17 ms·

Missing Titanic sub faced lawsuit over depths it could safely travel to

250 points by danso 3y ago

mjhay 3y ago
> That’s according to legal documents obtained by The New Republic. According to the court documents, in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. According to a press release, Lochridge was director of marine operations at the time, “responsible for the safety of all crew and clients.” In this case, being fired was an ideal outcome.
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  He was "responsible for safety of all crew and clients". So, he voiced that the sub wasn't safe. He was doing his job. If he hadn't been fired maybe he would've been able to enact changes to prevent a disaster, so I disagree that being fired was an ideal outcome. Being fired is only an ideal outcome if you believe that Lochridge wasn't trying to enact change but only to avoid liability. I don't see a reason to such cynical view.
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    Lochridge was also a submersible pilot. Being fired was an ideal outcome for Lochridge, because Lochridge was therefore not piloting the sub this week.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      The ideal outcome for Lochridge, I'm sure would have been the sub being modified so that these problems did not occur. I'm pretty sure he does not set the utility of other peoples' lives at 0, so their surviving along with him would definitely be better. So this has to be the second-best outcome at best.
      - margalabargala 3y ago
        That's true. What outcome is ideal depends on the priors, I suppose. If the company not listening to Lochridge is a given, then being fired is better than not, and having to go down on the sub. The company listening to Lochridge is better than the company not listening to Lochridge. The company putting safety first and engineering something that met Lochridge's standards from the outset is better than the company listening to Lochridge when he brought up problems. And so on.
      - wnkrshm 3y ago
        I think they couldn't modify the sub to be safe - the big worry is the integral part of the sub (and the one with the highest cost in this one), the composite pressure hull. You cannot ensure its safety, since you cannot evaluate it for growing defects. As is best practice for all other DSVs in the world that use metal pressure hulls. I suspect a metal hull and all it entails (way more complex design and careful selection of materials, equipment, passenger space etc.) would have cost too much.
    - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
      > Being fired was an ideal outcome for Lochridge, because Lochridge was therefore not piloting the sub this week. What an absurd thing to say. Not having the sub sink has all the upsides and none of the downsides of having it sink. Ergo, being fired is guaranteed not to be optimal.
  - ssnistfajen 3y ago
    If he resigned then it's plausible to speculate that he was trying to avoid liability, but he was fired. Someone didn't want him to do his job regardless of what he himself wanted.
  - wnkrshm 3y ago
    I think there was simply no economically feasible alternative to the composite hull, so Lochridge was fired. I also suspect that if you go with a metal hull, you don't have positive buoancy anymore - you need syntactic foam. You need larger thrusters, those are heavier too, so more foam etc. The engineering becomes harder and also costlier, in addition to the material and equipment costs. What you gain is the ability to evaluate your pressure vessel for growing defects - which you didn't do in the first place (and can't do) with your composite hull.
- EA 3y ago
  ...for risk adverse leaders in the company who wanted to utilize the system. This worker likely blew the whistle on the safety assessment of the system. Sometimes, external forces see product to market despite risks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  This is like 20th case of employee warning about fraud and\or impeding disaster, and being punished as a result. And employee being 100% correct. See theranos and others. We really need to address this
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    Problem is there are far far far more cases of an employee reporting irrelevant 'safety' problems just to try to win a settlement from a company. How do you separate the legit concerns from someone complaining that they can't go to work because their yellow safety vest is slightly dirty and therefore not safe anymore?
    - californical 3y ago
      Do you have a bunch of examples of employees filing concerns with OSHA that ended up being completely false? I feel like I’ve never heard of this
      - alach11 3y ago
        To be fair, there's a huge sampling bias issue here. We're talking about the submarine whistleblower because it made the news headlines. An employee raising concerns with OSHA and getting proven false doesn't make the front page.
  - sho_hn 3y ago
    Mature companies definitely go to big lengths to address this, usually above and beyond what regulators prescribe as a baseline. All proper engineering companies have integrity and compliance processes, whistleblower systems, confidante contacts, etc. It's good business to do this. Fucking up kills people, and liability kills companies.
    - flangola7 3y ago
      > Mature companies definitely go to big lengths to address this, usually above and beyond what regulators prescribe as a baseline. Mature companies develop code to intentionally dodge regulations. They're not trustworthy regardless of "maturity".
ak_111 3y ago
With the company's president as one of the passengers this is a rare example where "skin in the game" didn't offer much insurance (or assurance). edit: Actually it seems the person responsible for saftey wasn't on board (he got fired) and you can claim his skin was much more important to be in the game if you were looking for assurance
- hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
  Yeah. Some times the guy at the top puts others in danger because he doesn't care. Other times, because he doesn't know any better.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    And sometimes taking a calculated risk goes badly the way you knew was possible.
- mjb 3y ago
  Is it a rare example, though? Taleb and others spread this idea that "skin in the game" is some kind of magical anecdote to faulty thinking, incomplete risk analysis, incorrect application of heuristics, and other things. That just doesn't seem true. Lots of people do risky things every day based on social proof, or familiarity, or commitment, or scarcity, or many of the other risk-perception-altering heuristics that govern our lives. We do it when we drive, when we drink, when we ski, and in all kinds of other occasions. "Skin in the game" seems like an extremely faulty heuristic in its own way, with little evidence to support a strong assurance effect. Conversely, I know lots of people who take risks themselves who'd never recommend the same risks to others (especially outdoor and motor sports enthusiasts). That's the opposite of Taleb's hypothesis.
  - ak_111 3y ago
    "Rare" might be a strong word, but I would have order of magnitude more confidence living in an apartment if I know the head engineer who supervised its construction lives in the top floor. Or I would feel 10x more confident in an investment if I know its seller has a significant amount of his net worth invested in it. It is a very natural heuristic and has a long history. Where it mostly fails is incompetence, some might have the best intention of something succeeding but their best effort is still not worth much.
mcpackieh 3y ago
