For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
The 5 submariners chances of being rescued are very slim at this point but much much higher than the 500 migrants still missing off the coast of Greece who took to the waters not for a joy ride but to escape war and seek a better life.
I suspect they imploded.
These super deep subs are traditionally not reused very long, because the stress of the water pressing and then releasing weakens them. The more compression-decompression cycles they take the faster they degrade.
From all the reports, they got a lot of reports of issues that they ignored. I read that one of the reporters who saw it found it to be very jury rigged together. Apparently it was not certified in any way.
Even if they did survive and the ballast worked correctly, they would surface quickly (decompression sickness?) and cannot open the hatch from the inside. The thing doesn’t float above the water, so its going to be a pain to find. Also they didn’t paint it bright orange with blinking lights, its white, gray, and blue.
Overall, a lot of poor decisions and ignoring advice lead to disaster.
Of all the various ways to provide emergency rescue assistance, it appears that they’ve included almost nothing which would help them in the event of an underwater failure that prevented surfacing (i.e. emergency ballast release failing).
Apparently it was not certified in any way
My understanding of this is limited to the two paragraphs on CNN, but there is a process for “classing” vessels. The owners decided not to do so as the process only certified that the vessel itself is safe for use, and does not verify the procedures for operation or the training of the crew. Their logic for not classing was that most ocean failures are the result of poor procedures or poor crew decisions, ignoring entirely that the reason most failures fall into those to cases is because the vessels themselves are vetted (via the classing process) to eliminate the hardware as a failure mode. It’s almost poetic that the man in charge of that decision is on the craft.
Even if they did survive and the ballast worked correctly, they would surface quickly (decompression sickness?)
Decompression sickness is a concern only if they suffered compression. But the main problem, as I see it, is that the sub was made from materials that are famously brittle and tend to degrade over many cycles of pressure and release (resin, carbon fiber, etc). So the likely failure mode is catastrophic failure of the sub under pressure.
There’s a reason most deep sea stuff is made out of steel: it’s somewhat ductile and recovers from compression with minimal change in properties.
Also these depths are usually only explored with unmanned drones, not makeshift tuna cans with store parts
Not an expert, but I don’t think the air pressure inside the sub changes, so decompression sickness should be impossible. Don’t quote me on that, though
This would be correct. However, I suspect the air pressure in the sub did change. Very rapidly.
Unfortunately this seems the most realistic scenario.
I’m a bit confused that this is receiving so much attention. What’s so special about this case compared to all the other cases of people being lost at sea every year, besides them being rich?
Honestly, this case is somewhat extraordinary, in a deeply disturbing way.
First there was this amazing quote from the CEO who is missing on the craft right now
“You know, at some point, safety is just pure waste,” Rush told CBS’ David Pogue during an episode of his “Unsung Science” podcast. “I mean, if you just want to be safe, don’t get out of bed, don’t get in your car, don’t do anything. At some point, you’re going to take some risk, and it really is a risk-reward question.”
Second, aside from being made from questionable experimental materials, the sub was being controlled by an old, off brand xbox controller. There were numerous design and safety issues that were known at the time of departure. They kinda just did whatever in the F they wanted to. It’s a millionaire game of Fuck Around and Find Out and they’re not used to finding out.
Third, the damage waiver
The disclaimer, read out by CBS correspondent David Pogue, read: “This experimental submersible vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death.”
A nervous-looking Pogue makes a face and says, “Where do I sign?” in the footage recorded when he went on the $250,000 (£195,000) trip to see the Titanic at the end of last year.
I get that it’s just some rich idiots (and one of their kids) crossing the river styx, but it’s not very often you see such amazing disregard for basic safety.
I don’t get why the Logitech controller is so focused on. I get that it’s probably not the right controller due to it’s age and wireless only nature but COTS parts are often more reliable than in-house ones. The lack of certification as you mentioned is a much larger issue.
Any game controller, would be insufficient to put 5 peoples lives in danger.
If you were going to use a game controller to do so anyway, you’d use one that can be easily replaced, maybe something manufactured in the past decade. That F710 is old (2011) and honestly didn’t rate all that well compared to other controllers of it’s time. It’s wireless, adding needless risk.
The certification is all part of it. The control systems need to have backups. The gamepad aspect is interesting because it’s blatantly spitting in the face of safety which seemed to be the CEO’s style anyway.
Would it have been better than a new xbox controller? I’m not sure, perhaps not if it the new one was at least wired.
dear God just think if the part that failed was the controllers batteries
I wouldn’t trust that controller for a dungeon run in the Elder Scrolls Online and here’s this dude visiting the Titanic in person with one. They did say he has backups on board, though.
