Titan Sub CEO Dismissed Safety Warnings as 'Baseless Cries', Emails Show (bbc.com) 180
Warnings over the safety of OceanGate's Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. From a report: In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body. Mr Rush responded that he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation". The tense exchange ended after OceanGate's lawyers threatened legal action, Mr McCallum said. "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic," he wrote to the OceanGate boss in March 2018. "In your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry: 'She is unsinkable'".
In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a "catastrophic implosion" on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan's safety measures. "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed. "Until a sub is classed, tested and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations," he wrote in one email. "I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative," he added. "As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk." In his response a few days later, Mr Rush defended his business and his credentials. He said OceanGate's "engineering focused, innovative approach... flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation".
In the messages, Mr Rush, who was among five passengers who died when the Titan experienced what officials believe was a "catastrophic implosion" on Sunday, expresses frustration with the criticism of Titan's safety measures. "We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote. "I take this as a serious personal insult." Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. The vessel was never certified or classed. "Until a sub is classed, tested and proven it should not be used for commercial deep dive operations," he wrote in one email. "I implore you to take every care in your testing and sea trials and to be very, very conservative," he added. "As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk." In his response a few days later, Mr Rush defended his business and his credentials. He said OceanGate's "engineering focused, innovative approach... flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation".
I am looking forward.... (Score:5, Funny)
...to booking a seat on the next charter to view the OceanGate wreckage.
Re:I am looking forward.... (Score:5, Funny)
"We have heard the baseless cries of 'you are going to kill someone' way too often," he wrote.
Good news, he won't be hearing complaints any more.
What are people bitching about? (Score:4, Funny)
Those people wanted a Titanic experience. And they got one.
Re:I am looking forward.... (Score:5, Funny)
...to booking a seat on the next charter to view the OceanGate wreckage.
I've been (morbidly) saying much the same. There'll be a day that you can book a tour to see the graveyard of the people who died on a tour to see the graveyard of the people who died on a tour.
But the bonus thought is the vessel name progression. First we had the Titanic. Then the Titan. The next vessel: the Tit.
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There'll be a day that you can book a tour to see the graveyard of the people who died on a tour to see the graveyard of the people who died on a tour.
We already got one! (in best French accent)
https://allthatsinteresting.co... [allthatsinteresting.com]
Re: I am looking forward.... (Score:3)
I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
We seem to hear lots of similar disparaging commentary regarding regulations and whatnot from CEOs of newer companies (Musk immediately comes to mind, but he's just one of many). I wonder if it's the new "move fast and break things, don't slow us down" paradigm, or if CEOs have always been like this and we just happen to hear about it more nowadays because internet.
Boutique operation (Score:3, Informative)
This was never intended to be much of a business. The guy was just an idiot.
CEOs are usually aggressive but strangely conservative. They want to push stuff to the limit within the bounds of reality, unless they are looking to cash out, in which case they will lie with impunity, but generally in such a way as to protect themselves from future liability.
Re:Boutique operation (Score:4)
This was never intended to be much of a business. The guy was just an idiot.
Oh no I think he was. It looks like he wanted to use this as en opening into the oil & gas industry: https://www.insider.com/oceang... [insider.com]
He was also an idiot.
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It's true that there were almost no deep-diving manned submersibles in use; with the exceptions largely being a handful of academic research devices and a more mysterious handful of specialty military gear intended for deepwater salvage or f
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>> but, because he had an emotional attachment to manned operation,
No, I think that he saw a financial opportunity to leverage the emotional attachments of extremely wealthy people
There is no economic case to make money from joe schmoe, unless that schmoe is a billionaire, and even that economic case breaks down if you require "wasting" time on testing
imo CEO got what he deserved, maybe even the rich dumbass who was willing to pay a ton of money to brag about seeing Titanic with his own eyes
Bummer for
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
I work with many entrepreneurs. They're all amazing people, but almost all of them, and in particular the successful ones, are damaged or traumatized in some way, and that trauma either gave them the perseverance to overcome or it created a unique skill/coping mechanism that they turned into success. In no way do people really want to be any of these people; it's a difficult life these people choose and kudos to them, but also they're deranged to take on the stress they do. And for every Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, there's 1,000 more just like them but utterly fail, losing everything.
