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I don't think it's wrong to take yourself down in a crazy unproven sub, even if you die. But taking paying tourists (not explorers; tourists) who are not expert

• bombcar 3y ago
  A huge part of maturity is realizing that you can’t be an expert capable of evaluating all risk in your life, so outside forces/standards are necessary. Untrained smart people can be really bad at risk - a good shorthand is: can you get insurance for it and what is the price?
  • MichaelZuo 3y ago
    Huh the insurance test does sound pretty smart. Though I imagine some insurance products might not be quoted at all to any random person?
    • bombcar 3y ago
      It’s not perfect, but it at least gets you thinking. Because the adjusters have to price the risk objectively - house burn down? Risk relatively low. Submarine go pop? Probably not insurable at any price - either because risk is too high or they can’t evaluate it. And if they can’t, you likely can’t, unless you’re Cameron or someone similar. That doesn’t mean uninsurable risks aren’t worth taking sometimes. Just be aware and realistic.
      • CharlesW 3y ago
        > Probably not insurable at any price - either because risk is too high or they can’t evaluate it. FWIW, fatal experimental submarine accidents aren't the weirdest thing insurers have insured. https://havenlife.com/blog/craziest-things-insured-lloyds-london/ https://havenlife.com/blog/craziest-things-insured-lloyds-lo...
        • HWR_14 3y ago
          Those are all just extra insurance against injuries that are well known, e.g. a broken leg. They are just extra payouts in case something happens
      • BoxFour 3y ago
        There are lots of extremely high-risk things that can still be insured. As a simple example you can get a new life insurance policy as an 89 year old with some generic insurance providers—-it’ll cost you, though, obviously. Even if you put the risk of death ridiculously high (say, 90%) for each trip, it probably wouldn’t be impossible to insure it. The premium per trip would just likely be roughly the maximum payout and so it wouldn’t necessarily be worth it.
        • MichaelZuo 3y ago
          That sounds really incredible, a 89 year old getting a new life insurance plan? Can you link to one of the providers?
          • LorenPechtel 3y ago
            It doesn't surprise me at all. The customers of such policies are quite wealthy and have no actual need of life insurance. Rather, it's an estate tax dodge because life insurance proceeds are tax free.
          • CSMastermind 3y ago
            They might be thinking of whole life vs term life policies. Whole life policies are basically investment vehicles that are an attractive asset class to a specific segment of the population because of tax reasons. For those unaware term life pays out if you die within a certain time period. There's a chance that they won't pay out - you're pooling your risk of dying along with that of other people because statistically you're not all likely to die. So the premiums you pay in go to pay out someone who does in fact die. For whole life the policy is for well your whole life - so the payout rate is 100% because everyone dies eventually. People take out whole life policies which they pay premiums into and those policies accumulate value allowing them to take out loans against the value of the policy. And because of a tax loophole in the United States this allows you to avoid paying taxes on the (what is essentially) investment dividends. When I worked in the industry the cut off for term life at almost every carrier was 65 years old, though I vaguely remember people introducing policies for 70 year olds which might be a false memory. Whole life can obviously be sold no matter how old you are. A 103 year old could probably find a carrier willing to issue them a whole life policy for the right price.
    • SirSourdough 3y ago
      I’m sure it’s not the case that any random person can get a quote for something like this, but in the case of Titan the people who can afford the $250k ticket probably can.
    • jprete 3y ago
      If someone can't even get an insurance quote, that is a very bad sign by itself that what they're proposing is already too risky.
      • ghaff 3y ago
        Or that insurance companies (in general) have no way to evaluate the risk and therefore make a business decision not to play craps with their shareholder's money (and possibly their careers).
        • thunfischbrot 3y ago
          Which is similarly a sign that you might(!) also not be able to evaluate the risk.
      • marsten 3y ago
        On the other hand, insurance companies may have no interest underwriting unusual risks when the business opportunity is small. "Deep-sea submarine tourism" is a tiny market.
    • steveBK123 3y ago
      Lloyd's of London has entered the chat
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• mikeryan 3y ago
  The 19 year old kid on the sub is the one that gets me. Everyone else should have had the wherewithal to make their own choices - but the kid was just going because his dad wanted him to. Stories are out now that he was freaked out by the idea but went as a Father’s Day “gift”. I feel so horrible for his family. It makes it hard to be cynical about this tragedy.
  • huthuthike 3y ago
    That was a rumor that the mother has debunked. She has come out and said that she was supposed to go with her husband, but gave up her seat to her son because he really wanted to go. I'm not sure this makes it better for the mother, but at least he was willing.