> According to the court documents, in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. 2018; this would make it the previous model, no? Not the same submarine that went missing. At least that's the impression I get from this article (2020): https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-bigger-submersible-fleet-get-set-titanic-trips/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-big... > "That meant the Titanic trips — which had been planned at first for 2018, then 2019, then 2020 — had to be put off until mid-2021. By that time, Rush expects the new submersibles to be ready to enter service." It's my impression that one of those "new submersibles" is the one that's lost.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  I was also curious about the timeline of this. I'm waiting for that one geeky blog post that integrates all the facts. I'm particularly interested in an educated perspective on their choice in materials. I'm familiar with carbon fibre from bike frame building, and the common tricks/practices to try and look for fissures, find voids/delaminations, etc. after a crash, and it's such a complex subject and material. I wonder who manufactured this vessel and what the quality of their facilities, tools, processes was.
  - EamonnMR 3y ago
    I wonder if the NTSB will do a report on this.
  - jvm___ 3y ago
    It's also the only planned trip for the company this year due to weather. So the sub has sat for a period of time before being put in use. Do you think they do extensive trial runs first at the beginning of each season? Like send it to the bottom un-manned just to double check? As my former boss liked to say "Things that aren't tested don't work."
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      I think they can't even send it un-manned because it is not externally controllable. From what I understood in footage of a previous "mission", all is operated on board and there is nothing the ship crew can do appart from communicating (when it still works).
VWWHFSfQ 3y ago
> Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To I was always told never to end a sentence with a preposition. Is that still considered correct grammar? If I was the editor I would have rewritten the title to: > Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths To Which It Could Safely Travel Better or worse? Maybe this one: > Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Traveling To Unsafe Depths
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Obligatory Churchill quote ..."This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put".
  - Mordisquitos 3y ago
    But prepositions are not words to end sentences with!
  - mkl 3y ago
    Not Churchill: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-prepositi... You likely mean "arrant", too.
    - wizofaus 3y ago
      I knew as soon as I posted that someone would find proof it wasn't Churchill...
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        "Very rarely is a Churchill quote actually a Churchill quote." - Churchill
- rcme 3y ago
  Ending sentences with prepositions is perfectly fine English. According to this source [0], the original idea behind avoiding ending sentences with prepositions was conceived by people who wanted to align English grammar more closely with Latin grammar. Obviously, that's not an attractive selling point to many English speakers and sentences frequently end in prepositions today. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepositions-e...
kingTug 3y ago
> Lochridge discovered the viewing window on front of sub "was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers...to...4,000 meters...OceanGate refused to pay...to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters." Previously unseen levels of "I told you man, I warned you" here.
- hindsightbias 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - bambax 3y ago
    Not only is the Titanic not enough, but that thing was named after it! It was called "Titan"! They must have thought Titanic was a diminutive, if they only kept the Titan part then they would actually be invincible. But it wasn't enough to fool fate.
    - LightBug1 3y ago
      Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of ...
      - sho_hn 3y ago
        To be fair, this is all extremely cynical while we don't actually know what happened.
        LightBug1 3y ago
        You're right ... I had to stop myself from asking when the movie will be released ... * forgive me, Lord *
        Ambroos 3y ago
        Is there any way for this to end (other than sabotage and other outlandish options) in which this was not caused by a company trying to make money in an extremely unsafe way?
perihelions 3y ago
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/oceangate-inc-v-lochridge/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/oceangate-inc-v... ("OceanGate Inc v. Lochridge, 2:18-cv-01083, (W.D. Wash.)")
jeffbee 3y ago
Why would carbon fiber be a suitable material for this application? I get why people want it to be lightweight and resist environmental corrosion, but it just seems like the wrong choice under hydrostatic pressure. I found some recent academic articles analyzing composite cylinders for submersible applications and in those papers they buckled at a fraction of the pressure equivalent to 4000m of seawater. The fact that they advertise their suite of strain gauges seems to indicate that they under-designed the thing and intended to just see what happened in practice.
- aredox 3y ago
  There were lots of wrong choices and execution in the design of this submarine (no, using a joypad isn't one of them. There are far more worse details).
  - bambax 3y ago
    Using a joypad isn't a big problem in itself, but using a wireless one is extremely careless. What if the connection is lost? What if batteries die? Or leak? Etc.
    - afavour 3y ago
      I imagine (though with these people who knows) they’d just plug it in as a USB device. Almost all wireless controllers are capable of it.
      - egeozcan 3y ago
        If the batteries leak, you have toxic material inside the cabin (perhaps you retain control because you surely have replacements!). It's probably one of the last things you need in such environments, especially using a stupid cable with a couple of backups eliminates a big single point of failure.
      - ThatPlayer 3y ago
        This specific controller does not. The Logitech F710, I've got one on my desk right now. It has zero ports and only works wirelessly. It uses AA batteries so there's no need for a charging port either. For wired use, Logitech have the cheaper F310 that lacks rumble, and the discontinued F510.
42365767567 3y ago
Well at least the evidence is at the bottom of the ocean
stevecalifornia 3y ago
Does this thing have a tether to the surface or not? I would be blown away if it didn't have a tether, but that seems to be the case.
- cududa 3y ago
  They're going 4,000 meters/ 2.5 miles under the sea. Roughly 400 atmospheres of pressure. A quick google shows the longest commercial tether is 1,100 meters and is meant for undersea drones for power/ data. Aside from the massive tether and engine that would need to pull it, I'd imagine it would rip the submersible to shreds at those depths
  - whats_a_quasar 3y ago
    The Jason ROV has a six mile tether: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_(ROV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_(ROV) And the Titanic was discovered by camera sled being towed by a ship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(ROV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(ROV) So your search might have been a bit too quick. It certainly is possible possible to build a tethered crewed submersible, though this vehicle wasn't. Credit to js2 from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36396161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36396161
