Not gonna shed a tear given how avoidable this entire tragedy was, and how terribly managed and selected his engineering team was.

No amount of poor decision making changes the fact that several precious human lives were lost. Frustration over the company's potential negligence and sadness over the loss of life can coexist.

Thank you for calling this out. It's also disheartening and quite frankly scary, to see how the passengers get dehumanized on other online platforms due to their wealth.

Sure, or maybe, just maybe it's because of the brazen hubris enabled by their wealthy and not the wealth itself.

Still not a reason to completely dehumanize people.

I'm not dehumanizing anyone, that's just silly. It's about as dehumanizing as when I don't care when teenagers doing Tik Tok pranks suffer consequences of their ignorant, braggardly actions.

So much hand wringing and I've seen about two whole comments talking about the boat that sank carrying 100x as many people while this saga was unfolding.

How is it dehumanizing for me to not care about one, when virtually no one gave a single shit about the hundreds of non-wealthy people dying?

I'm just trying to understand your philosophical position: I don't have to care about certain people, as revenge for others not caring about a different group of people?

For me all human life is precious and equally worthy of effort to save, as well as sympathy and grief for their loss. I suppose that's not your position, but I don't quite understand what it is.

I guess I'm saying it's a spectrum. Other than the teenager, my empathy extends as far as "at least they didn't suffer as a consequence of doing something that they knew damn well was likely to kill them".

"Equally worthy of effort" - ironic because the amount of money spent trying to save these 5 people could save hundreds or thousands of times as many people. But I don't see people clamoring for equality in helping the disenfranchised.

Respectfully, I’m not allocating those funds myself. I share your frustration about the unequal devotion of resources to helping people. But that doesn’t mean that these people aren’t worth saving, or grieving.

Same, we regularly see lots of language used in the media and parliaments of Europe to do anything not to refer to these refugees as refugees or even people ("migrant ships") and I've never seen this called out on HN or in similar circles.

The hypocrisy is staggering.

You realize this thread is about the sub that was lost, not the thread about the ship that sunk. It shouldn't come as much surprise that people aren't talking about migrant ship that sunk.

Here it's off-topic to talk about the sunk ship and the migrants that died. Here it's on topic to talk about the people on the sub that died. People should have empathy with both situations, but are much less likely to express it when they're frustrated by someone complaining about something off-topic.

Yes but the issue is that there is no thread about this ship and the many hundreds who are routinely dying are never brought up. The only time I see it mentioned in the media or in parliament is when we're discussing how we can keep them further away and shed our responsibility to them.

At the same time we're being asked to support tax money going to search for these 5 risk tourists and being accused of ignoring their humanity when we simply point out the utter stupidity and greediness of their escapade.

Why not? Rich have no qualms about dehumanizing the poor. And many more of them at that. Because rich are few and poor are many.

"the Rich" aren't some kind of homogenous block that all act and speak in unison. Putting people in groups like that really worries me.

It's curious that you didn't oppose "the poor" group, only "the Rich", with capital R.

Because it's much worse when you put people in a group and then attack that group than when you just group. "We need to help the poor", not very problematic. "The poor are lazy and deserve to suffer", very problematic.

You raised your shield to defend the people who have all of the resorces to defend themselves. Are you sure this is the best way to spend your time?

Yes, I don't want some communist revolution or othering or dehumanization which frequently is a precursor to violence. Are you sure criticizing how other people spend their time is the best use of yours?

Poor behavior by one party does not excuse bad behavior by another.

Spending $250K to go sightseeing while there are starving people in your community is an act of dehumanization in your own right.

Starving? Homeless? Too bad. We have so much money that we gotta blow it to go look at this thing over here instead.

Do you know how much money they donate? I don't, it might be nothing, but I also wouldn't jump to conclusions. It's not like we don't have very wealthy people like Bill Gates put significant time and money into making the world a better.

I don't care how much money they donate, because the tax systems of the world are designed to minimize their losses versus the people who work for them. That's still money they clearly didn't need and certainly didn't earn.

Bill Gates has hubris because Bill Gates has a fuckton of wealth that he did nothing to directly earn. Merely having capital yields capital results.

I wonder to what degree the hubris causes the wealth. You need a high degree of certainty in yourself and your ideas to succeed in many ventures. I've seen people work their way up organizations who I think are much less competent and thoughtful than I'm, but they at least outwardly present themselves with certainty. Often times people liker that already got promoted away before the downsides of their decisions materialize. In other instances we might never hear about them, because nobody cares about the guy under the freeway bridge who has similar character traits to Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, but got less lucky or was slightly less smart or well connected.

Whatabouism.

Also tragic. Being sad over this does not preclude being sad about those events.

I think people are angry when, as others have mentioned, there are more resources and international cooperation going into helping these 5 people who took a needless risk while we watch 100s dying regularly while they try to flee literal war ones in regions we've destabilised for years.

You can also see in this thread people calling them "precious lives" as though that doesn't apply to the people making the ultimate sacrifice to try and bring their families to safety.

I have nothing against people being rich but it's frankly scary to see these refugees be dehumanised, framed as economic immigrants and become victim to to increasing legislation to keep them out of safety on the basis that we can't afford them using our resources when we suddenly have resources enough to spend on extensive missions to search for people who made bad decisions for fun and risked the lives of others for nothing but profit and fame.

Who’s we that destabilised these countries? Cos I bet you it’s is not the countries that they are sailing to.

If you want to call them refugees then take them home. They are economic migrants where “we” live.

I live were those poor people try to go, and I call them refugees. I also say we, because as a voting citizen of one of those countries that did some of said destabilazing over the years, I cannot wash myself of all responsibility.

I’m starting to think that’s the primary purpose of voting - to get people to feel complicit in actions they didn’t want by people they didn’t want in places they didn’t know existed.

