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Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

arstechnica.com

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Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#351

Post by TaylorAlexander »

IceHegel wrote: post #283
medellin wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what happens when you take the move fast and break things culture to anything where people die when things break. Really just sad and so stupid.

It’s sad of course, but the early days of flight were also quite dangerous but they lead to rapid innovation and the stable industry of today. It’s a tragedy, but high risk activities are by definition going to have a few.

Sure but at that time no one knew how to fly. Today we absolutely know how to build and test decent submersibles and there’s really no excuse for building a machine as untested as this one.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#352

Post by [deleted] »

blobbers wrote: post #309

This is a shockingly simple product to make "self driving". Why on earth do they have any controller, aside from some sort of emergency up button. Furthermore, what the hell is the emergency plan??? This is going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The CEO who should be held criminally liable is inside the sub. I really, really hope they're found alive so that he can be held to account for this. With regard to the…

[deleted]

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#353

Post by afavour »

taldo wrote: post #345
afavour wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What international safety standards apply to bicycles? Seems to me that if you’re way out in international waters it’s not too surprising that no one is going to step in to stop you doing something this stupid. There’s not much jurisdiction.

ISO 4210 comes to mind. There's also a handful of ASTM standards, F2043 for categories based on intended usage, and others specifying the testing requirements for frames etc. Not sure if legally required, but if my memory doesn't fail, all European-branded bikes I've seen are tested by those standards and categorized (e.g. cat 5 for downhill mountain bikes)

Sorry I phrased the question badly. I mean to say which standards are enforced by law globally? ISO 4210 certainly exists globally but I’m sure there are a great many countries where you can buy a bike that violates it.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#354

Post by [deleted] »

blobbers wrote: post #309

This is a shockingly simple product to make "self driving". Why on earth do they have any controller, aside from some sort of emergency up button. Furthermore, what the hell is the emergency plan??? This is going to cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The CEO who should be held criminally liable is inside the sub. I really, really hope they're found alive so that he can be held to account for this. With regard to the…

[deleted]

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#355

Post by AYoung010 »

kamranjon wrote: post #215
nycdotnet wrote: post #110

With all the talk about failure modes of carbon fiber, the scariest part of this article is the photo of the display and light held up by screws drilled into the side of the pressure vessel.

I heard an anecdote at one point that when a submarine depressurizes that deep, everything inside gets pushed through whatever hole caused the depressurization, like squeezing the contents out of a tube of toothpaste. Might have been from the Byford Dolphin accident: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin "Hellevik, being exposed to the highest pressure gradient and in the process of moving to secure the inner…

No — that incident was due to a high pressure area (saturation diver living quarters) being opened to a low pressure area (the atmosphere at large), resulting in explosive decompression. The submarine in question is a low pressure area in a high pressure environment, so essentially the inverse of the Dolphin accident.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#356

Post by javajosh »

proggy wrote: post #200
rwmj wrote: post #46

There's a BBC documentary from last year which I just watched: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fpz9zw and honestly a lot of it seems quite amateur hour. One of the steering motors was fitted backwards. When they discovered this, at the bottom of the ocean and a few hundred feet from Titanic, the solution they used was to hold the gamepad at right angles to compensate. That time they proceeded with the tour and mad…

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to. Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-…

>It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard.

As I get older, I see this sentiment as very naive. The tacit assumption seems to be that there is an agency, a government, an organization, that would review and approve such endeavors. But that's just not how the world works. You can't stop people from going to sea, or sending contraptions to the bottom. It's a very big world, filled with mostly ocean, and plenty of thrill-seekers who will attempt anything half-way reasonable. Even 10% reasonable. You can't stop that, and personally, I don't think its a good idea. To get it you'd need a nanny state that snoops on everyone and steps in to stop you "for your own safety". It's easy to imagine scenarios where this gets out of hand.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#358

Post by erik_seaberg »

acqq wrote: post #282
proggy wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is simply unbelievable that the company was even able to get to the point of diving to such depths with humans aboard. If they had encountered a program-destroying but non-catastrophic failure earlier on, it is possible we wouldn't be looking at one of the many horrific outcomes that this incident will likely resolve to. Looking at the accounts reported to date, the OceanGate engineering culture was basically non-…

3:54 Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate: "so the pressure vessel is not MacGyver at all because that's where we work with Boeing and NASA and the University of Washington. Everything else can fail: your thrusters can go, your lights can go, you're still going to be safe" https://youtu.be/29co_Hksk6o?t=219

This explains the “one button” and hokey controls. Only dropping ballast to surface is life-critical.

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#359

Post by neither_color »

ethbr0 wrote: post #208
dmonitor wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't afford to qualify the components on your 4000m diving vehicle, you can't afford to make a 4000m diving vehicle. See: the fact that they lost their diving vehicle.

Pressure hull >> ballast control >> thrusters >> everything else I'm not sure why everyone is taking potshots at a company for trying something crazy with willing passengers . Everyone involved knew what they were getting into. Kudos to them for trying, even if they're dead. > See: the fact that they lost their diving vehicle. That's an awful lot of keyboard engineering, given nobody knows what happened yet.

>Everyone involved knew what they were getting into.

Not necessarily. For extreme sports like skydiving, bungee jumping, hang-gliding scuba and the like customers still expect a high level of adherence to safety and quality products and certifications exist. Would you want to parachute off an uncertified plane with an un-licensed pilot and inexperienced jumper?

Re: Submarine missing near Titanic used a $30 Logitech gamepad for steering

#360

Post by rtkwe »

jojobas wrote: post #311
cpleppert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xbox controllers are used to control the periscope which is not a safety critical device. Regardless, the navy uses wired controllers and did extensive testing and verification. This outfit didn't do anything like that; in one video with a journalist the bluetooth controller was a 'feature' because they could pass it around the sub.

The periscope is a combat critical device, lose control of it and the enemy will see you first and you're dead.

It's something that can be quickly swapped out if it does fail though being a wired controller, I'd put decent odds on this company not bothering to put a backup controller in their death tube. Also a periscope is less critical to combat in the age of sonar that can tell you bearing, heading and what type of ship often without the risk of surfacing and getting lit up on radar. Modern subs basically never want to surface in combat there's no need to take the added risk.
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