  - interroboink 3y ago
    Just as another data point, the Nereus[1] explored the Mariana Trench at nearly 11km depth, and had a comms tether (very thin optical fiber). According to the wiki, its tether was 40km in length total. So, it's not out of the question, I don't think. No good for pulling it to the surface, of course, but reliable communication alone would be a great benefit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle)
  - esprehn 3y ago
    The tether is not connected directly, it's connected to a TMS that then has a smaller cable connected to the submersible. Ex. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-image-of-a-working-class-ROV-TMS-system-during-deep-water-deployment_fig1_361242757 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-image-of-a-wor... https://f-e-t.com/subsea/vehicles/tether-management-systems/ https://f-e-t.com/subsea/vehicles/tether-management-systems/ There's also this one which looks like it can get to the depths of the Titanic: https://nautiluslive.org/tech/rov-argus https://nautiluslive.org/tech/rov-argus So it was certainly possible to do this with a tether, but it would have been much more expensive.
comeonbro 3y ago
Sub Brief just released his first video on the matter an hour ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac
- bambax 3y ago
  Very informative, thanks!!
- EA-3167 3y ago
  He's one of the best things to come out of the War Zone imo, his videos are always informative and to the point.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- albert_e 3y ago
  He has already concluded that the five souls are lost.
- venusenvy47 3y ago
  I'm a little confused by his video. He says that it has never been tested at depth, but I thought this contraption had already made Titanic visits the last two years.
rwmj 3y ago
[dupe]
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and makes merging threads a pain. (it's a fine comment! we're just trying to avoid duplication) (I moved the replies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36410120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36410120)
elzbardico 3y ago
If we consider that the deepest submersibles in the US Navy "only" went 1.5 km deep (not talking about experimental craft, only deployed, actively deployed equipment), I'd be really cautious before embarking on this ship. This was a guy in a Marina nonchalantly going where the fucking US Navy, the most powerful navy in the whole history of the world doesn't dare to tread.
- oh_sigh 3y ago
  The US Navy has no need or desire to go deep like that. I'm sure they would figure out how to do it if they needed to, but it probably would be a ROV and not a little capsule you stuff some humans into.
- JimmyAustin 3y ago
  I'd say it's more "doesn't bother to tread" rather than "doesn't dare to tread". There probably is not a lot below 1.5km that would be of much interest to the US Navy.
- progbits 3y ago
  There is a big difference between "doesn't dare to" and "it's not practical/useful for warfare". There have been plenty of submersibles that went much deeper. People went down 10km in the 1960s. There is no excuse for the incompetence and stupidity of this titanic crew.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  The US navy is not attempting to solve the problem space of "Tourist trip to deep ocean locations". Privately owned submersibles have long out-depthed US navy crafts, because US navy doesn't need a small craft to go that deep.
- ak_111 3y ago
  What is extraordinary is the marketing line "You will go where the US navy dare not tread" will draw in some customers
- kens 3y ago
  The Navy's Trieste II went to 20,000 feet (6.1 km) in the 1960s. It dove to the wreckage of the Thresher, among other things and was in service until 1980. It was replaced by Alvin-class of deep-submergence vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_II_(Bathyscaphe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_II_(Bathyscaphe)
perihelions 3y ago
- "Lochridge, who claimed he was discharged in retaliation for being a whistleblower, made his filing after OceanGate sued him in federal court in Seattle that June. OceanGate has accused him of sharing confidential information with two individuals, as well as with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)." https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/a-whistleblower-raised-safety-concerns-about-oceangates-submersible-in-2018-then-he-was-fired/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/a-whistleblower-raised-saf... I didn't know "sharing confidential information with OSHA" could be a valid (?) cause of action.
- pitbull 3y ago
  [dead]
- ender341341 3y ago
  > I didn't know "sharing confidential information with OSHA" could be a valid (?) cause of action. Not that this sounds like one of those cases but I can think of several cases that it'd a perfectly reasonable cause of action, mainly when the disclosure isn't relevant to OSHA.
  - krisoft 3y ago
    Maybe. But it has terrible optics.
jmyeet 3y ago
There's a surprising amount of corner cutting that goes on with large engineering projects. Examples: - A water slide had basic design flaws. That water slide would later go on to decapitate the son of a Congressman [1]; - The Millenium Tower in San Francisco was allowed to be built without the piles going down to bedrock [2]; - A borrowed system from an earlier rocket was never tested on the Ariane 5. An integer overflow basically caused the Ariane 5 to blow up on launch [3]; - Famously, the Challenger disaster came down to some O rings becoming brittle in the cold launch conditions and the launch was approved regardless [4]; - To counter the competition of the Airbus A320neo, Boeing decided against a full redesign of the 737 and instead just updated the aging 737 design by putting more powerful engines on it and moving them forward. This could lead to stalls if the plane angled up too much. To counter this, Boeing added the (now famous) MCAS to keep the 737 type rating [5] and didn't really tell airlines and pilots about it. But the worst part was the system had no redundancy. It relies on a single sensor. Normally for safety-critical sensors there is triple-redundancy. So for something like this you'd have 3 sensors (minimum) and there'd need to be agreement between at least two. That was an optional upgrade. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/waterslide-boy-decapitated-charges.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/waterslide-boy-decapit... [2]: https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/11/10/what-really-happened-at-the-millennium-tower https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/11/10/what-really-ha... [3]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150505-the-numbers-that-lead-to-disaster https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150505-the-numbers-that... [4]: https://www.simscale.com/blog/space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/ https://www.simscale.com/blog/space-shuttle-challenger-disas... [5]: https://medium.com/the-systems-engineering-scholar/inadequate-systems-engineering-and-the-boeing-737-max-catastrophes-80afe4b0e614 https://medium.com/the-systems-engineering-scholar/inadequat...
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  I mean, yes, there are a lot of designs that fail, but the vast majority of infrastructure operates reliably for decades. Most waterslides don't decapitate people, and skyscraper collapses are exceedingly rare. Launch vehicles fail more frequently but they're phenomenally complicated machines that are produced in low volumes and flown infrequently.
- bambax 3y ago
disillusioned 3y ago