I just … can’t
I work on robotics and drones for the military and we use game controllers for teleoperation all the time. There are some times we use more rugged and robust controllers, but they are essentially just expensive, yellow Playstation controllers with e-stop buttons on the bottom (look up Fort robotics controller).
I think you’d be surprised at how often the military uses game controllers for mission critical tech. The convergent design of game controllers has kind of solved the problem of minimal, handheld, input-output machines that are capable of commanding difficult procedures.
flying any passengers with em?
Rarely in my line of work but we do do it sometimes. To your point, outside of what I do I’m not sure how often game controllers are used in situations like passenger flight or submarines where you can’t just mash the e-stop button and bail out.
Yeah, I know the navy has used them for ages on robotic control.
And fly by wire is everywhere now. But the systems involved, they’re pretty hardened.
I think a wired control on it’s own isn’t a horrible sin, it just seems to me that in a world with as much tech as we have sitting around, someone can make something a little more rugged for something as critical as this particular part.
And of coure the elephant in the room is we have little data about this whole setup. It’s possible he had a laptop in there where he could open up a terminal, or maybe he had access to the lines and motors directly. If someone can reach back and trigger the ballast tank themselves, it negates a lot of control worries.
Good money is on explosive compression anyway. That hull shape is dodgy AF
Do you think it’s fun killing people and pretending it’s a video game?
What? They don’t pretend it’s a game, they just use game controllers. Killing people is the game for them.
I don’t operate anything in the field but I design and build the stuff. Fortunately, I haven’t had to build any weapon systems or combat vehicles yet because I also have some moral apprehension to that as well, but I try not to shame those who do work on that stuff if I can avoid it. It’s a pretty standard meme that wide-eyed aerospace engineers with dreams of space travel get stuck designing missiles to pay the bills. I’m sure there’s not that many engineers in weapons tech that wouldn’t switch to rockets or self driving cars in a heartbeat if they could afford to and had an in.
Hey I appreciate the honest response. I was being a bit of a dick and I feel bad now. Peace.
Nobody is objecting to it being a standard commercial controller. It’s been widely noted that the US military uses X-Box controllers for drone operation. It’s the fact that it’s a cheap/off-brand item compared to an official Sony, Nintendo or MS controller being used in a life-critical situation, and as you note, wireless.
Wait, so they’ve done this dive before? For some reason I thought it was the first time
They have money
They did have money but the people involved Tham Luang cave rescue didn’t and that received a ton of attention. Similarly with the Chilean miners stuck underground for 2 months. You also have Kathy Fiscus (an old story but well known at the time) and Nutty Putty caving incident. There is no shortage of similar stories about people getting stuck in places that received wide attention.
The fact they are they rich is only really influencing where they ended up and how they got there.
For me, it’s because this situation is a nightmare situation. I can’t think of many more aweful ways to go. There is a chance that right now people are dying in a tube at the bottom of the ocean. Slowly. Or even worse, they could be on the surface. Able to see out their window but suffocating to death just hoping to see a ship come by. Maybe they saw a ship and it passed by. Maybe they died instantly is a rapid collapse.
I dunno, it’s just the epitome of horror. I keep finding myself thinking about possibilities and what it’s be like and what I’d do.
If they’re on the surface the interior is probably sloshing in vomit, as well as everything else.
More mysterious. Spookier. Generally more novel. Like you said, people get lost at sea all the time. People rarely get lost thousands of miles below sea.
One thing I can say is if they ever do find the sub intact, its very likely these guys recorded their last hours on their phones and we are very likely to see that at some point… talk about nightmare fuel.
Nah, it’s only 4km. If they weren’t lazy billionaires, they’d get out and walk home.
the quality of the sub really triggers my schadenfreude
It’s mostly the being rich thing.
It’s really sad that something like this gets so much news coverage and international support, while poor people are facing similar fates and we all pretend it’s not happening.
I understand the news coverage. These are folks who are relatable to a lot of western audiences. People aspire to their wealth. The international support and rescue efforts though are a little shameful. You don’t see this kind of efforts when it’s migrants fleeing war and oppression.
I see the attention on the war in Ukraine similarly. What Russia is doing is shameful and I’m glad Ukraine is getting so much help. At the same time Yemen has it much worse. Hardly anyone even knows there is a war happening there, but it’s American built bombs that are dropping on neighborhoods. They’re not quite white and relatable enough to get us all putting their flag on our Twitter profiles.