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This is a post-dot-com shift toward a new culture of business radicalism that fuses traditional business paternalism with Bay Area counterculture social experimentation. As with a cult, a modern disruptive startup sees traditional authorities, or indeed any outside restraints to their experimentation, as illegitimate.
Look at this guy. He held up the fact that the industry had gone 35 years without a fatal accident as proof that industry standards were *unreasonable*. Fifty years ago that attitude wouldn'
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Your right wing swipe at "Librul California" is bullshit. It might have been true back at the start of Google, or even Apple, but that is prehistoric compared to today's reality.
Today's Silicon Valley is Theranos, and Google's real slogan, "Be Evil and Make Money." It's not old school counter culture, it's Libertarianism blended with predatory capitalism. That can't be called "experimental" because it standard operating procedure in virtually all large sc
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I'm sorry, are you trying to insinuate that a postal worker is not allowed breaks or water? Especially as 66-67 is right on the fucking dot for the average life expectancy for an African American male? Given that he was almost immediately given CPR by someone who saw him collapse and was unable to be resuscitated I'm going stroke or heart attack caused by major heart disease.
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You absolutely hear about successes, as well as catastrophic failures. What you don't hear are about the huge number of quiet and inconsequential failures -- the people who just ran out of seed money before hitting their revenue goals.
There is something to be said for caveat emptor, although there's often an information assymetry between vendors and consumers. But I'm thinking more of things like sidewalks littered with unlicensed dockless electric rental scooters. It affects people who aren't part of th
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I don't know why this is getting so much attention when so many are dying where they never made the choice but was decided for them like in Ukraine. These people chose this. It's sad. they signed documents listing the risks. They knowingly took a chance. This time it didn't pay off.
Mostly because it's funny that a tech "disruptor" got himself and some billionaires killed after whining about safety rules. Unfortunately there was a 19 year old kid and a legit explorer also onboard.
Re: I wonder (Score:2)
All noted. However : Standards are built on top of a pile of corpses so that we learn from the past and dont repeat it. Ignoring the past becauseâ¦â¦innovationâ¦â¦.stop disruptophobe is going to kill innovation, not advance it
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
New companies usually don't like regulations because they're expensive and time consuming to figure out and comply with; a barrier you have to overcome. Established companies usually like them for that same reason.
"Move fast and break things" seems to be a software industry thing. It's really "ship it and fix the bugs later." You can only really get away with that when it's software, because recalling hardware is expensive.
I wouldn't read too much into Rush's comments about regulation. When you're trying to build a new product, regulation is an expense. If you elect to skip it, you've got no choice but to claim that it's unnecessary, not applicable, misguided, whatever. The actual sub was tested to depth and completed quite a few successful dives, so it most likely died to repeated stress fatigue. Some airliners died to that too, before we figured out that you have to design around and monitor for it. Quite possibly we would have lost some of the first composite airliners as well, except that the aviation industry took it very seriously when they were introducing new hull materials.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was that he went out of his way to avoid hiring experienced staff due to his own politically motivated ideology.
What politically motivated ideology? Hating to spend money? Not liking being told "no"?
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SpaceX's approach to "move fast and break things" can also be described as "test early, test often" and "fail fast". It's heavily based on real-world testing to root out failure modes in systems too complex or poorly understood to handle otherwise (as demonstrated with the Shuttle, the alternative is "move slowly and break things anyway, with people on board"). What's industry standard practice may be overly conservative, obsolete, and even flawed, but you need extensive testing to demonstrate that.
This phi
Tesla Dead Puppies (Score:5, Informative)
Tesla has been irresponsible with promoting self-driving tech. It's one reason why I don't drive around San Francisco if I can avoid doing so. I saw the video of the Tesla randomly braking on the Bay Bridge.
It's not limited to Tesla though. Just a week or two ago I read about the Waymo self-driving car that ran over someone's pet dog in San Francisco.
People who work on this tech seem to feel a detachment from any responsibility. I guess as an individual software engineer it's easy to feel that your entire team shares the burden, ao you don't individually need to worry about it. As a result, nobody on the team feels any burden of responsibility.
Re:Tesla Dead Puppies (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Tesla Dead Puppies (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe.