They lost contact right around 1:30-1:45 into the dive, which takes about 2 hours to reach final depth... while it's possible they lost power or controls, the idea that we're going to find them bobbing around somewhere instead of basically right next to the Titanic wreck itself on the seafloor seems laughable. It feels like the most likely failure mode has to do with the viewport, considering some earlier duty cycle trepidation and the linked concerns about the viewport's certifiable depths. Would love to be wrong, but I think we're going to find a crushed/mangled carbon fiber tin can sitting alongside the wreck when we finally get an unmanned submersible down there that can look for them.
- bambax 3y ago
  > the idea that we're going to find them bobbing around somewhere It wouldn't actually make any difference, because the only way out of that thing is to unscrew 17 heavy duty bolts from the outside. If they're floating around somewhere that doesn't make them safe; they're just suffocating at the surface instead of on the sea floor. Also, the claimed 96 hours of "life support" was never properly tested, and there's no evidence the vessel was able to properly extract toxic gasses from its atmosphere, etc.
- SheepHerdr 3y ago
  Apparently they implemented 'seven safety systems to help it return to the surface', but whether those actually worked is questionable. It doesn't exactly inspire hope to read that one of these 'systems' was to have the passengers 'tilt the sub by moving to each side of it releasing weights held in place on each side'. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65965665 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65965665
  - ssnistfajen 3y ago
    This reads like peak marketing since at least 5 of those 7 safety measures are just "drop weights" with extra steps, but I guess "three safety systems" sounds less sexy in promotional material.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fnordpiglet 3y ago
“”” OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters. For reference, the Titanic is estimated to sit on the ocean floor at a depth of nearly 13,000 feet. “”” I really want to reduce their grade for mixing units. It’s particular egregious to use different units in a “for reference!”
TwistMyArmature 3y ago
The submersible craft industry is especially niche. and that comes will all the facets of niche industry. There is no enforcement body, you can operate with great freedom. Most of the members lay at the intersection of wealth and liberty. Sometimes science. for reference; Ive been born and raised in this field. This is roughly my viewpoint when interpreting this news
glimshe 3y ago
Safety margins exist for a reason in Engineering. Lots of times you can just work dangerously and nothing is going to happen; the people pushing for using machines operating at the edge of the breaking point are seen as "aggressive", "daring" and "true leaders". But from time to time, things DO break and that's why these safety measures exist to begin with. They exist for dealing with the unknown, with the things that can't be directly measured like random imperfections or variations in the operating conditions. I hope that the company, and its owners/executives, that got away for so long with operating unsafe machinery are exemplarily punished.
carbine 3y ago
Sincere question: if this did in fact implode (hopefully not), would there be identifiable wreckage? Would we be likely to find it? And how likely is it that the Navy or some other group picked up the audio of the implosion via hydrophone, etc? I'm trying to understand whether [1] they've heard a possible implosion and are proceeding with search and rescue against all hope; [2] they haven't heard one, and think that's indicative that it's still intact; or [3] they haven't heard one and aren't sure either way. Thank you.
- randomNumber7 3y ago
  Even if it would be intact and somehow floating at 3000 meters it would be probably very hard to find it. Just think about submarine warfare, even the big military ones can be pretty stealthy. And this is a small submarine mostly made of carbon fiber. Thats probably even hard to distinguish from a big fish with sonar. And if this thing is on the ground then sonar doesnt help. I think if this thing has no ping device on board (to make active sound), then they probably never find it. Assuming its still under water of course.
folugna37 3y ago
After looking at the photos of the submarine that’s missing, I have no clue how people who are as rich and successful as the ones who were on board could pay such insane amounts of money to board that tiny tin-can of a submarine and go 12,500 feet under the sea without having a sense of, “You know what? This probably isn’t the greatest idea ever. I probably shouldn’t do this.” It boggles my mind.
- accfor1comment 3y ago
  I agree, I reckon they could’ve pooled their money together and built or bought something safer than this, maybe with some more room too. Or go to another company.
- dannypgh 3y ago
  If the tickets cost $50, there's no way anyone would have thought "this is a good idea." But they charged so much people who could afford to pay for the tickets assumed competence. Parallels with the Titanic are obscene...
  - wnkrshm 3y ago
    The sad part is, people who couldn't afford it also went: like a woman who spent all of her savings for the trip (she's on the BBC show). Luckily she made it back up alive (3 times, since 2 times they couldn't find the titanic, they get told where to go by the mother ship).
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  Some people climb very dangerous mountains while only being attached to a small claw, if they even have one.
Rapzid 3y ago
AFAICT, if that vessel is still intact under water, their only hope is the power fails and the weights release. There is not enough oxygen left for the amount of time rescue would take at this point.
dang 3y ago
Related ongoing thread: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36407781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36407781 - June 2023 (256 comments)
SheepHerdr 3y ago
This seems consistent with the CEO's position on regulations, which is that they are 'obscenely safe' regulations and hold back innovation. https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about-obscenely-safe-regulations-2023-6 https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about...
- HarryHirsch 3y ago
  Maybe if we had "obscenely safe" regulations in IT there wouldn't be this neverending procession of hacks - Louisiana and Oregon DMV is the latest breach, but since there are no consequences nothing will be done about the intractable towers of complexity that keep collapsing.
  - vorpalhex 3y ago
    Safe does not mean secure. Old defense technologies, while more reliable, are not typically up to par against modern weapons. The same is generally true for cybersecurity.
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  People like him is exactly why "obscenely safe" regulations were created. "Safety regulations are written in blood" is a fact, not a meme.
- sschueller 3y ago
  Sounds someone else we all know. Eventually it will bite him in the behind as well no matter how many fall guys and gals he tries to put in place.
  - accfor1comment 3y ago
    Who?
satisfice 3y ago
On the one hand we see once again that testers are an essential part of industry that does its best to undermine them. On the other hand, look on the bright side… Now there are TWO wrecks for rich people to go visit!
Solvency 3y ago
"At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (“PVHO”) standards. OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters." Well, that about it settles what happened.
- cyanydeez 3y ago
  Nah, you typically don't cut just one corner if you're cutting risk costs.
markwalllberg 3y ago
[flagged]
knguyenphi 3y ago
No Underwater Locator Beacons?