In Switzerland it pretty much works exactly like that.

That, and providing legitimacy to the existing power structures, no matter how much of a say people actually have.

And delegitimising all others forms of feedback and expression.

Than you have a clearly distorted view of democracy. And I do not feel complicit, why would I? But, as part of the Western democratic world, I cannot simply ignore everything we did all over the world in the last 20 odd years and pretend it was some outside force doing all of that. Democracy, regardless of shape in form, is exactly about giving people a voice in those affaires. Which is a good thing, IMHO.

The recent boat that sank was sailing to Italy from Libya, one of its ex-colonies.

France, the UK, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy have each spent a couple centuries having fun destabilising the whole world for their own gain.

The US was a bit late to the game, but appears to have caught up quite well.

And while in Europe these people often first set sail for the western Balkans, it usually isn’t their destination.

You missed Portugal and Germany.

Yes, I did! Sorry about that.

I thought it wise to only mention those whose colonial history I knew about, and avoid exposing my whole point to criticism by over-extending myself.

"We" would be roughly the members of NATO and its allies, former colonial powers and the countries traditionally within the sphere of Catholic influence.

Where are they sailing to that this doesn't cover? The recent example being spoken about in this thread was trying to make it to Italy, which has been involved in various conflicts in the middle east since the middle ages.

All that's awful and I hope we can make it better. That said, the humans on that silly submarine have very little to do with what we are and aren't doing about refugees in the Mediterranean.

It's not inherently dehumanizing to point out that, well, this was death by misadventure, and was profoundly avoidable.

If you die doing something dumb, then yeah, people are gonna point that out.

If you die doing something dumb that you spent house money to do, the pointing out will be much more pointed.

it's not the assertion that it was avoidable I'm objecting to, it's the 'not gonna shed a tear' <3

Potential negligence? Dude fired the guy who was trying to get the hull checked for voids before doing crew testing. Then they sued him and proceeded to run this thing with passengers without bothering to do non-destructive testing. Sounds more Stockton Rush went well beyond negligence and straight to malfeasance to me.

You're probably right but I, like you, am a lurker on the internet and not in possession of every single fact, so I'm choosing my words.

Sorry, I live in a country with a for-profit health care system. I have been assured my entire life that a few poor decisions are indeed complete justification for dismissing the value of human life.

P.S.: Hate all you want. I don't give a fuck. I'm tired of being told to give a shit when some billionaire fuckwad dies of his own reckless stupidity while at the same time being told we can't treat treatable illnesses because rich fucks can't make enough money off of doing it.

Well I wouldn't agree with either position. Human life is human life, but I guess some people seem to believe that either poor OR wealthy people are less deserving of sympathy, care, and investment of resources.

I happen to disagree, but you do you.

I feel for them about as much as I do the ~100 people who died today in car accidents in the US. Most of whom were probably also doing reckless things. In a sane world we would do something about that, but people like Rush actively work against sanity in the name of profit, so here we are.

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents."

"Please don't fulminate."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I hope the other souls onboard fully understood the risk of death, otherwise that isn't fair to them.

To relate it to flying in an airplane, “If you take one flight a day, you would on average need to fly every day for 55,000 years before being involved in a fatal crash.”

I'll take those odds.

Take a deep dive in an experimental vessel with public safety concerns expressed over years, nope I'm out.

They all had to sign multi-page waivers that mention "death" no less than three times on the first page.

That is simply wild, is the multi-page waiver available to read?

I haven't seen the full waiver anywhere. The death being mentioned three times comes from someone who took an earlier Titan dive. However, it is mentioned in David Pogue's story about OceanGate: https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=160

It also occurs to me that there should be no more sophisticated consumer than a billionaire. If one really wanted, I'd imagine they could build their own submersible to their own safety specifications.

Many billionaires, including the one on board, frequently demonstrate how wholly unsophisticated and arrogant they are. Extreme hubris was on display by everyone involved.

I would reserve judgment on that, there was a teenager involved and I highly doubt they were of an age which allowed them to absorb the knowledge to properly evaluate the risks. There also was his dad and the CEO of the company on board which may have given him an extra degree of feeling that the risks were acceptable.

Yes. I feel bad for that guy the most. So young, and of course he probably didn’t had the resources to independently verify the safety of the sub. Unlike the millionaire passengers could have just thrown tenth of the ticket price at any marine engineer who would have been able to explain to them how dangerous the whole thing is.

Ok. Extreme hubris was on display by everyone involved except maybe one of them, the adult son.

Common misconception, don't need to be intelligent or sophisticated to be one, social skills and utter ruthlessness seem to be way more indicative.

Easily dismissed by "the lawyers made us do it" for people who were drawn to the "adventure" of the trip or the allure of the Titanic.

> They all had to sign multi-page waivers that mention "death" no less than three times on the first page.

You sign similar waivers for all kinds of benign things - including amusement park tickets, concerts, skateboard parks, etc.

I have a feeling the safety of this contraption was grossly oversold to the passengers...

It's one of the best arguments over that whole 'this product is known to the state of California to cause cancer' warnings.

When you have to start putting that on coffee cups, it loses all meaning.

People have to sign those waivers very often for significantly less risky activities like going ziplining, so let's not pretend signing a waiver is the same as actual informed consent.

It also looked so terribly janky. I feel like all the lights were flashing red for this craft, but maybe people were swayed by assurances from people who were a bit too enthusiastic about their product.

Billionaires get to the money by the art of charisma and bullshitting so it is entirely possible they got bullshitted all the way to the bottom on that too

He was not recognized as an expert by other deep-sea submerisble experts. He was repeatedly warned about safety issue with this design. These events are tragic, but they were predictable and avoidable and that makes it frustrating.

