traditional media coverage + social media hype. Add in the fact that it’s a group of billionaires gallivanting in the deep sea. It’s a recipe for becoming a media sensation across all types of people.
It’s mostly the being rich thing.
It’s really sad that something like this gets so much news coverage and international support, while poor people are facing similar fates and we all pretend it’s not happening.
I understand the news coverage. These are folks who are relatable to a lot of western audiences. People aspire to their wealth. The international support and rescue efforts though are a little shameful. You don’t see this kind of efforts when it’s migrants fleeing war and oppression.
I see the attention on the war in Ukraine similarly. What Russia is doing is shameful and I’m glad Ukraine is getting so much help. At the same time Yemen has it much worse. Hardly anyone even knows there is a war happening there, but it’s American built bombs that are dropping on neighborhoods. They’re not quite white and relatable enough to get us all putting their flag on our Twitter profiles.