Re:Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepa...
by proggy on Tuesday June 20, 2023 @11:01PM
(#36413861)
It’s a relief to see that the Marine Technology Society saw this coming 6 years ago, and did what they could to encourage OceanGate to do the right thing. There are inherent, known risks with deep sea exploration and firms need to be held to a minimum standard of safety out of a basic respect for human life. Being a scrappy startup isn’t a valid excuse for cutting corners when it comes to engineering and qualification of a pressure vessel and its essential components.
I really hope that the foresight of the MTS is recognized amongst the general public, and the DSV space doesn’t suffer a setback in perception and/or funding. At present, it does seem like the general sentiment is that this specific submersible was built to an incredibly poor standard when compared to, say, the famed Alvin or Deepsea Challenger. I hope that sentiment holds.
Peers in the industry though have expressed concerns, such as in this 2018 letter:
> This letter is sent on behalf of our industry members who have collectively expressed unanimous concern regarding the development of TITAN and the planned Titanic Expedition. Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by Oceangate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry.
https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/marine-technology-soc...
Or when they fired and sued their director of marine operations who raised safety concerns:
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23854184-oceangate-v...