Another testament to the magic of speaking confidently about something to others who know nothing about that something.

I often figure that you only need about 25% more knowledge/expertise on a topic than others to seem like an expert, and for them to be incapable of actually judging your knowledge

Specifically warned 5 years ago by his own employee and fired him as a thank you to boot. "OceanGate fired employee David Lochridge in 2018 after he expressed concern about the submersible's safety"

source https://www.cbsnews.com/news/titanic-submarine-oceangate-hul...

He's also on record as saying things like, "It's obscenely safe because they have all these regulations. But it also hasn't innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations." (https://www.insider.com/titan-submarine-ceo-complained-about...)

He seemed especially proud about combining titanium and carbon fibre against the advice of others, which seems to now have been in a pretty active role in the demise of the Titan.

>"I'd like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General MacArthur who said "you're remembered for the rules you break." And I've broken some rules to make this. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. The carbon fibre and the titanium, there's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."

https://www.reddit.com/r/titanic/comments/14ekh3r/stockton_r...

Titanium and carbon are meant for each other. Nothing innovative there unless we’re taking about the 1950s

Apparently if you put titanium and carbon fibre next to each other in salt water the titanium begans to corrode at quicker rate.

Can read more here: https://www.corrosionpedia.com/galvanic-corrosion-of-metals-...

> Therefore, there is no significant gap between titanium and carbon-fiber-reinforced composite to create galvanic corrosion. This means that commercially pure titanium and its alloys are completely resistant to galvanic corrosion when they are coupled with carbon composites.

Small things, e.g. insognificanz rebellions, ah, gaps, do add up.

I see a problem in stress loads so. Titanium and carbon fibre composites behave differently under load. And at those depths, they are under a lot of load. These small differences induce additional stress at the critical joint between bulk heads and submarine body. That stress causes, over time, material fatigue.

That's why those components are, in most othee use cases, fatigue tested to their breaking point. Knowing that point, allows you to define a save service life for those components and replace thek way before they fail.

The article you cite says "Therefore, there is no significant gap between titanium and carbon-fiber-reinforced composite to create galvanic corrosion. This means that commercially pure titanium and its alloys are completely resistant to galvanic corrosion when they are coupled with carbon composites." This seems to be the opposite of what you are asserting.

Serotta did too when making this bike: https://www.bigshark.com/articles/serotta-road-bikes-pg318.h...

There is a rather large difference between a road bike and a vessel that needs to withstand the pressures of being 4000 meters underneath the ocean.

Bicycles are not submersibles.

They can be, but it’s a one way trip.

Danny MacAskill begs to differ.

https://youtu.be/K_7k3fnxPq0

James Cameron is extremely critical of the design of the sub, and of Rush's attitude [0]. He says that carbon fiber was a very poor choice and that it had been known for a very long time, and that "deep submerged diving is a mature art".

If you think you're going to reinvent the wheel and bypass regulatory bodies and ignore subject experts, and move fast and break things, you're delusional.

Any baby can break things; any toddler can break rules. What's hard is to discover new rules, make things that don't break.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThZLhNF_xg

Exactly. What really gets me is that he would subject passengers - one of which is a teenager - to this kind of risk. It really gets me, that kid probably had absolutely no clue about the real level of risk involved.

Carbon is fantastic stuff if used properly, used improperly it will seem to be perfect right up to the point where it fails catastrophically.

A few weeks ago there was a tragic caving accident at a local school here where a boy drowned when the outdoor adventure group entered the caves even as flood waters were rising from a storm.

I told my 10 year old son that one day his life might depend on being able to recognise danger and not follow the herd. I said that might mean you staying out of the cave even if the teacher and all the other students went in, called you names, etc.

He rightly pointed out that would be almost impossible such is the power of peer pressure. Still I hope if that day comes he remembers it.

You are right and your son is also right. As a father of sons I share your concerns and I hope that I'm able to give them the capability to withstand that peer pressure. I've been - and still am - subject to this on account of not drinking alcohol, smoking or using drugs. To the point that it becomes ridiculous ('don't be boring'). This has been a recurring thing since my teenage years and I really don't get why people feel the need to pressure others into joining them in their stupidity. Just like I don't push them to behave like I do.

But it's been tough, on occasion and I can see the point that your son makes, and I hope with you that if that day comes that he will remember it. FWIW you can tell him this internet stranger agrees with his dad and that peer pressure can be overcome.

> A few weeks ago there was a tragic caving accident at a local school here where a boy drowned when the outdoor adventure group entered the caves even as flood waters were rising from a storm.

That's awful, and if there's one thing that I learned from Thai cave rescue a few years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tham_Luang_cave_rescue) it's that you never want to go swimming in caves when it might start raining.

I write about the propensity of adolescents worldwide to take unreasonable risks in here:

https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/how-about-not-overcoming...

it isn't just Americans or even First Worlders. In some cultures they're not able to do it, but they all want to. And it's -- guess what? -- peer pressure that makes them do it. Brain scans show that they recognize the danger as well as adults do, but they're more susceptible to the peer pressure.

It's ok to be afraid. No one had to go down to 12,500 feet to see the Titanic.

A father at least got it, flat out refusing to send his son on that trip, he survived.

https://i.stuff.co.nz/national/132006337/dad-who-stopped-son...

Yep, a helicopter pilot used to doing real risk assessments.

Resisting peer pressure is a life long skill, eventually it just merges with one’s sense of ethics and duty.

Are you in Whangarei? The incident at the Abbey caves was really so tragic and preventable. I still don't get what went through the teachers heads, it's to rainy to go rock climbing, so we go caving instead?!

Yep, I hope some solid information about their risk assessment process comes out.

