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Using equipment that was designed under the assumption that the worst fail state is a frustrated gamer, to operate a leviathan cargo ship, seems like a huge lia

by yzzxy 12y ago

Using equipment that was designed under the assumption that the worst fail state is a frustrated gamer, to operate a leviathan cargo ship, seems like a huge liability. If a ship were to crash, can you imagine the headlines or accusations in court? "Video game controller was used to operate billion-dollar crashed cargo ship"

Lambdanaut 12y ago
It doesn't matter if it's a video game controller or a high-grade steering wheel, as long as it works. Knowing that they've built the ship to operate using these devices tells me that they have trust in them.
darkmighty 12y ago
Those things don't fail like that. When you're looking at big projects it seems you should delegate more and more money as you go closer to the control, but it turns out you can't affect the reliability of those measurably with large sums of money: a specialized joystick isn't guaranteed to last a ton more than your avg gamer one. But it should make sense to also make a specialized computer, usb connection, ... It's easy to see the optimal is really the consumer grade stuff, you can just replace broken parts, quite differently from say a satellite, where once it's broken it's done.
satyap 12y ago
That's... not what labor laws cover. These ships also have an electronics engineer aboard to take care of such stuff. That's aside from the usual team of marine engineers handling the heavy equipment. In this context, the electronics engineer handles everything from the office equipment to the deck cranes. The engineering team handles the actual engines. They kinda step on each other handling the smaller equipment around the engines (steam plants, pumps, etc -- yes they have steam plants). And they have excellent machine shops. I expect a consumer joystick to be a) simple to fix and b) cheap and small, so plenty of spares on board. Source: sailed aboard oil tankers.

by yzzxy 12y ago

Lambdanaut 12y ago

It doesn't matter if it's a video game controller or a high-grade steering wheel, as long as it works. Knowing that they've built the ship to operate using these devices tells me that they have trust in them.

darkmighty 12y ago

Those things don't fail like that. When you're looking at big projects it seems you should delegate more and more money as you go closer to the control, but it turns out you can't affect the reliability of those measurably with large sums of money: a specialized joystick isn't guaranteed to last a ton more than your avg gamer one. But it should make sense to also make a specialized computer, usb connection, ... It's easy to see the optimal is really the consumer grade stuff, you can just replace broken parts, quite differently from say a satellite, where once it's broken it's done.

satyap 12y ago

That's... not what labor laws cover. These ships also have an electronics engineer aboard to take care of such stuff. That's aside from the usual team of marine engineers handling the heavy equipment. In this context, the electronics engineer handles everything from the office equipment to the deck cranes. The engineering team handles the actual engines. They kinda step on each other handling the smaller equipment around the engines (steam plants, pumps, etc -- yes they have steam plants). And they have excellent machine shops. I expect a consumer joystick to be a) simple to fix and b) cheap and small, so plenty of spares on board. Source: sailed aboard oil tankers.