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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

#911

Post by mechhacker »

jimnotgym wrote: post #849
rob74 wrote: post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The use of the controller is symptomatic of their attitude, but I agree that it's probably not as relevant as, say, using an untested (and apparently untestable) carbon fiber hull: > Lochridge’s concerns mainly focused on the company’s decision to rely on sensitive acoustic monitoring – cracking or popping sounds made by the hull under pressure – to detect flaws, rather than a scan of the hull. Lochridge said the com…

If the news report is true, some sonar bouy heard a knocking sound. If they were knocking on the hull, at least we can be fairly certain that the hull did not implode.

Could mean a lot of things

Could be a pop of the hull that then flooded the inside almost immediately. Would like to see failure tests of how these kinds of hulls fail.

Other subs that failed with other hull designs were pretty gruesome, like Scorpion

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

#912

Post by heavyset_go »

sfn42 wrote: post #803
heavyset_go wrote: post #725

Earlier quoted context omitted.

. Edit: The bit mentioned above is at 0:37 in this video: https://youtu.be/ClkytJa0ghc?t=37 - "we keep a couple of spares on board just in case", that's great but I'm wondering who in that sub knows how to pair an ancient Logitech gamepad and remap XInput like a kid playing Diablo. They don't, in the BBC Travel episode "Take Me to Titanic" about this team and their sub, they did a dive with customers and almost had t…

Fucking hell that's terrifying

That's just the insanity that happened with the gamepad, the entire dive experience was littered with potential and actual emergencies that were only averted due to luck.

To find their way around, they were literally dead reckoning on the bottom of the seafloor without any navigation systems. They had no voice or video communications with their team on the surface, and they relied on that team's text messages to help them adjust their dead reckoned position.

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

#913

Post by benglish11 »

mrweasel wrote: post #899
hasmolo wrote: post #850

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this isn't true anymore. you can get carbon bikes scanned after and accident to find any internal damage. Ruckus in Portland, OR is where i've shipped to before with luck, but there's a lot more local options now depending on the scene

Out of curiosity, does that actually work out financially, or is it really cheap or are carbon forks really expensive?

You probably wouldn’t do this for a fork. You’d just replace it. The carbon frame though can be expensive

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

#914

Post by Eisenstein »

civilitty wrote: post #908
Eisenstein wrote: post #903

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What’s next? Are we going to start patrolling for DSVUIs, breathalyzing submarine captains at random? Are you saying that commercial marine pilots should not be held to be sober when operating a passenger carrying vessel?

I'm saying it can be enforced the same way it is in most industries that rely on dangerous equipment: via insurance policies, civil lawsuit, and criminal prosecution for negligence. We don't breathalyze pilots when they board the plane, despite them being responsible for hundreds of people at a time, and millions of flights complete every year just fine.

No one suggested doing mandatory DUI checks except you, in order that you can argue against regulation. Regulation is requiring the pilot to be sober. Mandatory breathalyzer checking would be an example of a type of enforcement (which no one is arguing for).

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

#915

Post by schwartzworld »

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…

The pressure is greater outside the sub. Nothing is getting sucked out.

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

#916

Post by [deleted] »

Eisenstein wrote: post #914
civilitty wrote: post #908

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it can be enforced the same way it is in most industries that rely on dangerous equipment: via insurance policies, civil lawsuit, and criminal prosecution for negligence. We don't breathalyze pilots when they board the plane, despite them being responsible for hundreds of people at a time, and millions of flights complete every year just fine.

No one suggested doing mandatory DUI checks except you, in order that you can argue against regulation. Regulation is requiring the pilot to be sober. Mandatory breathalyzer checking would be an example of a type of enforcement (which no one is arguing for).

[deleted]

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

#917

Post by cscurmudgeon »

sschueller wrote: post #750
cscurmudgeon wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OceanGate Inc. is a privately held U.S. company operating out of Everett, Washington, that provides crewed submersibles for industry, research and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush.[1] Why do you blame Silicon Valley for that?

"Move fast, break things" is a SV mantra. That is ok for entertainment software or social networks but when you apply this to systems where people can die like healthcare, cars, spaceships and submersibles it's a problem,

Yes, but no one in Silicon Valley forced this on these people.

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

#918

Post by swid »

mysterydip wrote: post #827
somenameforme wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like the video [1] mentions, they were only improvising on things (including the controller) that would not pose a safety hazard if they failed. The critical components like the capsule were designed alongside NASA and others. People aren't just tossing safety to the wind, but trying to create a better balance. NASA does spend a extreme amount of money on compliance and safety - yet that doesn't prevent them from doi…

He told CBS News: "You know, there's a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. 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. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules." https://metro.co.uk/2023/06/20/titanic-sub-ceo-was-worried-a...

I’ve know mountain climbers, hang glider/paraglider pilots, scuba divers, sky divers, and more and we pretty much say that exact thing. I’ve been casual acquaintances with people who have died doing extreme sports.

Usually, the people in these sports say if the worst were to happen to them, they accept that risk and wouldn’t want their fate to stop other people from following their passions. That the feeling of being alive chasing these dreams fulfills a part of them, and they would be lost without that fulfillment.

We all do take risks for our own happiness, different people just want different things from life and will drawn that line in different places.

My guess is the five people on the sub would not want this incident to stop people from attempting to visit the Titanic.

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

#919

Post by gambiting »

robertlagrant wrote: post #902
gambiting wrote: post #820

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it's explained in another comment - the CEO wanted it tested but there isn't a facility anywhere on earth equipped to test it. Perhaps the argument then is that part of the company funding should have been building a custom rig designed for testing this highly custom 5 inch thick carbon fibre shell - but it's not like options to test it were available and were ignored.

The answer to "this can't be tested" isn't "don't test it". It's "don't use it".

A lot of things that we use all the time couldn't be reasonably tested in operational scenario in any other way than by just using them(most planes are in that category - you can test a lot of things on test benches but there isn't a way to test an airliner at operational speed an altitude other than actually flying it)

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

#920

Post by tristanb »

ceejayoz wrote: post #845
lb1lf wrote: post #801

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The capsule itself is positively buoyant. As long as it can jettison the ballast (and is not tangled up in something on the seabed, say, the Titanic), it will come to the surface.

And the ballast is held on via electromagnets. Lose (or deliberately cut) power, you're going up.

I don't think it is on this "sub". I believe I read they used a material that degraded over time in water.
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