The kid's father seems to bear a lot of responsibility in his son's demise.

> In the days before the Titan vessel went into the ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the 19-year-old university student accompanying his father on the expedition expressed hesitation about going, his aunt said Thursday in an interview.

> Azmeh Dawood — the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood — told NBC News that her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he "wasn't very up for it" and felt "terrified" about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.

> But the 19-year-old ended up going aboard OceanGate's 22-foot submersible because the trip fell over Father's Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the lore of the Titanic, according to Azmeh.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/titanic-submersible-shahw...

Ugh, that's so sad. Dying to please your old man. He seems to have had the best intuition about the safety risks involved then.

That or he still thought it was safe but was scared regardless.

Even though everyone knows flying commercially is incredibly safe, lots of people are still anxious about it. Its not like this kid, or maybe any of the other customers, knew of any of the safety concerns and just thought it was as safe as flying.

Flying commercial is safe.

Its also good to remember the titanium wings bear the full weight of the plane.

50% of the wings on a 787 are carbon fiber. Which was tested far above loads before failing.

When corners aren't cut building the planes, and Boeing has never cut corn... oh, crud.

Almost the full weight. The fuselage typically contributes in the neighborhood of 10% of the lift.

Sad, maybe. Seems like one of the best ways to go. Respect.

I doubt it felt like a good way to go to someone who was scared to go on the thing in the first place. Maybe it went from no indications of a problem to near instantaneous implosion in a moment, but I kind of doubt it. I’m guessing that carbon fiber was anything but silent as it approached the moment of catastrophic failure. I’d like to think they didn’t know what was about to happen, but it seems unlikely.

This was one of the reasons I always hoped their deaths were as quick as could be. As a parent myself, the idea of looking my child in the eyes for days on end, knowing that I’d condemned them to death with my own hubris… I can’t imagine anything more miserable.

> Carbon is fantastic stuff if used properly, used improperly it will seem to be perfect right up to the point where it fails catastrophically.

It blows my mind that anyone thought it was a good idea to make a deep-sea submersible out of the stuff.

Carbon's tendency to abruptly fail without warning was a source of significant anxiety whenever I'd go riding the more aggressive trails on my ibis mojo hd3. And that wasn't a certain death outcome should the carbon let go...

Also people have been making bikes out of carbon for a while and reputable brands know what they're doing.

And even then. If you buy a carbon bike second hand (which I would advise against) you'll have to do an absolutely minute inspection to ensure there are no cracks, especially the front fork and all the places where there are inserts are excellent spots for hairline cracks to develop.

I suppose it is easier to move fast and break things when all you need to do is post pictures of cats, but diving to 4km depth you only get to break once I’m afraid

How costly was Cameron venture ? it seems so strange to see a crew die in conditions that were already mastered, with near no added benefits.

Cameron says the sub had sensors that would detect if the sub was starting to delaminate. He says the sub was trying to return because they probably had a warning. How terrifying.

I'm curious about this detail, and I have what is surely a very dumb question. Both titanium and carbon fiber are, afaik, known and used for their strength to weight ratio; so aerospace is a natural application. But in deep sea diving is weight a factor at all? Could one just build vehicles with, I don't know, a 30 cm thick steel plate?

> But in deep sea diving is weight a factor at all?

You need to be able to attain both positive and negative buoyancy, which constrains density within a range, right? That limits design choices like “giant block of steel with a tiny passenger cavity”.

It's super easy to add buoyancy by attaching it to the hull outside the pressure vessel. James Cameron's design uses a metal pressure vessel with an advanced foam composite outside of it for buoyancy.

And of course he used McArthur, of all the people, as a reference...

Well, he now will be remembered, just for inevitable Darwin award

>which seems to now have been in a pretty active role in the demise of the Titan.

I know little about the topic but it sounds terribly early to rule what exactly had 'a pretty active role' in the incident. Is it not?

LOL, Guardian published information about documents describing the danger of this thing, the lack of regulations and how deep sea exploration of this kind is probably finished for many years to come.

Him saying "it's obscenely safe" just sounds like a Silicon Valley CEO saying they're going to save the world by selling their users' personal data under the table. EDIT seems like I interpreted this wrong according to comment below.

The "obscenely safe" remark was directed at "regulated" vessels, not at his own sub. He was acknowledging that he was taking risks by not conforming to regulations.

Thanks, my bad.

From what I understand he was also complaining about those regulations holding back the private industry and also it's been stated as of late that he's on record saying how he's broken rules. That among allegations of a safety director being fired in 2015 for pointing out design safety oversights. [0]

I don't think it's great to make this guy into a folk hero just because he was pushing the limits. Imagine, for a second, how this would be reacted to in the aviation space.

If the CEO cut corners then that should be his legacy. Great people can be flawed. Flaws can be fatal. It's just a shame if those flaws weren't properly portrayed to those who dove with him.

[0] https://fortune.com/2023/06/21/titan-titanic-missing-sub-dav...

It’s ok and even a good thing to cut corners and take a “ask forgiveness not permission” attitude when the results of failure are inconvenience and annoyance. Pushing through layers of accumulated red tape does indeed help when you’re making a taxi service or delivering food or making a social app.

Not so much when you’re building life-critical systems or those where there are real big serious problems when they go down or fail.

Things can go bad quickly with taxi and food delivery too. The difference is that those come with built in fall guys

making people into folk heros just because they were pushing the limits is how we got aviation in the first place, and a lot of dead aviators

https://www.planecrashinfo.com/famous1910s.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aviators_killed_in_av...

progress in both aviation and undersea exploration stopped about 50 years ago when we stopped doing that

Oh I'm all about innovation. Just don't pretend to be innovating when you're charging people $250k for a trip in your experimental vehicle that is thinly veiled with the marketing gimick of "tourism". I believe you're conflating individual risk takers with the new age charlatans looking at this through the lens of profit first, innovation second.