250 points by danso 3y ago

> That’s according to legal documents obtained by The New Republic. According to the court documents, in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. According to a press release, Lochridge was director of marine operations at the time, “responsible for the safety of all crew and clients.” In this case, being fired was an ideal outcome.

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
He was "responsible for safety of all crew and clients". So, he voiced that the sub wasn't safe. He was doing his job. If he hadn't been fired maybe he would've been able to enact changes to prevent a disaster, so I disagree that being fired was an ideal outcome. Being fired is only an ideal outcome if you believe that Lochridge wasn't trying to enact change but only to avoid liability. I don't see a reason to such cynical view.
- margalabargala 3y ago
  Lochridge was also a submersible pilot. Being fired was an ideal outcome for Lochridge, because Lochridge was therefore not piloting the sub this week.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    The ideal outcome for Lochridge, I'm sure would have been the sub being modified so that these problems did not occur. I'm pretty sure he does not set the utility of other peoples' lives at 0, so their surviving along with him would definitely be better. So this has to be the second-best outcome at best.
    - margalabargala 3y ago
      That's true. What outcome is ideal depends on the priors, I suppose. If the company not listening to Lochridge is a given, then being fired is better than not, and having to go down on the sub. The company listening to Lochridge is better than the company not listening to Lochridge. The company putting safety first and engineering something that met Lochridge's standards from the outset is better than the company listening to Lochridge when he brought up problems. And so on.
    - wnkrshm 3y ago
      I think they couldn't modify the sub to be safe - the big worry is the integral part of the sub (and the one with the highest cost in this one), the composite pressure hull. You cannot ensure its safety, since you cannot evaluate it for growing defects. As is best practice for all other DSVs in the world that use metal pressure hulls. I suspect a metal hull and all it entails (way more complex design and careful selection of materials, equipment, passenger space etc.) would have cost too much.
  - hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
    > Being fired was an ideal outcome for Lochridge, because Lochridge was therefore not piloting the sub this week. What an absurd thing to say. Not having the sub sink has all the upsides and none of the downsides of having it sink. Ergo, being fired is guaranteed not to be optimal.
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  If he resigned then it's plausible to speculate that he was trying to avoid liability, but he was fired. Someone didn't want him to do his job regardless of what he himself wanted.
- wnkrshm 3y ago
  I think there was simply no economically feasible alternative to the composite hull, so Lochridge was fired. I also suspect that if you go with a metal hull, you don't have positive buoancy anymore - you need syntactic foam. You need larger thrusters, those are heavier too, so more foam etc. The engineering becomes harder and also costlier, in addition to the material and equipment costs. What you gain is the ability to evaluate your pressure vessel for growing defects - which you didn't do in the first place (and can't do) with your composite hull.
EA 3y ago
...for risk adverse leaders in the company who wanted to utilize the system. This worker likely blew the whistle on the safety assessment of the system. Sometimes, external forces see product to market despite risks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
This is like 20th case of employee warning about fraud and\or impeding disaster, and being punished as a result. And employee being 100% correct. See theranos and others. We really need to address this
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Problem is there are far far far more cases of an employee reporting irrelevant 'safety' problems just to try to win a settlement from a company. How do you separate the legit concerns from someone complaining that they can't go to work because their yellow safety vest is slightly dirty and therefore not safe anymore?
  - californical 3y ago
    Do you have a bunch of examples of employees filing concerns with OSHA that ended up being completely false? I feel like I’ve never heard of this
    - alach11 3y ago
      To be fair, there's a huge sampling bias issue here. We're talking about the submarine whistleblower because it made the news headlines. An employee raising concerns with OSHA and getting proven false doesn't make the front page.
- sho_hn 3y ago
  Mature companies definitely go to big lengths to address this, usually above and beyond what regulators prescribe as a baseline. All proper engineering companies have integrity and compliance processes, whistleblower systems, confidante contacts, etc. It's good business to do this. Fucking up kills people, and liability kills companies.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    > Mature companies definitely go to big lengths to address this, usually above and beyond what regulators prescribe as a baseline. Mature companies develop code to intentionally dodge regulations. They're not trustworthy regardless of "maturity".

ak_111 3y ago

With the company's president as one of the passengers this is a rare example where "skin in the game" didn't offer much insurance (or assurance). edit: Actually it seems the person responsible for saftey wasn't on board (he got fired) and you can claim his skin was much more important to be in the game if you were looking for assurance

hsjqllzlfkf 3y ago
Yeah. Some times the guy at the top puts others in danger because he doesn't care. Other times, because he doesn't know any better.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  And sometimes taking a calculated risk goes badly the way you knew was possible.
mjb 3y ago
Is it a rare example, though? Taleb and others spread this idea that "skin in the game" is some kind of magical anecdote to faulty thinking, incomplete risk analysis, incorrect application of heuristics, and other things. That just doesn't seem true. Lots of people do risky things every day based on social proof, or familiarity, or commitment, or scarcity, or many of the other risk-perception-altering heuristics that govern our lives. We do it when we drive, when we drink, when we ski, and in all kinds of other occasions. "Skin in the game" seems like an extremely faulty heuristic in its own way, with little evidence to support a strong assurance effect. Conversely, I know lots of people who take risks themselves who'd never recommend the same risks to others (especially outdoor and motor sports enthusiasts). That's the opposite of Taleb's hypothesis.
- ak_111 3y ago
  "Rare" might be a strong word, but I would have order of magnitude more confidence living in an apartment if I know the head engineer who supervised its construction lives in the top floor. Or I would feel 10x more confident in an investment if I know its seller has a significant amount of his net worth invested in it. It is a very natural heuristic and has a long history. Where it mostly fails is incompetence, some might have the best intention of something succeeding but their best effort is still not worth much.

mcpackieh 3y ago

> According to the court documents, in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. 2018; this would make it the previous model, no? Not the same submarine that went missing. At least that's the impression I get from this article (2020): https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-bigger-submersible-fleet-get-set-titanic-trips/ https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-big... > "That meant the Titanic trips — which had been planned at first for 2018, then 2019, then 2020 — had to be put off until mid-2021. By that time, Rush expects the new submersibles to be ready to enter service." It's my impression that one of those "new submersibles" is the one that's lost.