But you have to admit, if your Mom gets run over by a drunk driver, at least you have an individual to be angry at for their irresponsible life choices, and there's someone you can hold to account, and feel a sense of justice.
If your Mom gets killed by a Tesla self-driving vehicle having a software hiccup, and you're told "well that's just the way it is" and there's no one person you can hold to account, you may never feel any sense of justice for what's been done. And nothing may even be done at all. You'll just be told to accept it and move on.
The feeling sort of hits differently doesnt it?
Re: Tesla Dead Puppies (Score:4, Informative)
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Mercedes [...] have stated that they are responsible for crashes
Taking responsibility in the sense of giving some money and maybe issuing a public apology; not that an executive is going to jail for ignoring safety concerns. Certainly better than nothing, and apparently better than the competition, but I'd say still not enough. Executives at Boeing avoiding tribunal despite the MAX crashes makes me think we are still far from an ideal situation.
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You'll just be told to accept it and move on.
Yeah, this is pretty much the calling cry of the whole tech industry at this point. Don't even get me started on right to repair, security issues, walled gardens, or DRM.
I'm fed up with living fast and breaking things. There's a reason why I have zero interest in all of the new electric cars.
Re: Tesla Dead Puppies (Score:2)
Always fun when they try to put the blame on someone else. Enjoy the deafening silence when you pull up the paper trail to prove you did your job. And then they carry on as usual.
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Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no Musk apologist, but in his defense, the "move fast and break things" is not endangering people, because he's doing that to find out what's wrong and fix them.
is this statement intended to include what Musk has done at Tesla or only SpaceX? Because the rollout of autopilot+"full self-driving" certainly has endangered(and killed) people. And i'd categorize it as a "move fast and break things" approach.
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Re: I wonder (Score:2)
Musk is a fucking retard. (Score:2)
This reminds me of that time Uwe Boll called out his critics to a boxing match. [youtube.com] Then knocked out one after the other. [theguardian.com]
Difference being that Musk is the lard-ass schlub [twitter.com] calling out the obsessive [youtube.com] who doesn't treat it like a game but as a competition. [youtube.com]
The only sad thing is it's probably gonna be just a lot of hugging, so we will be denied the footage of Zuckerberg breaking his fist along with Musk's jaw.
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no Musk apologist, but in his defense, the "move fast and break things" is not endangering people, because he's doing that to find out what's wrong and fix them.
His factories are endangering employees
His cars are killing and injuring people
His neural implants are torturing monkeys
His starship didn't kill anyone yet but certainly endangered people (and animals) when it failed to self-destruct poroperly.
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If he isn't, then it is up to the federal government to step in and levy fines and correct the issues.
But that means that he is, in fact, endangering employees.
"I'm not endangering live of these hostages, it's the police's job to prevent me from doing bank robberies!
If you're not aware, the government has, in fact, been fining Tesla for it: https://www.thedrive.com/news/... [thedrive.com] and there's the whole covid thing.
Sounds like security in tech (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is when there's a data breach, people usually don't die. In this case, at least there was poetic justice: The CEO literally went down with the ship.
Re:Sounds like security in tech (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is when there's a data breach, people usually don't die.
My hospital would like a word with you.
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Seems a good example of common sense smell test and red flags. Shunned standards, didn't do enough critical thinking, didn't honestly appraise risk.
The insight though is the "skin in the game" rule was worthless. Self delusion ruled instead.
Independent critical appraisal was needed... fired... ginormous red flag.
This Is Why You Eliminate Noise... (Score:2)
You cannot get in the habit of ignoring noise. This is what happens. If there is some noise, you figure out why it is being generated and you stop it. That is either by adjusting what you're collecting or otherwise. You're going to miss critical things when you're habitually ignoring things.
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You cannot get in the habit of ignoring noise.
If you can still turn the stereo up loud enough so that you can't hear the noise it's not a real problem yet.
I smell LAWSUIT (Score:2)
Three families will seem to have very profitable suits against OceanGate, and possibly against Rush's estate as well (seeing as Rush is no longer around to be sued personally).
DISCLAIMER: IANAL... But this looks like textbook negligence to my layman's eye.
in an admiralty court of international waters? (Score:2)
in an admiralty court of international waters?
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The waivers won't do shit probably but the owner/ceo is dead, they'll liquidate the company and that's going to be it.
