They fired the non team player for being a total drag about that; and were operating in a context where regulatory approval was more or less optional.
Perhaps more importantly people seem to pretty aggressively discount risks if they exist in the future and are subject to some uncertainty: The actual risk (which was indeed lunacy) was “build carbon fiber pressure vessel; just keep fatigue cycling it until something bad happens or the magic microphones warn us!”; but it’s a pretty easy handwave to change the subject to “haha, legacy old-sub said it couldn’t be built; but I’m a disruptive innovator who built it!”; which was entirely true the first 14 times.
There’s a long, long list of things that anyone even slightly familiar with them could tell you are a disaster waiting to happen(and some professionals closer to them are probably writing plaintive memos about how they are a disaster waiting to happen); but which there’s not much urgency about because it sure looks like it’s working right now.