sho_hn 3y ago
I was also curious about the timeline of this. I'm waiting for that one geeky blog post that integrates all the facts. I'm particularly interested in an educated perspective on their choice in materials. I'm familiar with carbon fibre from bike frame building, and the common tricks/practices to try and look for fissures, find voids/delaminations, etc. after a crash, and it's such a complex subject and material. I wonder who manufactured this vessel and what the quality of their facilities, tools, processes was.
- EamonnMR 3y ago
  I wonder if the NTSB will do a report on this.
- jvm___ 3y ago
  It's also the only planned trip for the company this year due to weather. So the sub has sat for a period of time before being put in use. Do you think they do extensive trial runs first at the beginning of each season? Like send it to the bottom un-manned just to double check? As my former boss liked to say "Things that aren't tested don't work."
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    I think they can't even send it un-manned because it is not externally controllable. From what I understood in footage of a previous "mission", all is operated on board and there is nothing the ship crew can do appart from communicating (when it still works).

VWWHFSfQ 3y ago

> Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To I was always told never to end a sentence with a preposition. Is that still considered correct grammar? If I was the editor I would have rewritten the title to: > Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths To Which It Could Safely Travel Better or worse? Maybe this one: > Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Traveling To Unsafe Depths

wizofaus 3y ago
Obligatory Churchill quote ..."This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put".
- Mordisquitos 3y ago
  But prepositions are not words to end sentences with!
- mkl 3y ago
  Not Churchill: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-preposition/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/04/churchill-prepositi... You likely mean "arrant", too.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    I knew as soon as I posted that someone would find proof it wasn't Churchill...
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      "Very rarely is a Churchill quote actually a Churchill quote." - Churchill
rcme 3y ago
Ending sentences with prepositions is perfectly fine English. According to this source [0], the original idea behind avoiding ending sentences with prepositions was conceived by people who wanted to align English grammar more closely with Latin grammar. Obviously, that's not an attractive selling point to many English speakers and sentences frequently end in prepositions today. 0: https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepositions-ending-a-sentence-with https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/prepositions-e...

kingTug 3y ago

> Lochridge discovered the viewing window on front of sub "was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers...to...4,000 meters...OceanGate refused to pay...to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters." Previously unseen levels of "I told you man, I warned you" here.

hindsightbias 3y ago
[flagged]
- bambax 3y ago
  Not only is the Titanic not enough, but that thing was named after it! It was called "Titan"! They must have thought Titanic was a diminutive, if they only kept the Titan part then they would actually be invincible. But it wasn't enough to fool fate.
  - LightBug1 3y ago
    Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of ...
    - sho_hn 3y ago
      To be fair, this is all extremely cynical while we don't actually know what happened.
      - LightBug1 3y ago
        You're right ... I had to stop myself from asking when the movie will be released ... * forgive me, Lord *
      - Ambroos 3y ago
        Is there any way for this to end (other than sabotage and other outlandish options) in which this was not caused by a company trying to make money in an extremely unsafe way?

perihelions 3y ago

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/oceangate-inc-v-lochridge/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/7506826/oceangate-inc-v... ("OceanGate Inc v. Lochridge, 2:18-cv-01083, (W.D. Wash.)")

jeffbee 3y ago

Why would carbon fiber be a suitable material for this application? I get why people want it to be lightweight and resist environmental corrosion, but it just seems like the wrong choice under hydrostatic pressure. I found some recent academic articles analyzing composite cylinders for submersible applications and in those papers they buckled at a fraction of the pressure equivalent to 4000m of seawater. The fact that they advertise their suite of strain gauges seems to indicate that they under-designed the thing and intended to just see what happened in practice.

aredox 3y ago
There were lots of wrong choices and execution in the design of this submarine (no, using a joypad isn't one of them. There are far more worse details).
- bambax 3y ago
  Using a joypad isn't a big problem in itself, but using a wireless one is extremely careless. What if the connection is lost? What if batteries die? Or leak? Etc.
  - afavour 3y ago
    I imagine (though with these people who knows) they’d just plug it in as a USB device. Almost all wireless controllers are capable of it.
    - egeozcan 3y ago
      If the batteries leak, you have toxic material inside the cabin (perhaps you retain control because you surely have replacements!). It's probably one of the last things you need in such environments, especially using a stupid cable with a couple of backups eliminates a big single point of failure.
    - ThatPlayer 3y ago
      This specific controller does not. The Logitech F710, I've got one on my desk right now. It has zero ports and only works wirelessly. It uses AA batteries so there's no need for a charging port either. For wired use, Logitech have the cheaper F310 that lacks rumble, and the discontinued F510.

42365767567 3y ago

Well at least the evidence is at the bottom of the ocean

stevecalifornia 3y ago

Does this thing have a tether to the surface or not? I would be blown away if it didn't have a tether, but that seems to be the case.

cududa 3y ago
They're going 4,000 meters/ 2.5 miles under the sea. Roughly 400 atmospheres of pressure. A quick google shows the longest commercial tether is 1,100 meters and is meant for undersea drones for power/ data. Aside from the massive tether and engine that would need to pull it, I'd imagine it would rip the submersible to shreds at those depths
- whats_a_quasar 3y ago
  The Jason ROV has a six mile tether: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_(ROV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_(ROV) And the Titanic was discovered by camera sled being towed by a ship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(ROV) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argo_(ROV) So your search might have been a bit too quick. It certainly is possible possible to build a tethered crewed submersible, though this vehicle wasn't. Credit to js2 from this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36396161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36396161
- interroboink 3y ago
  Just as another data point, the Nereus[1] explored the Mariana Trench at nearly 11km depth, and had a comms tether (very thin optical fiber). According to the wiki, its tether was 40km in length total. So, it's not out of the question, I don't think. No good for pulling it to the surface, of course, but reliable communication alone would be a great benefit. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle)
- esprehn 3y ago
  The tether is not connected directly, it's connected to a TMS that then has a smaller cable connected to the submersible. Ex. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-image-of-a-working-class-ROV-TMS-system-during-deep-water-deployment_fig1_361242757 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Schematic-image-of-a-wor... https://f-e-t.com/subsea/vehicles/tether-management-systems/ https://f-e-t.com/subsea/vehicles/tether-management-systems/ There's also this one which looks like it can get to the depths of the Titanic: https://nautiluslive.org/tech/rov-argus https://nautiluslive.org/tech/rov-argus So it was certainly possible to do this with a tether, but it would have been much more expensive.

