13 ms·
There's a BBC documentary from last year which I just watched: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw and honestl
by rwmj 3y ago
There's a BBC documentary from last year which I just watched:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw
and honestly a lot of it seems quite amateur hour. One of the steering motors was fitted backwards. When they discovered this, at the bottom of the ocean and a few hundred feet from Titanic, the solution they used was to hold the gamepad at right angles to compensate. That time they proceeded with the tour and made it back, but I can see how things could have gone a lot more wrong.
- soumyadeb 3y ago"BBC iPlayer only works in the UK. Sorry, it’s due to rights issues".
- slacka 3y agoYou can watch it outside of the UK here: https://vimeo.com/838023699 https://vimeo.com/838023699
- plugin-baby 3y agoUS is no longer part of UK.
- soumyadeb 3y agoHa, udpated the comment. My point was, why would this content be gated.
- misiti3780 3y agolol
- SV_BubbleTime 3y agoI assume this happened with Brexit.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dekhn 3y agohttps://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee
- lentil_soup 3y agoYeah, BBC iPlayer is UK only since it's funded by UK residents
- phantom784 3y agoLooks like it's licensed to "BBC Select" in the US. https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/take-me-to-titanic/ https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/take-me-to-titanic/
- martin_ 3y agoNote that the BBC is funded primarily by what's known as a "TV License"[0] in the UK - I think it's entirely possible they could probably increase ads or something for international viewers but understand why it isn't their area of focus [0] https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee https://www.bbc.com/aboutthebbc/governance/licencefee
- TillE 3y agoPeople - including politicians - have said for many years that the BBC should sell iPlayer subscriptions to international viewers, but they just...don't. They also have a massive archive of beloved content, enough to be a first-class streaming platform, but that stuff's not available even to UK residents.
- PokemonNoGo 3y agoProbably because with their current scheme they liscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? As well as their co-funding/producing of foreign material. The question I would as as a liscense payer is what they earn through this. Not saying it's not possible but why it is quite the hard thing to get out of, and not spend liscens money while doing so, makes sense. I would guess someone has made these calculations once or twice too. Pretty sure it's not that they "just don't" though.
- reaperducer 3y agoliscens the material for other markets and thus would be in violation of these kind of deals? Except that the BBC does it all the time. You can watch lots of BBC content - even current stuff - in other countries. ABC in Australia, and Acorn streaming or PBS OTA in the US.
- ceejayoz 3y agoThose are the licensed deals.
- 3y ago
- mkl95 3y agoiPlayer is usually VPN-friendly.
- rwmj 3y agoYeah I'm sorry about that. Maybe someone could download it and host it somewhere (which would be contrary to the license, but possibly in the public interest in this case).
- throwawaypirate 3y ago[dead]
- idop 3y agoSo apparently this OceanGate company is a VC-funded startup or some such founded "to make underwater exploration cheaper and accessible to private citizens" (Wikipedia quote). Tells me everything I need to know about how this all came to be.
- mysterydip 3y ago"move fast and break things" may not be the best mantra for such an operation.
- euroderf 3y agoThe next test dive to max depth is reserved for the board of directors.
- bleepblop 3y agoAh yes, the life insurance scheme.
- class3shock 3y agohttps://www.ussvirginiabase.org/sea-trials.html https://www.ussvirginiabase.org/sea-trials.html Last paragraph: "This ship is exactly what the Navy needs, when it needs it," agreed EB President John P. Casey, who was on board during the trials. "There is no substitute for the Virginia-class submarine." Testing included its first dive to max depth.
- klabb3 3y agoI don’t think this is (was) a money maker at all. There’s a clip on YouTube where they invited a CBS journalist to join. The CEO, to me, seems like a passionate dreamer who definitely 100% ate his own dog food (ie took huge personal risk). He was onboard this likely final voyage. They didn’t make any profit, at least back then. It’s obviously incredibly expensive and near-impossible to scale such an operation. Look, I despise VCs as much as the next guy, but this doesn’t smell like a typical cynical VC money grab, like at all. To me it smells like an ultra-extreme sport. To ordinary people, it’s extraordinarily stupid, they’re certainly in over their heads, but nobody casually signs up to go to 4000m depth without being well aware of the risks.