Re:I smell LAWSUIT (Score:5, Informative)
Those things usually aren't enforceable as written. Signing your life away is not really possible. Actual releases of all claims are carefully worded. It's a speed bump, nothing else.
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Lawyers laugh hysterically as they wipe their asses with "waivers".
This lawsuit writes itself, no "AI" needed.
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There's a good chance the families can still sue if they can show that the waiver didn't adequately warn of risks that OceanGate were aware of. If it can be shown that OceanGate negligently or willfully failed to adequately inform the passengers of risks, they'll be on the hook for something.
Re: I smell LAWSUIT (Score:2)
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IANAL but as far as I know liability waivers only take you so far in the case of gross negligence.
Correct. I've been told that by people who are lawyers while working up a contract with just such a waiver. You can waive force majeure, things that no reasonable person could expect to go wrong, and even minor negligence up to a point, but when your employees are telling you that what you are doing is dangerous and you keep doing it anyway, absent the sort of situation where you didn't have time to fix the problem before someone got hurt, you're likely to be screwed, because at that point, you're talking
Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this surprising? A lot of you came out of the woodwork to howl, shriek and down mod me for saying this [slashdot.org], but it is absolutely true and undisputed at this point that the CEO bragged about how his team wasn't full of a bunch of 50 year old white men. He literally said he wanted a lot of young people and diversity because it would be "inspirational."
Well, it turns out that when your goal is to actively avoid senior engineers with decades of experience and actively recruit for youth, innate characteristic
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:5, Insightful)
It certainly is funny watching some mud being slung back in the other direction and I can't say I feel all that bad watching it happen. I just don't think that I could bring myself to believe that it's fully deserved in this particular case.
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Did these people die because blacks and women were on the team? Of course not. They died because the CEO and recruiters actively sought well-meaning, but less competent people because they fit an "inspirational story."
Hating white people makes you just as much a racist as hating black people. In this case, hating white people paid off (for the rest of us).
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You're either trolling or you genuinely believe your irrelevant fallacy.
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:4, Interesting)
The CEO was trying to make a joke about DEI and conservatives aren’t getting it.
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:4, Insightful)
> He specifically said he didn't want the most experienced and competent and instead wanted "inspirational" people instead
So is he saying he doesn't want experienced people who are going to bring up security issues like McCallum did because as he said he takes that "as a serious personal insult", but rather what he does want is "inspirational" people, the ones who are going to inspire him with their somewhat naive, uncritical or wide eyed enthusiasm ?
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Was he really "committed to DEI", or just jumping on the latest CEO-fad buzzword? Maybe he found a couple of yes-men who happened to be brown and thought it would be a good PR move to highlight that? I'd be interested to know the actual breakdown of his engineers.
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this surprising? A lot of you came out of the woodwork to howl, shriek and down mod me for saying this [slashdot.org]
One of the times when the mod system worked admirably.
but it is absolutely true and undisputed at this point that the CEO bragged about how his team wasn't full of a bunch of 50 year old white men. He literally said he wanted a lot of young people and diversity because it would be "inspirational."
Well, it turns out that when your goal is to actively avoid senior engineers with decades of experience and actively recruit for youth, innate characteristics, etc. you have no said quality engineering is not your #1 engineering goal.
No.
He avoided experienced professionals because they were expensive.
Just like he avoided existing designs that used the proper materials, because they were expensive.
And like he avoided getting the design tested and certified, because it was expensive.
And we have countless records of people in the industry telling him his craft was potentially unsafe and he needed to get it certified. And him ignoring them.
And finally we have a lawsuit from someone who was fired for speaking up about the safety.
But you still think he would have succeeded if not for those meddling females and minorities?
Did these people die because blacks and women were on the team? Of course not. They died because the CEO and recruiters actively sought well-meaning, but less competent people because they fit an "inspirational story."
You know what, I found a team photo [twitter.com], and they look pretty damn white and mostly male. A fair number of youth but actually a fair number of middle aged and older folks as well. It doesn't look demographically unusual.
So is your claim not that the staggering incompetence of black people so strong they sunk the craft from the sheer fact he wanted to employ them... or will you actually admit that you're completely wrong?
I will say one thing, you have quite the obsession with DEI.
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Fucking christ you're a retard. Get back to me when you find a photo of the engineering team and people who built the thing, not the fucking dive team out on the boat.