comeonbro 3y ago

Sub Brief just released his first video on the matter an hour ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac

bambax 3y ago
Very informative, thanks!!
EA-3167 3y ago
He's one of the best things to come out of the War Zone imo, his videos are always informative and to the point.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
albert_e 3y ago
He has already concluded that the five souls are lost.
venusenvy47 3y ago
I'm a little confused by his video. He says that it has never been tested at depth, but I thought this contraption had already made Titanic visits the last two years.

rwmj 3y ago

[dupe]

dang 3y ago
Please don't copy-paste comments on HN. It lowers the signal/noise ratio and makes merging threads a pain. (it's a fine comment! we're just trying to avoid duplication) (I moved the replies to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36410120 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36410120)

elzbardico 3y ago

If we consider that the deepest submersibles in the US Navy "only" went 1.5 km deep (not talking about experimental craft, only deployed, actively deployed equipment), I'd be really cautious before embarking on this ship. This was a guy in a Marina nonchalantly going where the fucking US Navy, the most powerful navy in the whole history of the world doesn't dare to tread.

oh_sigh 3y ago
The US Navy has no need or desire to go deep like that. I'm sure they would figure out how to do it if they needed to, but it probably would be a ROV and not a little capsule you stuff some humans into.
JimmyAustin 3y ago
I'd say it's more "doesn't bother to tread" rather than "doesn't dare to tread". There probably is not a lot below 1.5km that would be of much interest to the US Navy.
progbits 3y ago
There is a big difference between "doesn't dare to" and "it's not practical/useful for warfare". There have been plenty of submersibles that went much deeper. People went down 10km in the 1960s. There is no excuse for the incompetence and stupidity of this titanic crew.
mrguyorama 3y ago
The US navy is not attempting to solve the problem space of "Tourist trip to deep ocean locations". Privately owned submersibles have long out-depthed US navy crafts, because US navy doesn't need a small craft to go that deep.
ak_111 3y ago
What is extraordinary is the marketing line "You will go where the US navy dare not tread" will draw in some customers
kens 3y ago
The Navy's Trieste II went to 20,000 feet (6.1 km) in the 1960s. It dove to the wreckage of the Thresher, among other things and was in service until 1980. It was replaced by Alvin-class of deep-submergence vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_II_(Bathyscaphe) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trieste_II_(Bathyscaphe)

perihelions 3y ago

- "Lochridge, who claimed he was discharged in retaliation for being a whistleblower, made his filing after OceanGate sued him in federal court in Seattle that June. OceanGate has accused him of sharing confidential information with two individuals, as well as with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)." https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/a-whistleblower-raised-safety-concerns-about-oceangates-submersible-in-2018-then-he-was-fired/ https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/a-whistleblower-raised-saf... I didn't know "sharing confidential information with OSHA" could be a valid (?) cause of action.

pitbull 3y ago
[dead]
ender341341 3y ago
> I didn't know "sharing confidential information with OSHA" could be a valid (?) cause of action. Not that this sounds like one of those cases but I can think of several cases that it'd a perfectly reasonable cause of action, mainly when the disclosure isn't relevant to OSHA.
- krisoft 3y ago
  Maybe. But it has terrible optics.

jmyeet 3y ago

There's a surprising amount of corner cutting that goes on with large engineering projects. Examples: - A water slide had basic design flaws. That water slide would later go on to decapitate the son of a Congressman [1]; - The Millenium Tower in San Francisco was allowed to be built without the piles going down to bedrock [2]; - A borrowed system from an earlier rocket was never tested on the Ariane 5. An integer overflow basically caused the Ariane 5 to blow up on launch [3]; - Famously, the Challenger disaster came down to some O rings becoming brittle in the cold launch conditions and the launch was approved regardless [4]; - To counter the competition of the Airbus A320neo, Boeing decided against a full redesign of the 737 and instead just updated the aging 737 design by putting more powerful engines on it and moving them forward. This could lead to stalls if the plane angled up too much. To counter this, Boeing added the (now famous) MCAS to keep the 737 type rating [5] and didn't really tell airlines and pilots about it. But the worst part was the system had no redundancy. It relies on a single sensor. Normally for safety-critical sensors there is triple-redundancy. So for something like this you'd have 3 sensors (minimum) and there'd need to be agreement between at least two. That was an optional upgrade. [1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/waterslide-boy-decapitated-charges.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/26/us/waterslide-boy-decapit... [2]: https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/11/10/what-really-happened-at-the-millennium-tower https://practical.engineering/blog/2021/11/10/what-really-ha... [3]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150505-the-numbers-that-lead-to-disaster https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150505-the-numbers-that... [4]: https://www.simscale.com/blog/space-shuttle-challenger-disaster/ https://www.simscale.com/blog/space-shuttle-challenger-disas... [5]: https://medium.com/the-systems-engineering-scholar/inadequate-systems-engineering-and-the-boeing-737-max-catastrophes-80afe4b0e614 https://medium.com/the-systems-engineering-scholar/inadequat...

whats_a_quasar 3y ago
I mean, yes, there are a lot of designs that fail, but the vast majority of infrastructure operates reliably for decades. Most waterslides don't decapitate people, and skyscraper collapses are exceedingly rare. Launch vehicles fail more frequently but they're phenomenally complicated machines that are produced in low volumes and flown infrequently.
bambax 3y ago

disillusioned 3y ago

They lost contact right around 1:30-1:45 into the dive, which takes about 2 hours to reach final depth... while it's possible they lost power or controls, the idea that we're going to find them bobbing around somewhere instead of basically right next to the Titanic wreck itself on the seafloor seems laughable. It feels like the most likely failure mode has to do with the viewport, considering some earlier duty cycle trepidation and the linked concerns about the viewport's certifiable depths. Would love to be wrong, but I think we're going to find a crushed/mangled carbon fiber tin can sitting alongside the wreck when we finally get an unmanned submersible down there that can look for them.