    • viciousvoxel 3y ago
      The dark, cynical side of me says that could just as easily be an excuse to save face/preserve the image of her husband. It's terrible in any case.
      • xeromal 3y ago
        The son not wanting to go was a comment from some random aunt or cousin. I'd trust the mother's word instead of someone cashing in on the drama.
        • 6D794163636F756 3y ago
          They could easily both be telling the truth. He could have been pressured into it by his father and told his mother he wanted to go while telling a more distant relative his fears caused by his parents
        • MagicMoonlight 3y ago
          I wouldn’t. The mother has an incentive to lie, a rando relative doesn’t.
• engineer_22 3y ago
  > I don't think it's wrong to take yourself down in a crazy unproven sub, even if you die. I take your point and I dont quible that in hindsight the mission was reckless. But just to bring some more information to the debate, OceanGate had previously taken the Titan to this depth to visit the Titanic. So, it was "proven". The german entrepreneur who is in this [1] article claims to have visited Titanic twice in the same sub. [1] https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/former-titanic-sub-passenger-dubs-dive-a-suicide-mission/ https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/former-titanic-sub-passenger-d...
  • inoop 3y ago
    > OceanGate had previously taken the Titan to this depth to visit the Titanic. So, it was "proven" This reminds me of an old joke about an optimist who falls from a 40 story building. As he passes the 30th story he thinks to himself, 'so far so good!'
    • stcredzero 3y ago
      How is your current life different? 1) It's not in freefall. 2) It will last orders of magnitude longer. Otherwise, we are all in this boat.
    • peteradio 3y ago
      The analogy would be an optimist who successfully falls two times due to extreme luck, like falling on a passing pillow truck and then goes for a third try.
      • mcpackieh 3y ago
        A man who jumps onto a pile of bubble wrap, but each time he does this a few more of the bubbles pop. (The submarine got weaker each time they used it.)
        • peteradio 3y ago
          This is good.
• throw7 3y ago
  Informed consent. I'd even say "rigorous, neutral, informed consent". And it's not only paying customers. Personally, I've always felt more angry about Christa McAuliffe. I'm not sure I'd go all the way with banning the general public altogether, but I suppose I'm open to it still. Tip: hubris is a tell.
  • LorenPechtel 3y ago
    The astronauts weren't informed with the problems with the boosters, either. The recovered hardware said the seals were frequently failing at ignition (as it goes from ambient to 1000 psi), just not to the point of destruction.
    • mcpackieh 3y ago
      In fact the O-rings were never working as designed in the first place and NASA (but not necessarily those astronauts personally) knew it from the start. This was recognized early on in the program before the Shuttle ever flew. Those SRB joints were originally meant to have two O-rings as redundancy. But in testing they found that the first O-ring was being extruded, pushed past where it was meant to be into the joint and some hot gases were getting past it, meaning the second O-ring was no longer redundant. It was then determined that 'This is Fine'; instead of changing the design they changed the designation of the second o-ring to acknowledge that it was no longer redundant. They flew with that arrangement even though they already knew the primary O-rings didn't function correctly.
  • spiderice 3y ago
    For those, like me, who had no idea what you’re talking about. From Wikipedia: > In 1984, President Ronald Reagan announced the Teacher in Space Project, and McAuliffe learned about NASA's efforts to find their first civilian, an educator, to fly into space. NASA wanted to find an "ordinary person," a gifted teacher who could communicate with students while in orbit. McAuliffe became one of more than 11,000 applicants. … > On January 28, 1986, McAuliffe boarded Challenger with the other six crew members of STS-51-L. Only 73 seconds into its flight at an altitude of 48,000 ft (14.630 km), the shuttle broke apart, resulting in the deaths of all seven crew members
• stickfigure 3y ago
  > cannot vet the safety of your device Meh. The release forms were pretty clear. And if you aren't capable of judging the technical merit - well, that is a decision too. You're deciding to take a leap of unknown risk. We need to stop being this judgy. People should be allowed to make decisions - including the decision to trust someone else - that turn out badly. They paid for those decisions both figuratively and literally. They weren't exactly tricked. I think the good lesson here is that if you aren't capable of judging the risk of something, you shouldn't participate in it. Some people will violate that rule and some of those people will die. It's ok. People die for stupider reasons and nobody lives forever. It doesn't make the world a better place by trying to eliminate every possible source of death.
  • rtkwe 3y ago
    Except basically all release forms include clauses about "risks of serious bodily injury or death" with the understanding that the people running whatever experience it is have done their job and are mitigating those risks. Instead Mr Death Sub here active ignored experts and violated tons of safety rule in favor of making money taking passengers down.
