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

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

#611

Post by iancmceachern »

afavour wrote: post #313
analog31 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what actually amazes me. The reliability of something like an airplane, bus, or train, is held to extremely high engineering standards. There are even safety rules for bicycles. But you're allowed to take people for rides in a submarines with barely any oversight.

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.

These are for the US, it's written in law:

https://www.cpsc.gov/content/bicycle-requirements-business-g...

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

#612

Post by iancmceachern »

afavour wrote: post #353
taldo wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Here:

https://www.cpsc.gov/content/bicycle-requirements-business-g...

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

#613

Post by iancmceachern »

thehappypm wrote: post #552
Karupan wrote: post #165

According to the NYTimes, OceanGate refused to undergo any sort of external audit/certification process [0]. I would imagine using an off the shelf, cheap controller would have been one of the first things to be flagged. Makes you wonder how many other critical components did they skimp on [0] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/20/us/titanic-missing-s...

Why would off the shelf be considered a bad thing? If you’re an engineer, finding a reliable part from a supplier that meets your spec is an amazing thing. Intel processors are off the shelf, as are 555 timers, screws, literally everything. Not every field is like computer science where “isEven” has a library that makes sense to avoid

If you learned the autopilot on the 777 your flying on was running on a dell laptop they bought at best buy running windows, would you feel safe on that plane?

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

#614

Post by numpad0 »

mey wrote: post #231
EddieJLSH wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US UAV/Drones use xbox controllers too

There was video floating around of a machine gun turret being remote controlled using the Valve Steamdeck in Ukraine. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/steam-deck-controls-a-real... Edit: consumer joysticks normally use potentiometers, which aren't great for deadzones/drift. For things like dust incursion reasons along it would make sense for any industrial/military device to be using hall effect based joysticks.

Valve donated few of those for kids. Most likely one of those units, than purposefully chosen.

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

#615

Post by calf »

jacurtis wrote: post #426
klabb3 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think this is (was) a money maker at all. There’s a clip on YouTube where they invited a CBS journalist to join. The CEO, to me, seems like a passionate dreamer who definitely 100% ate his own dog food (ie took huge personal risk). He was onboard this likely final voyage. They didn’t make any profit, at least back then. It’s obviously incredibly expensive and near-impossible to scale such an operation. Look,…

Yeah my understanding is that it was not profitable either. The founder claimed he was losing money and to his credit, he ate the cost on the previous failed missions (of which there are a shockingly high number of). There was one article I read last year (don't have it here) where he claimed his hard costs were $1M per voyage to cover fuel and consumables. So the $250k buy-in was literally a break-even on his expens…

So they hired big-name aerospace experts and still failed? That's intriguing.

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

#616

Post by sanderjd »

marmakoide wrote: post #610
javajosh wrote: post #356

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. 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 t…

I have a hard time to let people throwing themselves into danger with a "I don't need a nanny" attitude, and then see a state-run, massive and costly rescue effort when things go wrong.

Yes. Thank you. I live in Colorado and people do dumb stuff in the mountains all the time, which ends up being expensive for everyone, not just themselves. And it doesn't work to just not rescue people.

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

#618

Post by csb6 »

slushh wrote: post #601
csb6 wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s safety. I seriously doubt the passengers onboard were aware of OceanGate’s whistleblower lawsuit or the claim…

>it could be carried out by classification societies So everything already worked as intended. The tourists didn't bother to check the classification or if they did, were willing to dive anyways. The 737 MAX shows that government involvement is not enough. Likewise doping shows that a legal framework is not enough to prevent advanced cheating. >Personally, I think it ought to be illegal to misrepresent your service’s…

> The tourists didn't bother to check the classification or if they did, were willing to dive anyways.

My comment was suggesting that the U.S. government require that a business has a certification from an approved classification society in order to conduct a submersible tourism business. This does not seem to be the law currently since OceanGate is allowed to operate without any.

> The 737 MAX shows that government involvement is not enough.

No regulations will prevent all accidents, but I would say the rarity of fatal air accidents in the U.S. in recent decades is partly due to the high standards enforced by the FAA.

> Wouldn't it be better to establish a verification culture?

That sounds good too. That doesn’t contradict that regulations should also be in place so these conventions are required.

> The law only works retroactively while the tourists would be alive if they had checked.

Laws and regulations definitely do not only work retroactively. The FAA can ground unsafe planes, food inspectors can shutdown production before rotten food is shipped out, health inspectors can shutdown a restaurant.

Laws can’t protect these passengers, but they should be made to protect all future passengers.

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

#619

Post by pillefitz »

xdavidliu wrote: post #436
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-…

> Narf. Now that is a word I have not heard in a long, long time.

Come on, it's not reddit here..
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