bambax 3y ago
> the idea that we're going to find them bobbing around somewhere It wouldn't actually make any difference, because the only way out of that thing is to unscrew 17 heavy duty bolts from the outside. If they're floating around somewhere that doesn't make them safe; they're just suffocating at the surface instead of on the sea floor. Also, the claimed 96 hours of "life support" was never properly tested, and there's no evidence the vessel was able to properly extract toxic gasses from its atmosphere, etc.
SheepHerdr 3y ago
Apparently they implemented 'seven safety systems to help it return to the surface', but whether those actually worked is questionable. It doesn't exactly inspire hope to read that one of these 'systems' was to have the passengers 'tilt the sub by moving to each side of it releasing weights held in place on each side'. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65965665 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65965665
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  This reads like peak marketing since at least 5 of those 7 safety measures are just "drop weights" with extra steps, but I guess "three safety systems" sounds less sexy in promotional material.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fnordpiglet 3y ago

“”” OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters. For reference, the Titanic is estimated to sit on the ocean floor at a depth of nearly 13,000 feet. “”” I really want to reduce their grade for mixing units. It’s particular egregious to use different units in a “for reference!”

TwistMyArmature 3y ago

The submersible craft industry is especially niche. and that comes will all the facets of niche industry. There is no enforcement body, you can operate with great freedom. Most of the members lay at the intersection of wealth and liberty. Sometimes science. for reference; Ive been born and raised in this field. This is roughly my viewpoint when interpreting this news

glimshe 3y ago

Safety margins exist for a reason in Engineering. Lots of times you can just work dangerously and nothing is going to happen; the people pushing for using machines operating at the edge of the breaking point are seen as "aggressive", "daring" and "true leaders". But from time to time, things DO break and that's why these safety measures exist to begin with. They exist for dealing with the unknown, with the things that can't be directly measured like random imperfections or variations in the operating conditions. I hope that the company, and its owners/executives, that got away for so long with operating unsafe machinery are exemplarily punished.

carbine 3y ago

Sincere question: if this did in fact implode (hopefully not), would there be identifiable wreckage? Would we be likely to find it? And how likely is it that the Navy or some other group picked up the audio of the implosion via hydrophone, etc? I'm trying to understand whether [1] they've heard a possible implosion and are proceeding with search and rescue against all hope; [2] they haven't heard one, and think that's indicative that it's still intact; or [3] they haven't heard one and aren't sure either way. Thank you.

randomNumber7 3y ago
Even if it would be intact and somehow floating at 3000 meters it would be probably very hard to find it. Just think about submarine warfare, even the big military ones can be pretty stealthy. And this is a small submarine mostly made of carbon fiber. Thats probably even hard to distinguish from a big fish with sonar. And if this thing is on the ground then sonar doesnt help. I think if this thing has no ping device on board (to make active sound), then they probably never find it. Assuming its still under water of course.

folugna37 3y ago

After looking at the photos of the submarine that’s missing, I have no clue how people who are as rich and successful as the ones who were on board could pay such insane amounts of money to board that tiny tin-can of a submarine and go 12,500 feet under the sea without having a sense of, “You know what? This probably isn’t the greatest idea ever. I probably shouldn’t do this.” It boggles my mind.

accfor1comment 3y ago
I agree, I reckon they could’ve pooled their money together and built or bought something safer than this, maybe with some more room too. Or go to another company.
dannypgh 3y ago
If the tickets cost $50, there's no way anyone would have thought "this is a good idea." But they charged so much people who could afford to pay for the tickets assumed competence. Parallels with the Titanic are obscene...
- wnkrshm 3y ago
  The sad part is, people who couldn't afford it also went: like a woman who spent all of her savings for the trip (she's on the BBC show). Luckily she made it back up alive (3 times, since 2 times they couldn't find the titanic, they get told where to go by the mother ship).
raxxorraxor 3y ago
Some people climb very dangerous mountains while only being attached to a small claw, if they even have one.

Rapzid 3y ago

AFAICT, if that vessel is still intact under water, their only hope is the power fails and the weights release. There is not enough oxygen left for the amount of time rescue would take at this point.

dang 3y ago

Related ongoing thread: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36407781 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36407781 - June 2023 (256 comments)

SheepHerdr 3y ago

This seems consistent with the CEO's position on regulations, which is that they are 'obscenely safe' regulations and hold back innovation. https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about-obscenely-safe-regulations-2023-6 https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about...

HarryHirsch 3y ago
Maybe if we had "obscenely safe" regulations in IT there wouldn't be this neverending procession of hacks - Louisiana and Oregon DMV is the latest breach, but since there are no consequences nothing will be done about the intractable towers of complexity that keep collapsing.
- vorpalhex 3y ago
  Safe does not mean secure. Old defense technologies, while more reliable, are not typically up to par against modern weapons. The same is generally true for cybersecurity.
ssnistfajen 3y ago
People like him is exactly why "obscenely safe" regulations were created. "Safety regulations are written in blood" is a fact, not a meme.
sschueller 3y ago
Sounds someone else we all know. Eventually it will bite him in the behind as well no matter how many fall guys and gals he tries to put in place.
- accfor1comment 3y ago
  Who?

satisfice 3y ago

On the one hand we see once again that testers are an essential part of industry that does its best to undermine them. On the other hand, look on the bright side… Now there are TWO wrecks for rich people to go visit!

Solvency 3y ago

"At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (“PVHO”) standards. OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters." Well, that about it settles what happened.

cyanydeez 3y ago
Nah, you typically don't cut just one corner if you're cutting risk costs.

markwalllberg 3y ago

[flagged]

knguyenphi 3y ago

No Underwater Locator Beacons?