- gsanderson 3y agoAh, I remember watching that travel show episode. It takes on a whole new perspective now.
- CryptoBanker 3y agoThe founder/CEO has said that he hasn't been on a single trip where everything went to plan...
- jmount 3y agoWow, everything working should be the goal- not a mere nice to have.
- TX81Z 3y agoStop being such a nerd! There’s an old boat in the water that sank because of hubris, let’s go see what we can learn! (Lesson learned the hard way)
- ekianjo 3y ago> everything working should be the goal It's probably the goal, but complex endeavors mean you need to iterate to get there
- eropple 3y agoThe iteration has already been done. Safety rules exist because somebody has died and had it written in their blood. Failure to read the literature gets people killed. This is reckless and it is stupid and excusemaking for it has no moral grounds.
- ekianjo 3y ago> The iteration has already been done. Excuse me, there are several companies operating submarines that visit the Titanic with tourists?
- eropple 3y agoThis is a response that, if made not in jest, is a signal of mendacity. Submersibles visited the Challenger Deep in the 1960s. We know how to build them, we know how to build them effectively, and we know many of the ways not to build them. "But we added tourists!" is not a meaningful factor here unless what you meant-but-wouldn't-say is "but we value engineered it!" in which case: yes, exactly, that's what safety rules are designed to put guardrails around.
- anigbrowl 3y agoHow do you not test this at the bottom of a harbor rather than in prod.
- TX81Z 3y agoTo quote bill oreilly, “Fuck it! We’ll do it live!”
- busyant 3y agomy guess is that they did test in a shallow location, but ... not nearly enough unit tests.
- nraynaud 3y agoOne of the critics said that the pressure vessel is subject to fatigue and is not inspectable, so even testing the final article is not going to help. They are not facing small engineering issues, and didn’t seem well equipped to tacle hard stuff (I would venture, by lack of money).
- gonzo41 3y agoI guess sometimes you've just got to get bolted into a steel coffin and sink to the bottom of the ocean to see what happens.
- lost_tourist 3y agoMy guess is they didn't sent it down 1000 times under robotic controland then tear it all down and look for damage, stress fractures, or to estimate lifetime. I mean why in the hell weren't there multiple and redundant, independently powered, sonar locators for example? You would be truly amazed how far sound can travel in water.
- venusenvy47 3y agoThey probably aren't allowed to put this in the water of any country that has watercraft rules. The reporter from CBS reads the form he had to sign, at 2:40 in this video: https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o It says something like "this experimental craft has not been certified by any regulatory body". They probably have to be in international waters to put it in water.
- proggy 3y agoIt is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to. Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-existent. Their test program was extremely lightweight to say the least, and the results that came back from what little hull testing they did do were ignored, resulting in the dismissal of an internal whistleblower [1]. We also learned that there were flammable materials within the pressure vessel, no practical contingency plan to speak of, no emergency beacon fitted, the list goes on. The whole thing was just cobbled together, not fully thought out or vetted, and yet the intent was to journey to one of the most unforgiving environments imaginable. But getting back to the account of the reversed motor above -- it is one of the purest examples I can now think of where life imitates art. Piloting a stolen (but seaworthy) deep-sea submersible to the wreckage of the Titanic -- that was only able to make right-hand turns due to a "sub club" anti-theft device -- was a major plot point in the pilot episode of the TV series "Pinky and the Brain". Narf. [1] https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-faced-lawsuit-depths-safely-travel-oceangate https://newrepublic.com/post/173802/missing-titanic-sub-face...
- bpp 3y agoI haven't thought about that episode of "Pinky and the Brain" in years, thanks for a chuckle.
- acqq 3y ago3:54 Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate: "so the pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail: your thrusters can go, your lights can go, you're still going to be safe" https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=219 https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=219
- erik_seaberg 3y agoThis explains the “one button” and hokey controls. Only dropping ballast to surface is life-critical.
- sho_hn 3y agoThe German publication Der Spiegel has an interview up with a tourist who visited the Titanic on the same vessel.