The links you provide show a stark difference in end game from then and now. None of them killed tourists in the name of pushing the limits. That and those risk takers in aviation didn't blindly disregard highly researched and engineered vehicle designs, and oh by the way, publicly state that your design was ultimately against what other experts in the industry have shown to be non-viable with our current build process and manufacturing capabilities using those materials. And to top it off using control mechanisms not even remotely designed for the use case of a real time system that could cause a grave outcome of life. One that you can buy at Walmart to play a video game.

In my mind comparing this situation with those innovators is unfortunate.

It really makes you think about other tech CEOs, when they say something is safe, or private or something similar.

Most software doesn’t implode though.

Those of us making web apps don't have the same safety critical nature as anything carrying souls. Working in aerospace gave me a great appreciation for the complexity of ensuring safety, the engineering hours poured into it, and why regulations exist.

The CEO was quoted[1] as:

> “We only have one button and that's it,” Rush said in the CBS report. “It should be like an elevator.

What an example to reference. Early elevators resulted in many deaths [2] and safety regulations and mechanisms needed to be invented to prevent them [3].

Similar regulations existed for submersibles, but he decided not to take all those lessons learned. I'm thankful building elevator operators do not have a cavalier attitude towards safety like this.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/06/20/david-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevator_accidents [3] https://blog.ansi.org/history-of-elevators/#gref

Having formerly worked in safety critical software, it would make me cringe when I would hear people in those industries use phrases like "move fast and break things."

I'm not even a risk-adverse individual. But I can often recognize when people say things like that, not because they're comfortable with the risk, but because they are blind to it. It's hard for me to feel like the teenager aboard was fully cognizant of the risks.

While it’s been 15 years I used to work in telco. Everyday I reminded myself that my software needed to work because someone might need to call 911, or make an equally important call.

Mostly yes, although externalities are worth considering. For example Pokémon Go may have lead to 256 deaths https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3073723

It’s ok to mourn somebody who caused the tragedy that took them.

This is true, but he took others with him.

Reminds me of a joke I heard on my first night time fishing trip on a boat.

Boat owner: "This boat has been certified as insubmersible"

Guest 1: "Certified until what depth?"

Guest 2: "...All the way to the seafloor"

"Two months later, OceanGate faced similarly dire calls from more than three dozen people — industry leaders, deep-sea explorers and oceanographers — who warned in a letter to its chief executive, Stockton Rush, that the company’s “experimental” approach and its decision to forgo a traditional assessment could lead to potentially “catastrophic” problems with the Titanic mission."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/20/us/oceangate-titanic-miss...

letter (pdf): https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/marine-technology-soc...

I don't understand why they didn't just drop it to the bottom of the ocean without people hundred times to see if it still holds. Who experiments with a crew in the age of remote control sensors and computers?

`Over the years it has carried out more than 200 dives with its three submersible vessels in the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf of Mexico.`

But not with the same hull. So that's a bit of a tricky statement.

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-big...

They didn't change the name and technically the cylinder is just another part but it suggests that the same hull was used which isn't correct as far as I read it.

Right. Also, the difference in depths matter just as much as number of dives.

I'm guessing they couldn't afford to without going bankrupt.

Then they couldn't afford it, period.

In the end all participants consented and were aware of the risks.

There's no absolutely safe way to dive that deep, just like there's no absolutely safe way to ascend K2. People still want to do it.

K2 is attempted by experts using their own gear under their own power. They know exactly what risks they are taking.

This submersible was basically a rollercoaster ride that wasn't up to spec. If a participant doesn't need to know or do anything on a trip, they are going for a ride not an adventure, and they aren't expected to be safety experts in the field.

Also one of the passengers was a teenager who was concerned about going, but went along to make his dad happy. Hardly a clear eyed risk taker who was fine with the risk.

1000% this. A previous participant Mike Reiss, former Simpsons producer, did a interview a few days ago where he all but compared himself to one of the astronauts on the Mercury missions. It was nearly borderline delusional.

He even said he was well aware of the risks involved and kissed his wife goodbye not knowing if he would see her again. Just because something is insanely dangerous doesn't make you an explorer, and you're not performing in any research capacity, you're a former writer for the Simpsons and this is TOURISM. Get some perspective.

> In the end all participants consented and were aware of the risks.

They consented, but were they aware of the actual risks? That seems unclear at best, given the active concealment of safety issues and the misleading marketing that has been cited in various reports.

> There’s no absolutely safe way to dive that deep

Nothing is absolutely safe, but deep submersion diving isn’t a new field, there are established safety standards and practices (including in the latter third-party audits to confirm compliance to the former) and OceanGate uniquely among operators of manned vehicles refused to conform to either (though it marketed its subs as exceeding the standards it decided not to be certified against). And its also unique in experiencing a manned disaster.

Now, we aren’t at the point where it can conclusively be shown that those two unique features are directly connected (and practical issues with investigating a disaster at this depth may not make that practical any time soon), but, its not unreasonable to suspect that they are.

> Now, we aren’t at the point where it can conclusively be shown that those two unique features are directly connected

I would take that bet.

> > Now, we aren’t at the point where it can conclusively be shown that those two unique features are directly connected

> I would take that bet.

And I would agree that that is where the smart money is, I’m just acknowledging that the actual specific cause of the disaster and any connection to specific cut safety corners remains unknown.

There are a lot of tell tales in how the debris field is structured.

The fact that the two end bells are separated from the central cylinder and that the cylinder itself can't be located pretty much singles out the carbon fiber structure. The company was aware of problems with previous iterations of the hull of Titan which may have been rebuilt at least once and possibly more than once (this is a bit unclear in what I've been able to dig up about it so far). If the window blew first I would expect things to look a bit different.