    • tartoran 3y ago
      Yes, the risks are still there even with no safety violations. I bet it didn't say in the waiver forms that the viewport was only certified for 1300m and that they were going way lower than that. That should have been in red and bold text. A lot of people aren't qualified to asses risks and trusted the adults who unbeknownst to them were just wishful thinkers.
      • stickfigure 3y ago
        > viewport was only certified for 1300m The 1300m rated viewport was on the (retired/rebuilt) 1st gen sub, not the one that failed. If you pay attention to the photos, the Titan has an obviously different viewport. If you are this mistaken on such a simple matter of fact, please look inward and maybe reconsider being so assertive and judgmental.
• grecy 3y ago
  I prefer to let people make their own choices, otherwise the alternative might just be to ban everyone from doing everything even remotely dangerous anywhere on the entire planet (who's laws will apply?) If people want to do risky things, that's their business.
  • rfwhyte 3y ago
    Bullshit. When the expectation is that we'll fund any potential rescue efforts when something invariably goes wrong with our tax dollars, it becomes the rest of our business pretty damn quickly.
    • grecy 3y ago
      Back country skiing? sky diving? Scuba diving? Hiking deep into the wilderness? All of those require search and rescue type operations, should we ban them?
• steveBK123 3y ago
  I think there's an argument that even crazy unsafe stuff that only harms yourself shouldn't be exempt from regulatory frameworks purely on the "personal harm only" basis. Stuff like this triggers costly (and sometimes dangerous) search & rescue parties. A regular boat has to be registered in most US states. I'm not a boating expert, but it would seem some combination of "well its not a boat" & "International waters" lead to it being less regulated/inspected than Joe 6 packs fishing boat. Or more specifically, because the sub is taken out to international waters by its support ship, it would seem the sub falls under less regulation than the support ship carrying it, despite being a higher risk profile..
  • asfarley 3y ago
    It doesn’t need to, you could put yourself on a risky-behavior list which would result in skipping the search.
    • SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      Yeah, sign a DNR - Do not recover.
    • deleted 3y ago
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    • Thrymr 3y ago
      By international maritime law, any ship at sea is required to assist in search and rescue, if they can do so safely and there is a chance of saving lives. That doesn't mean everyone is required to send expensive assets for deep sea recovery of debris and remains, but for that time that there seemed like there was a chance, however remote, that the submersible might be bobbing on the surface with no way to open the hatch, there was a real legal obligation to search if possible.
  • everforward 3y ago
    An interesting counterpoint is that these people are pushing science and engineering forward, and are risking their own time, money and lives in the process. Attempting to rescue them seems like a fair trade. I don't think this situation is a particularly good example, but I don't think blanket condemning experimental deep sea vehicles is the right response.
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• HWR_14 3y ago
  We have "accredited investors" whose wealth and sophistication makes them able to take financial risks in unregulated markets where scams would destroy naive investors. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that any billionaire entering a dangerous situation can have or access whatever experts on risk mitigation they want. I have no sympathy towards the "cannot vet the safety" argument. If it was regular tourists who save up for a once in a lifetime experience, I would feel differently.
  • sugarkjube 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure they only went because the CEO/owner went along. Seems like a reasonable assumption to make as a customer that the CEO wouldn't risk his life.
    • HWR_14 3y ago
      Again, they don't have to make assumptions. They can have their own engineers provide due diligence. These are people who can trivially afford that level of care on an experimental submersible.
      • flangola7 3y ago
        Making the argument that customers should have had their own engineers conduct an assessment if they wanted safety is definitely a solid plan if your goal is to be torn to sheds by the judge/jury.
        • HWR_14 3y ago
          I'm sure the legal case before the judge is "check page 2, subsection 4 of our indemnity clause" and the case is tossed before it even gets to the jury. I'm specifically talking about people trying risky things. And yes, billionaires who want to risk their lives on experimental deadly craft should hire engineers.
• fatfingerd 3y ago
  I don't really see much difference between this and the most expensive/extreme tourist mountain climbing. Plenty of people die on adventures with things where they don't really understand much and put their trust in paid experienced guides. Its not unusual for a death to be caused by the expert guides being wrong and in the minority of opinion on the right way to do something or planners being wrong on how many tourists can be handled, which tourists are fit enough, etc. I think many more people who already survived a one time sub trip with that company will ultimately die in safer equipment due to cumulative risk, so one really has to factor in quality of life explanations to argue it is unacceptable, but then maybe from a quality of life POV a once in a lifetime trip was fine. The real issue I think is the pilot risk which wasn't approaching 100% only because there were other failures that could have shelved the sub besides catastrophic ones.