- wingworks 3y agohttps://www.spiegel.de/panorama/titan-tauchgang-zum-wrack-der-titanic-beim-gedanken-an-das-u-boot-laeuft-es-mir-eiskalt-den-ruecken-runter-a-e11cfbfe-2e22-4789-9d35-c96e3b16cb13 https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/titan-tauchgang-zum-wrack-de... Edit, oh, it's a pay walled story.
- top_sigrid 3y agohttps://archive.ph/iBnRE https://archive.ph/iBnRE There you go :-)
- LeoPanthera 3y agoThey really remind me of Tesla. Exploit bleeding-edge technology by doing things as fast and as cheaply as possible. This may sound glib but I really do blame Elon for making "move fast and break things" acceptable in the world of hardware. When things work you can do great things in record time. When things don't work, people die.
- chinchilla2020 3y agoThe difference is that Tesla spends enormous manufacturing cost on aesthetics. Where this sub looks like a bucket of bolts.
- LeoPanthera 3y agoI own a Tesla, and I can tell you that the aesthetics are only aesthetics. The beauty is literally skin-deep. Inside, the car is bodged together to make manufacturing as cheap as possible and with no other considerations. Tesla likes to boast about the safety of their cars, and while I don't deny this, I believe that the safety is an accidental side-effect of the inherent properties of building a car with no explosive fuel and a heavy battery pack at the very bottom of the car.
- sixQuarks 3y agoIf safety is an accidental side effect, then why are no other electric vehicles ranked as high in safety?
- LeoPanthera 3y agoWhere did you read that? Many other EVs have equivalent safety ratings. https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/electric-vehicles/ https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/electric-vehicle... https://www.shift2electric.com/_files/ugd/49f443_f12301e882e5495088fe164bfa51d5aa.pdf https://www.shift2electric.com/_files/ugd/49f443_f12301e882e...
- throwawaypirate 3y ago[dead]
- ibizabear 3y ago[dead]
- hunson_abadeer 3y agoMaybe so, but it's easy to say this after the fact. When kludges like this work, we admire "scrappy" and "ingenious" engineers who are finding ways to launch rockets or build submarines or medical devices or whatever for fraction the price. It's only when it blows up that it turns from "ingenuity" into "amateur hour". People who participated in this knew the risks. They fucked up. None of us would have designed a better submarine, and I'd wager we're not all that qualified to tell a crappy design from a good one, except - once again - after the fact.
- joshspankit 3y agoI just designed a better one while talking this through in the room: Once you realize that ingenuity is not going to be enough to survive: Seal everyone in, then fake the whole experience with a screen built in to the porthole.
- Aeolun 3y ago> None of us would have designed a better submarine I dunno. I would never go with wireless over cabled, certainly not as my primary steering method, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be the only method onboard to control the thing. Maybe it’s better if these things are build by paranoid instead of adventurous people?
- kevinpet 3y agoYou can have safety, or you can have a submarine tourism startup. You can't have a submarine tourism startup staffed by cautious risk averse people.
- svnt 3y agoHow many people should we sacrifice to get a submarine tourism startup?
- worthless-trash 3y agoI believe that question has been answered.
- wingworks 3y agoI just watched it too. What was up with there external lights? several were constantly turning off/on. Where they overheating? loose connection? or what was going on. I just mean, if the lights are so unreliable, imagine if they all failed, they moving in the dark next to the Titanic. (looks like they also have radar, but that could fail too) And the Pilot in that ep seemed to partly depend on the viewer at the front to say if they got close to something. Looks pretty hard to navigate the sub. I know they trying to give a tour to consumers, but I would want the pilot at the front by the window with the best view and time to react. "Driving" kinda blind with just radar and high ISO camera's is a bit sketch.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago> One of the steering motors was fitted backwards… the solution they used was to hold the gamepad at right angles to compensate. Sounds like everything I’ve built in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom so far.
- k_roy 3y agoI hate that I feel this comment in my soul
- SV_BubbleTime 3y ago“Man this thing steers like garbage… oh wait… duh”
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]