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:4, Informative)
"So is your claim not that the staggering incompetence of black people so strong they sunk the craft from the sheer fact he wanted to employ them"
Well let's see - what did he write?:
"Did these people die because blacks and women were on the team? Of course not."
So, no, it fucking obviously is not his claim.
Finish the quote:
Did these people die because blacks and women were on the team? Of course not. They died because the CEO and recruiters actively sought well-meaning, but less competent people because they fit an "inspirational story."
They were just throwing in the standard I'm not sexist/racist disclaimer before suggesting the disaster was the fault of incompetent females and minorities.
Not to mention, they jumped to this conclusion entirely based on that single interview. As I pointed out, the actual team was pretty male and very white.
I will say one thing, you have quite the obsession with enforcing sexist, racist, ageist DEI.
You're free to keep basing opinions on nothing.
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You're free to keep missing the point. But it's getting boring.
Go woke, go broke.
Here's the point, look at the actual photos of their teams [twitter.com].
Mostly white, largely male, and a fair bit of grey hair.
So where are all these less competent young females and minorities who apparently messed things up?
You and the OP are so obsessed with blaming everything on "woke" and "DEI" and whatever else the alt-right has gotten obsessed with you missed the obvious fact that the demographics you're trying to blame don't seem to even be there.
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How many of those women are there because of sexist DEI recruitment policies?
You are so obsessed with defending "woke" and discrimination based on gender and whatever else the hateful woke has gotten obsessed with, you missed the obvious fact that the demographics you're trying to deny are clearly there.
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So, no, it fucking obviously is not his claim..
Yeah it basically is, if you have any sort of reading comprehension and literacy. The OP is directly blaming the deaths on DEI aka not being a racist piece of shit, instead of the CEO being a cheap dumbass.
Re:Once again, killed by an obsession with DEI (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the best examples in some time of the right's inability to argue about anything in good faith.
(1) CEO is on record lying about everything in terms of safety and performance of their new vehicle.
(2) CEO claims to be invested in DEI and hire only young, disadvantaged, minorities for the team.
(3) Vehicle implodes killing a full crew of all rich, mostly old, men (who are all white or could easily pass for that).
But the right can't add 1 + 2 + 3 together to determine the CEO was simply lying about #2.
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
DeplorableCodeMonkey, you need to learn these lessons:
1. Being objectively right will not protect you from a troll mod. Following-up on a troll mod with cries of "but I was right!! see??" will not protect you from a troll mod.
2. Even if you actually are right, how you deliver your message has a huge impact on whether you are modded troll. Tactless and brusque posts will get modded troll, regardless of details.
3. Posting on a political hot topic guarantees troll mods. Both sides of the political spectrum
OceanGate Arbitration at sea will rule for OceanGa (Score:2)
OceanGate Arbitration at sea will rule for OceanGate.
maybe an admiralty court will have differnt rules to over rule this.
Don't be sad (Score:2)
It's a Marketing Ploy (Score:5, Funny)
They'll bump the price from $250K to $375K and advertise "Now! Two Shipwrecks For The Price Of One!"
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Respect the old, white male. But Not Proven. (Score:2)
But until it is discovered what exactly caused the loss of the Titan, I think it is unfair to blame the CEO for it.
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It was definitely his excuse for not having any navy submariner vets working on his deathtrap.
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But until it is discovered what exactly caused the loss of the Titan, I think it is unfair to blame the CEO for it.
It was the viewport. But I doubt they ever confirm that.
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The viewport was only rated for 1300m depth (compared to 3800m depth that they were operating at), but I doubt it was the point of failure. More likely the cylindrical carbon fibre composite hull section developed internal damage from pressure cycling and failed catastrophically.
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Where there's baseless smoke there's baseless fire (Score:5, Informative)
From what I understand:
* The man quoted in the BBC article, who is a deep sea exploration expert, warned him repeatedly
* Engineers, specifically of submersible craft, warned him that carbon fiber was an unacceptable material for deep-sea diving (a chief problem being that flaws caused by shearing due to unequal pressures would go unnoticed until the point of sudden, catastrophic failure—something you see in carbon fiber bicycle frames)
* He was strongly urged to have his design certified to industry standards, but he refused
* He exclusively hired young, "spirited" people, because, presumably, older people with experience would know better
* His own employees expressed safety concerns (and were fired)
If all of these were considered "baseless cries," this dude didn't have "innovation" on his mind, what he had was a religion.