I wonder to what extent gross negligence trumps the language in the consent waiver.

> There's no absolutely safe way to dive that deep

That's true, but there are (substantially) safer ways. This design should have never been used for passengers.

I really draw the line there: innovators are free to do whatever the hell they want to do with their own lives and if a professional who really understand the risks decides that they want to take those risks they should be free to do so.

But to charge passengers for a ride requires a completely different attitude towards safety. No matter what you are going to write on your consent forms. Besides being unable to properly evaluate the risks inherent in your design they will be subject to all kinds of pressure to participate which will reduce their ability to properly assess the risks.

This is why we have different classes of aircraft, and why depending on your goals you will be assessed differently by the authorities if you intend to operate one for ferrying (paying) passengers.

> free to do whatever the hell they want to do with their own lives

Is that entirely true? In a scenario like this they're going to incur tremendous costs borne by others in search and recovery, and potentially put rescue personnel in harm's way. Modulo these things being used as useful exercise and training for the military.

That's true, but then we'd have to outlaw a whole bunch of other activities as well.

Besides the legal complications of being in a place that technically is outside of the legal boundaries of all countries, so who would enforce that?

> This design should have never been used for passengers.

That's cheap talk. As soon as there is some major accident, some people creep up to declare: it was obvious all along. Of course it wasn't quite obvious enough for them to actually make that declaration in advance.

Except for the experts Rush hired that did make that declaration well in advance.

That he fired.

Then sued.

This expert should get money after company dissolution as a compensation, IMHO.

> There's no absolutely safe way to dive that deep,

No, but using a vessel built the same way as the one James Cameron used would be safer (he did 33 dives).

I think they just didn't think there hull design would implode. In there minds the worst case is, they're stuck in deep ocean for a few hours until the backup dissolvable weights fall off and they pop back up to the surface (and then hopefully located).

From what I've read, in there minds there hull design was the best part of the sub. I inclined to believe he believed it, since the CEO frequently dove in it.

The hull was replaced because the previous one showed damage due to repeated stress cycling:

"This is shaping up as a rebuilding year for the nearly 11-year-old venture, based in Everett, Wash. The main task on the agenda is to build two new submersibles capable of diving as deep as 6,000 meters (3.7 miles), which is more than a mile deeper than the part of the North Atlantic ocean floor where the Titanic is resting.

OceanGate will take advantage of lessons learned during the construction of its carbon-hulled Titan submersible, which was originally built for Titanic journeys. Rush said tests that were conducted at the Deep Ocean Test Facility in Annapolis, Md., revealed that the Titan’s hull “showed signs of cyclic fatigue.” As a result, the hull’s depth rating was reduced to 3,000 meters.

“Not enough to get to the Titanic,” Rush said."

From:

https://www.geekwire.com/2020/oceangate-raises-18m-build-big...

From a link within that article:

> Because Titan was once known as Cyclops 2, the working titles for the new submersibles will be Cyclops 3 and 4.

So they lowered the depth rating of Titan back in 2020 .. but then continued to dive down to the Titanic with it?

With a new hull. But this was then also subjected to multiple dives but I'm not aware of any subsequent testing. Possibly if they had tested it defects would have shown up because that's pretty much the way this sort of structure responds to stress cycling. We'll never know unless a record of subsequent tests surfaces.

Isn't implosion like the one obvious danger of being deep underwater?

> I think they just didn't think there hull design would implode.

Even the diver that piloted it imagined at least one way how it could implode (window).

The carbon fiber hull has a limited cycle life. It's designed for a single-digits number of dives, and it becomes weaker on each cycle.

That puts a new spin on a “brittle unit test”

That makes sense, but to me that just means "keep dropping it until it implodes and then you can find out exactly how many dives it's good for". I still see absolutely no reason why humans should have been inside that thing. It's easy to criticize from an armchair, but goodness it just boggles my mind.

They did roughly that with the previous hull: it was used until it had to be derated. This accident was on the replacement hull which already had a few cycles on it... tested but supposedly not worn out.

Material science is hard, especially on a budget. This is definitely daredevil territory.

If it's a consumable, they should have tested at least one hull to destruction, just so they could be sure of it's failure modes.

Based on what I've seen, it doesn't sound like OceanGate had decided on a fixed number of dives. Instead they were planning to continually monitor it (x-ray scans after every dive and real-time acoustic monitoring during the dive) with the assumption that they would get some warning before it failed.

This is how they test aircraft... It's very expensive and time consuming. Pilots, technicians, all staff, must be paid. You are subject to weather cancellations. It takes years. Like everyone has said, move fast and break things!

$$

My thoughts exactly. How do pull a design out of your hat, against literally every expert's advice, and not test it a thousand times? It's insane.

Testing is costly in terms of time and money, particularly with a submersible. It's one thing to test a piece of code, but testing a submersible under realistic conditions means basically arranging a full mission for every test run (which is hugely expensive, requiring a support ship, etc.). There's no such thing as perfect safety, which always has to be balanced with cost. I'm not saying Rush's approach was sound (he apparently eschewed more thorough testing) but testing that submersible a hundred times surely would have been cost-prohibitive.

Also the Titan did successfully complete ~20 deep dives from what I've read, so the design was apparently sufficient to stand up to the pressure more than once, meaning even a non-trivial testing program might not have detected the problem. Unfortunately the problem (as many have stated) seems to be in the choice of carbon fiber, which (particularly when taking into account the interfaces with other materials) will weaken over time even if the initial flaws are very small. All materials experience fatigue but the problem is much worse with carbon particularly under those kind of pressures.

