Originally published at: Lost sub's company OceanGate was warned about safety and possible "catastrophic"outcomes back in 2018 | Boing Boing
…
7 Likes
Since they have now both “gone fast” and “broken things”, that means OceanGate’s next CEO will be in charge of a successful start up, right?
16 Likes
I would think the thing would at least have an emergency beacon buoy which should have been deployed by now.
Of course, if you’re living by big techs “Move fast, break things” mindset, then maybe not.
12 Likes
But there was pushback to the letter from OceanGate’s CEO Stockton Rush, who said that following the guidelines would slow down innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” his company said. And so he continued to rapidly innovate.
10 Likes
Not just others in the industry. Internal too.
At the end of the meeting, after saying that he would not authorize any manned tests of Titan without a scan of the hull, Lochridge was fired and escorted from the building.
25 Likes
10 Likes
What a horrible situation. The kind of quiet desperation they’re feeling reminds me of the people who slowly perished during the Kursk disaster and the Sago mine disaster. You can be sure that the billionaire on board would pay anything to be able to see his kids again.
14 Likes
Move fast and break things. Wait, that’s wrong. Move fast and kill people. Did the CEO ever work at Tesla? It seems like the same business plan.
9 Likes
I’m amazed that it takes this long to find the sub, given that they had a defined destination at the wreck.
Also, given fiasco/scandal after Nixon is named *gate, did the guy give much thought to the naming of his company?
8 Likes
Minor correction: Pogue wasn’t super clear about this in the original reporting but he wasn’t on the sub itself when it got lost, he was on the surface ship. But while the search was underway the company cut off internet access to ensure that Pogue and the rest of the people on the vessel couldn’t alert the outside world what was going on.
17 Likes
Is “underwater GPS” even a thing? How would that work?
12 Likes
Another key quote from that link
Titan’s forward viewport would only certify it to a depth of 1,300 meters due to OceanGate’s experimental design.
13 Likes
OMG I want to punch this clown in the mouth so hard right now.
This attitude of general disdain of expertise and oversight is the cause of so many of the world’s problems right now.
If they were truly interested in innovation, they would do it right by developing their innovations in concert with experts in the field to make sure everything is safe and genuinely better than how things are currently done.
What techbros like this actually care about isn’t innovation, but rather giving the appearance of innovation so they can get VC funding and cash out before moving on to the next thing as quickly as possible. Real innovation is hard and expensive. That’s not what they want.
28 Likes
They say it’s the size of a minivan. With all of the existing Titanic wreckage do you really think they’ll find it using sonar? I’m hoping for the best but I think it might be game over. It wasn’t fitted with an emergency “pinger” for some reason either.
9 Likes
If I were to make a guess I’d say they probably died instantly from a structural failure, especially after seeing articles like that linked one from TechCrunch above. That would explain the sudden loss of both communication systems and the fact that none of the ballast-dropping systems seems to have surfaced the sub. They’ll probably find the sub eventually and we’ll find out for sure.
The Kursk disaster was terrible but it was only about 350 feet deep, which is why some people were able to survive for a little while in closed-off areas. At 13,000 feet of depth this would be a whole different kind of failure.
14 Likes
Reminds me of Oregon’s “Rocketguy,” a toymaker who literally thought he could build a functional homemade spaceship in his backyard without bothering to do any serious consultations with actual rocket scientists.
Though in that case he was eventually diagnosed with bipolar disorder so at least there was an explanation of sorts for his hubris.
14 Likes
The flat earth rocket guy was the same story, except he managed to kill himself with his Hubris Contraption.
21 Likes
It could utilize a Dead Reckoning system.
Basically you record all course and speed changes from starting point and plot accordingly. Standard procedure aboard all military vessels, at least when I served.
9 Likes
Yeah maybe one of the other people on the submersible did that, since he was on the sub. But you’re absolutely right. He complained about industry regulation. But there is a saying: regulations are written in blood.
I know there’s an Ocean Gate not too far from me here in New Jersey. That’s probably not what the company is named for, though.
18 Likes
He may not have proved it was flat, but he did prove that it was hard.
10 Likes
