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They actively sought tourists. Made them believe the system was safe, sufficiently enough to persuade them to get on board and pay $250k. Had the company not b

by Renaud 3y ago

They actively sought tourists. Made them believe the system was safe, sufficiently enough to persuade them to get on board and pay $250k. Had the company not be deluding itself and be more responsible, they would never have opened the sub to the public. A test pilot or an astronaut are highly technical people who really understand the risks they get into. And they know that dying is not an unlikely event. Expecting a 16 year old to be technically competent to know he shouldn't have boarded that death-trap is disingenuous. You can only be capable of judging the risk of something if you're told the honest truth about the actual risk, or if you have enough inside knowledge to assess that risk. Dying because you've been tricked -lied- into thinking it's safe enough, is a high price to pay for anyone. Saying it's alright to die because you've been tricked is pretty callous. With a company owner who shrugged off safety to the point of deluding himself, do you think the passengers had any honest way of knowing how unsafe that sub really was and make an informed decision? It's easy to say they should have done due diligence after the fact. It's like blaming passengers from boarding a doomed flight with a maverick pilot who thinks loading the plane by 300% is alright because nothing ever happened before.

stickfigure 3y ago
Not a single one of these customers walked in off the street. This is not a mass-market product, it's incredibly bespoke. It's so new and experimental that nobody knows exactly how safe it is. That's why it's literally classed as experimental. There was no trickery here - hell, there are tons of stories from rich folks who declined a trip because they didn't think it was safe. There's a long tradition of rich people getting themselves killed with experimental toys. Usually it's general aviation. Did John Denver know the risks of having the fuel tank selector valve over his left shoulder? Obviously not, or he probably wouldn't have crashed. But we let people buy and sell airplanes anyway - or at least, we did up until the 80s when we sued aircraft manufacturers into oblivion. I'd rather live in a world with general aviation and a small but steady stream of deaths, rather than a world with no deaths because we've eliminated general aviation. I ask you personally: Would you fly on a hypothetical next shuttle launch? Because I think most HNers would, even though the shuttle has historically had about a 2% failure rate. Which, if the 50 dives claimed by the oceangate website is correct, is on par with the Titan.

by Renaud 3y ago

stickfigure 3y ago

Not a single one of these customers walked in off the street. This is not a mass-market product, it's incredibly bespoke. It's so new and experimental that nobody knows exactly how safe it is. That's why it's literally classed as experimental. There was no trickery here - hell, there are tons of stories from rich folks who declined a trip because they didn't think it was safe. There's a long tradition of rich people getting themselves killed with experimental toys. Usually it's general aviation. Did John Denver know the risks of having the fuel tank selector valve over his left shoulder? Obviously not, or he probably wouldn't have crashed. But we let people buy and sell airplanes anyway - or at least, we did up until the 80s when we sued aircraft manufacturers into oblivion. I'd rather live in a world with general aviation and a small but steady stream of deaths, rather than a world with no deaths because we've eliminated general aviation. I ask you personally: Would you fly on a hypothetical next shuttle launch? Because I think most HNers would, even though the shuttle has historically had about a 2% failure rate. Which, if the 50 dives claimed by the oceangate website is correct, is on par with the Titan.