It seems you’ve already identified the main part. Also the fact that it is a sexy story, shipwreck squared
It being so completely ridiculous. If a boat sinks, it just sinks… bad luck.
But this was some crazy person using some jerry-rigged submarine and then rich people actually trusting that.
Traditional media coverage + social media hype. Add in the fact that it’s a group of billionaires gallivanting in the deep sea. It’s a recipe for becoming a media sensation across all types of people.
Probably the significance of the dive site, and I’m not sure how many commerical submarines go missing every year, maybe a few private ones, but seldom in waters this deep.
Sadly I don’t think so. This incident was absolutely preventable. Someone warned them about this and they got fired. A makeshift vessel that wasn’t inspected/certified, immersed to almost 3 times the rated depth, controlled by a wireless Logitech gamepad from 2010 with no redundancy and only 96 hours of oxygen. I really really hope for a last minute miracle though…
A couple things are potentially different from how op laid them out. (From my understanding)
The vessel was designed to automatically begin resurfacing after a set period of time underwater, even without pilot input, so it might not be very deep at all. The problem is it doesn’t sit very high in the water and is very hard to see.
They don’t necessarily have 2 days of oxygen left, those were calculated values, and there may be other gaseous build ups that impair the totally oxygen supplies.
I hope it was over quickly for them, I don’t know how you could resurface that type of vessel without breaking it. I hope we will find evidence and be able to piece together what happened, but I suspect it’ll just be lost at sea. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy up keep evidence away from the public, I think most people underestimate how difficult it is to find 4 cubic meters inside a 10 cubic kilometer area, hell that would be hard without that area being covered in water.
Isn’t there an automatic beacon that transmits when on the surface?
And why isnt it tethered?
From what I’ve seen floating around, nope. I heard that they aren’t even carrying an epirb. Seems nuts but with the rest of it it may be true
If you can drop an emergency beacon they may as well drop emergency weights and surface. Even if we knew exactly where they were a recovery at 4km deep is not guaranteed. Better to be on the surface.
Tethers don’t work at that depth for a variety of reasons. One being that the surface boat drifts around on the surface and it would pull the sub all over the place. The sub goes under and the boat ‘stays in the area’ not right on top of them.
It’s interesting how just 6 days ago, a boat with 750 people on board, including 100 kids, capsized near Greece, only 104 survived, and it’s less of an issue than those billionaires
Probably not the worst way to go all things considered.
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I would also say that I don’t think people SHOULD be risking their lives at this point. We’re looking at a case of people who took an informed risk and understood that there was danger associated with the recreational activity they were undertaking. These people either had vast monetary resources and could have consulted the best experts in the world, or had significant prior experience and knowledge. While obviously withholding information interferes with informed consent, and that may or may not have played a role, I don’t think this is morally equivalent to rescuing someone from a burning building. There’s also simple probability - the odds of rescuing them alive and well aren’t good, and to put someone else’s life at risk for the off chance that they succeed would be unethical in my opinion.
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I don’t like billionaires but of course I wish for their miracle survival. As unlikely as it seems.
And if they don’t make it, I hope it was a quick and painless death for all of them…
unlikely. sub rescues are hardly successful. Their sub could have imploded, fast way to die. Had a power failure wich would takes days to die either from a lack of o2 or possibly the cold. Or it reached the surface and they got to look out at thet ocean until about noon their time tomorrow unable to open the hatch and slowly die from a lack of air.
I’m gonna go out on limb and say they’re no longer with us.
Yeah I don’t think you’re very far out on that limb. The likelihood of successful rescue is extremely low.
I can’t really believe anybody would spend $250K on a submarine expedition with the guy in charge of Ocean Gate, and his incredibly cavalier attitude toward safety.
Yea when I first heard about this I kinda just wrote them off tbh. The ocean is massive and moving, plus they’re in a glorified, malfunctioning, soup can.
I’ve never heard of the guy, but I can imagine based on that description jeez.
“It’s all apart of the experience” probably.
Maybe for a camping trip, but not this lol. Your already completely and literally out of your element.
I’ve heard somewhere it’s easier and safer to explore deep space than to explore the deep ocean.
I wonder…is that only because we use probes? Or is it something to do with atmospheric pressure? Like I’m assuming water is heavier than space so even if you had a space suit on underwater you’d still get crushed or eaten by some big ass squid.
I’d love if a scientist could weigh in on this.