It's sad that they're dead, but all parties had time to brace for this inevitability. I can't imagine any engineer (save a software engineer) seeing this guy's attitude and not seeing this coming from a mile away.

You’d be surprised. I used to work at a hazardous test site and there was a lot of complacency. Sometimes it was just bad engineering, sometimes it was arrogance about their ability, or something else. It taught me we’re all humans first, and all susceptible to human biases regardless of credentials or prestige.

PSG, WSP. Best I can say is he died doing what he loved.

I do feel awful for the kid seemingly unhappily dragged into the trip.

I really couldn't care less. As far as I can see he was exactly what's wrong with people chasing money and forgetting about the possibly consequences of their attitude towards other people's lives. I'm sure his relatives are grieving, but my sympathy goes to the family of the passengers first.

As for the CEO's credentials: nature can't be fooled.

Agreed.

By my estimation he committed manslaughter with his recklessness. He's every bit as bad a drunk driver that kills 4 people in an accident.

I don't know the guy, but this seems off the mark. If he wanted to get rich, spending 11 years on a money losing operation seems an unlikely choice. My take is that it was a passion project, a passion he shares with apparently a substantial number of well-to-do people.

I don't judge.

Just because you spent 11 years on it losing money doesn't mean it's not in the interest of money. See: serial gamblers.

Yeah, chasing “money” seems off the mark. Chasing “thrills” or “glory” seems closer.

Good video. Some excerpts:

"If you're not breaking things, you're not innovating. If you're operating in a known environment as most submersible manufacturers do, they don't break things." (8:49)

"Our rule is we risk capital, we don't risk people." (9:56)

"We used the same prepreg that's used on the 787." (11:15)

And my favorite: "When you're outside the box, it's really hard to tell how far outside the box you really are." (8:30) He does seem to be far outside the box now.

But the most significant quote IMHO is the one about "the same prepreg that's used on the 787". Like they often tell you that phone holders for bikes are made of "aircraft-grade aluminium" (which usually means it's 6061, the most common alloy). It's a strong indication of bullshit -- name dropping that doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter.

In the rest of the presentation he seems nice enough, and truly passionate about deep sea exploration. So maybe he was a cool guy, I don't know. But in the end it's his hubris that killed him and his clients.

> name dropping that doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter

This is a good point.

However, it's probably worth pointing out that in the past few decades -- at least here in the PNW -- carbon fiber availability to the hobbiest and small producer has been spotty.

I'd refer to Boeing and being the same 787 carbon fiber for my personal projects, but that's just because they're made from Boeing offcuts donated to a local University. At the time (ca 2006), even bare weave was hard to obtain from private suppliers.

Its feasible that Rush may have had help from Boeing sourcing his material, which puts comments like that in a different light.

Aircraft grade aluminum is 2024 or 7075, not 6061, because those alloys are more resistant to fatigue from repeated pressurization cycles.

6061 is more commonly used in automotives than in aircraft.

the comment above you is correct that consumer goods will often brag about "aircraft grade" when referring to 6061. like flashlights, tools, combs, pens, cufflinks, money clips, etc.

This made me realise how little I know about alumiunium and made me summarise this from a quick wiki search:

- “2024 aluminium alloy is an aluminium alloy, with copper as the primary alloying element. It is used in applications requiring high strength to weight ratio, as well as good fatigue resistance. It is weldable only through friction welding, and has average machinability.

- “7075 aluminium alloy is an aluminium alloy with zinc as the primary alloying element. It has excellent mechanical properties and exhibits good ductility, high strength, toughness, and good resistance to fatigue. It is more susceptible to embrittlement than many other aluminium alloys because of microsegregation, but has significantly better corrosion resistance than the alloys from the 2000 series.”

- “6061 is a precipitation-hardened aluminium alloy, containing magnesium and silicon as its major alloying elements. It has good mechanical properties, exhibits good weldability, and is very commonly extruded. It is one of the most common alloys of aluminium for general-purpose us.”

There are 8 basic alloys of aluminum based on the alloying element(s) (or none for 1000, which is pure) with the 8000 serving as a sort of catch-all for various combinations that don't warrant a category all their own. The total number of formulations is quite large and the properties, machinability, weldability, various strengths, density, resistance to fatigue (and post processing options, such as hardening) vary considerably.

Materials science is a fascinating field.

> It's a strong indication of bullshit -- name dropping that doesn't have anything to do with the subject matter

It means you're using a material that's been vetted over decades in life-critical applications in harsh conditions by expert engineers all over the world. Aerospace aluminums today are derived from Japanese alloys invented in WW2 and were a major innovation in metal aircraft. It's much more expensive than steel, but we use it because of favorable characteristics. Here's an overview of different aluminums and where they're used: https://www.aircraftaluminium.com/blog

In this context, he was talking about carbon fibre, not aluminium (though, aluminium would also be a less than ideal material to make a deep-water submersible out of).

this wasn't an aircraft

The reference to "aircraft" wasn't about airplanes or submersibles, it was about how the term "aircraft-grade" is a meaningless marketing buzzword. It's obvious to me, and I imagine a lot of readers, that a submarine isn't an aircraft. I think the reference to the use of the bullshit marketing term is also obvious.

"Military grade" is another one of those marketing phrases that pisses me off. What does it even mean? That it is green and is more expensive than it should be?

Occasionally, they will identify a particular MIL-STD (or MIL-SPEC) that the product supposedly complies with; whether or not there is any substance to this claim and whether or not, if you looked up the standard, it would have any bearing on suitability for the purpose the product is marketed for is a mixed bag.

I think I read a comment on HN that described what "military grade" meant: stuff made as cheaply as possible by the lowest bidding contractor that sometimes is fit for purpose.