Well for once the ceo (Score:2)
Classification is pretty important (Score:5, Informative)
That's what classification societies [wikipedia.org] are for. They set standards for what equipment should do, how hulls are built, maintained, and inspected, and in many ways advise ship operators on how to maintain them in good health. This all bore out of the British shipping industry, when insurance was getting off the ground and figuring out how to underwrite risky voyages to far away lands. The class society Lloyd's Register formed to be that neutral 3rd party inspector to help ensure the ship was in good working order and built, operated and maintained in good working order.
I get this guy didn't like how slow these societies are, but they were slow because he was "innovating", which now we seem to know means he was reducing costs at the expense of safety. Class societies are full of every engineering discipline required for anything on the ocean; they slowed him down because he wasn't following good practices; that's not innovating it's just dumb. And the entire point of class societies is to ensure that the customers can feel confident that the owner is following good practices; it's to enable commerce and trust, not to slow down innovation.
Bottom line, any time you get on a ship, you can look at which society classed it [eagle.org] and when it was inspected. No reputable business that owns or operates a ship goes without inspection, and if it does, well don't pay them anything and don't get on board.
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Can we drop it? (Score:2)
Just hand out the Darwin award and move on, for chrissake...
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Just hand out the Darwin award and move on, for chrissake...
Unfortunately for the Darwin awards, he already reproduced.
The lesson to be learned. (Score:5, Insightful)
The laws of man may be circumvented by those with money, but the laws of physics and the guidelines of materials engineering give no thought to wealth or personal influence.
Is there really a problem that needs solving here? (Score:2)
The guy was wrong about the capabilities of the sub, but he died piloting it, so there's some justice there. Everyone on board signed waivers which mentioned the possibility of death three times, apparently.
The only thing that I'm uncomfortable with is that the one buy brought his 19 year old son along, and it's well known that the part of the brain that can weigh the possibility of future outcomes doesn't fully mature until around age 25, so I question if he really understood the document he was signing,
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Maybe it would be some what deserving if it were just the one reckless dummy who died, but I get the strong impression that he misrepresented the degree of risk involved. Maybe people weren't properly informed about how rickety this submersible was.
My neighborhood has a swimming pool with no lifeguard. We make people sign waivers in order to use it that mention the possibility of severe injury or death even though the maximum depth is 5 feet, but everyone fully understands the risk.
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Everyone on board signed waivers which mentioned the possibility of death three times, apparently.
Needs to have mentioned possible death more possible death often possible death on possible death that possible death waiver.
If only... (Score:2)
If only there was some sort of lesson to be learned from the original Titanic disaster, this second one might have been avoided.
Sadly he'll never realize the error of his ways (Score:2)
Even assuming that there were signs of trouble prior to the too-fast-to-perceive implosion, I can imagine that right up to the end the CEO was diluding himself into thinking it would all be OK and what they were experiencing were only minor technical problems.
The regretable thing here is he took an honor guard with him when he died. He got to take the easy way out. He doesn't have to continue living after the incident, dealing with the guilt, anxiety and any other emotions caused by knowing he was ultimatel
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It's more likely the moment the communication dropped out was the same moment it imploded, so about 2 hours after launch.
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neoliberal capitalism strikes again (Score:2)
but hey, someone made money, so it's all good.
As the Greeks said (Score:2)
40ms of torture (Score:2)
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I would say there was a good chance.
The most significant innovation is the proprietary real-time hull health monitoring (RTM) system. Titan is the only manned submersible to employ an integrated real-time health monitoring system.
the RTM system makes it possible to analyze the effects of changing pressure on the vessel as the submersible dives deeper, and accurately assess the integrity of the structure. This onboard health analysis monitoring system provides early warning detection for the pilot with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.
https://oceangate.com/our-subs... [oceangate.com]
Thanks for the chuckle btw.
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Not sure a Darwin Award is a good fit for a sixty-year-old anyway - he's already passed on his genes.
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But it might count since he terminated his offspring at the same time he kills himself. If he had no other children, I'd say he's still in the running.