My layperson understanding is that with space you only have to have something robust enough to keep the atmospheric pressure in (as well as other considerations of course) which allows for less robust materials. For deep sea exploration you need something robust enough to keep the water pressure out.
For additional info: 10 metres of water depth is approximately equivalent to 1 atmosphere’s worth of pressure (ATM) - so 50 metres is 5ATM and so on and so forth. So theoretically a submarine would have to combat hundreds of ATMs of pressure, whereas a space craft only has to combat at most a couple of ATM.
In the ISS a minor hole can be patched pretty easily and quickly as it’s a slow leak of air out, however if a leak occurs in a submarine the results can be explosive and deadly.
Thank you, yes this is what I had in my head, I appreciate you wording it properly, with examples!
So, I’m not a scientist, but I’ve watched plenty of space and ocean documentaries because it’s interesting to think about, so I’m pretty qualified, right? So, space is actually the opposite of heavy. It’s a vacuum, so the vessels designed to operate there have to deal with holding pressure IN, instead of out. Also, there’s no big ass squid in space to eat you, lmao.
Yes you are qualified, cause you summed it up pretty good! Summary: ocean is sketchy af!
even if you get a hole in your space suit you’ll live for a minute or so before freezing/dying of lack of oxygen. Get a pin hole in a sub down by the titanic and it will basically instantly implode killing you before you even knew something happened. space is far easier other than getting there and the radiation you need to protect against long term.
I mean just superficially space is 0 atmospheres of pressure and sea level is 1. Compare that to the many hundreds of bars of pressure at the bottom of the ocean.
The distance is greater when exploring space but there’s nothing there. No currents or waves or storms or sharks… Just nothingness.
I mean everyone says “omg they’re crazy”, but it’s so easy to say that, and all of us have at least a few things that we’d be willing to do that an onlooker could point to and say “lol why do that when you might die”.
There’s nothing wrong with taking an informed risk, and it’s really up to you what kind of risk you’re comfortable taking. Most of these people seem to have a consistently high risk tolerance, and three of them were very experienced, so I don’t think it’s fair to call them “stupid” or “idiots” just because your risk/reward assessment doesn’t line up with theirs. If that was their idea of living the best life possible, then that’s good for them.
I get what you’re saying about taking a calculated risk - like going for a bungee jump or paragliding or bouldering. However, the more you read about this particular craft the more you realize how much they ignored highly standard safety procedures and design. So I feel like the people criticizing are less saying “why bungee jump when you could die” and more saying “why would you bungee jump without a cord and pay 250,000 dollars for the privilege.”
Wishing death on people is a very garbage take
I don’t know that you can really call it wishing. I think that deed is done.
If you want to get up on a high horse, how about this instead of some billionaire?
There are few enough billionaires who got there by being a good person that one could easily assume that number was effectively zero. Not saying they deserve death, but your hyperbole isn’t helping.
Right, and there are also poor people who are really shitty, it’s just that their shittiness has had less of an impact, and definitely not for a lack of trying. Your logic is basically “they’re billionaries so they must have done shitty things”, but even if that’s true, that only means that they did shitty things SUCCESSFULLY. For every one of them, there are thousands of people who tried and failed, but the intentions were no different.
The billionaire social class shouldn’t exist but not in the same way that poverty shouldn’t exist. For me it’s not about the individual, it’s the subject of their existence.
As opposed to all the non-billionaires among us who are all wonderful perfect people. We’re all a bunch of bastards, some of us just have a shitton more resources than others.
I mean, I hope they survive but I’m not holding my breath.
This comment had me gasping.
way to sink my mood
Holding my breath. Oh dear
It really depends on how they went. Sudden implosion of the hull, quick and easy.
Floating around for days until your air runs out, wondering if someone will find you… Not so much.
I think they are gone. Safety regulations are a thing for a reason.
There is only so much others can regulate when you are building an inverted rocketship
They are paying their price right now. Other dives have gone much deeper, safer. This guy is a fly by night con guy in my opinion.
Read the Bloomberg piece in him.
By the way used to work a lot in defense procurement. There are a ton of regs they do follow, though they sure as hell don’t care about RoHs for the most part.
Here is the link to the Bloomberg archive to bypass paywall
Straight link https://www.denverpost.com/2023/06/21/titanic-tour-leader-loved-risk-and-called-safety-a-pure-waste/
This guy risk-rewards.
This is going to come up in engineering safety classes for years. If the CEO says safety is a pure waste, you need to leave that job.
There’s a desire for low regulation, and then there’s wilful disregard of what professional bodies are saying…