That said, I think there are times when it does mean something. I believe military grade/milspec chips/ICs are often engineered to be more resilient to environmental factors like heat and vibration, interference, etc. If I'm wrong about that, I suspect it won't be long before we learn if I'm right.

There are some compabies that actually do test theor products according to military standards. Now, ideally they would tell you which ones. Whether or not those standards are better than theor civilain counterparts is a different story.

In my (very short, many years ago) stint as an EE it meant that parts (transistors, ICs, etc.) were guaranteed to work within certain specs within certain operating conditions (temp, etc.).

It did not guarantee anything outside of that. Soundness of design and ensuring inputs and environmental factors conformed to the spec was up to the engineers.

Military grade does not mean it is any better built than anything else. it does however mean it is often better specified. So it does not mean anything in regards to suitability to purpose it does mean there is a document that describes the product and the product meats the requirements of the document. Which can be nice if your requirements are also matched by the document.

The problem, it is a military specification so the public may not be able get access to it.

No, but the point is that in such a scenario, the material deficiencies and failure modes are mostly pretty well understood.

> It means you're using a material that's been vetted over decades in life-critical applications in harsh conditions by expert engineers all over the world.

If I start using a screwdriver to hammer in nails, it doesn't matter how many expert engineers use screwdrivers. I'm using it for a purpose it is unfit for.

Just because it's aircraft grade doesn't mean that it is (or isn't) suitable for building a submarine.

Now might be a good time to revisit the "calling yourself an engineer" means something specifically debate.

I’ve seen it said you’re not an engineer unless your job and/or life is on the line, under which standard he’d qualify.

The question are:

Why use novel vessels when tried and true work. Why did they have to try a carbon-fiber wrapped vessel? The bathysphere went all the way down to the Marianas trench --many decades ago. Why try something new in unforgiving environments?

Why fire an engineer after he started raising questions about safety?

It seems like there was a bit of a cavalier attitude that cost five people their lives.

I don't believe that one was particularly safe in its design either? Just quoting the most colorful parts of Wikipedia's history:

- "Oxygen was supplied from high-pressure cylinders carried inside the sphere, while pans of soda lime [hn: sodium hydroxide?] and calcium chloride were mounted inside the sphere's walls to absorb exhaled CO2 and moisture.[6] Air was to be circulated past these trays by the Bathysphere's occupants using palm-leaf fans.[2]"

- "Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the bolt was torn from our hands, and the mass of heavy metal shot across the deck like the shell from a gun. The trajectory was almost straight, and the brass bolt hurtled into the steel winch thirty feet [9.1 m] away across the deck and sheared a half-inch [13 mm] notch gouged out by the harder metal. This was followed by a solid cylinder of water, which slackened after a while into a cataract, pouring out the hole in the door, some air mingled with the water, looking like hot steam, instead of compressed air shooting through ice-cold water.[6]"

- "The ocean during this dive was rougher than it had been during any of their previous dives, and as the Freedom rocked on the surface, its motion was transmitted down the steel cable, causing the Bathysphere to swing from side to side like a pendulum. As the Bathysphere descended, Barton succumbed to seasickness and vomited inside it. However, the first half of the radio transmission had already been broadcast, and neither Beebe nor Barton wished to cancel its second half, so they continued their descent.[5] ... the Bathysphere was still rocking wildly and Beebe and Barton were both bruised and bleeding from being knocked about inside it."

- "During their first test dive, they demanded to be pulled up after descending only four feet (1.2 m) because the sphere had begun to leak; they soon discovered this was because Tee-Van had neglected to fasten all of the bolts that hold the hatch shut.[2] Another problem occurred on their second test dive, during which they discovered that the lower end of the rubber hose holding the power cable and phone line had begun to deteriorate, and they spent the rest of the day reversing the hose's direction so that the end which was deteriorating would be the end above the water.[5]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathysphere

I grant you that; but that was decades ago and it went down to the Marianne’s trench. People have developed safe vessels. Why did this guy think he needed to reinvent it with experimental of unproven materials. Dunk it dozens of times into 2x depths see if it remains intact. No, the Navy or someone deemed a vessel a 3,000 meter rating. And they were like ooops, I guess it’s not good enough. Damned right you don’t just meet the minimum rating. You should have a healthy margin of safety.

> He does seem to be far outside the box now.

Very poor taste to say this now.

Especially given that he’s almost certainly still in the box, just it’s much smaller now.

I doubt there's actually much of a box left.

The 787 preprec is actually pretty good. At holding a pressure delta <1 bar on the inside...

>... he was seen as an expert in the specific engineering disciplines necessary to safely build and operate deep sea submersibles like Titan.

And yet he called safety "pure waste"...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-21/titanic-t...

The thing about the Seattle tech community is that they have no idea about building submarines, so who they think is an expert on building submarines is irrelevant.

People really need to remember that tech bros aren't really smarter than most people, they're usually just more willing to take risks.

Considering the risk some typical tecj bros take, they don't seem to be that intelligent to be begin with...

I don’t see any members of HN standing up for Stockton Rush. Nor do I imagine they would after his carelessness killed several people.

Being seen as an expert doesn’t mean you are one, and it’s unfortunate the Seattle tech community didn’t have a better role model to look up to.

He killed 4 people with his negligence. Not someone to remember as a hero.

I'm going to be very blunt here. I've seen enough interview footage in the last 48 hours to know that this guy comes off as the Elizabeth Holmes of ocean exploration. Five people are now dead (including himself) because he convinced them to climb into his Lyle Lanley water contraption and pay him a quarter of a million $ each to do so. He is not an expert of anything but salesmanship. Anyone that has sat through 15 minutes of year one engineering ethics would know what he was doing was extremely reckless and the obvious consequences prevailed. I have zero empathy for this guy.