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Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

bbc.com

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Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#61

Post by youngNed »

908B64B197 wrote: post #4

"The OceanGate CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.” The CEO, Stockton Rush, added that “expertise was unnecessary” because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller." [0] [0] https://www.outkick.com/tr…

Hey! It looks like you are trying to shoehorn into your culture war narrative! Don't you think this is tedious yet?

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#62

Post by xyzelement »

stasmo wrote: post #48
xyzelement wrote: post #29

Names are important. If your name is Rush (as is the CEOs), you are gonna do stuff too fast and cut corners.

This is just simple prejudice.

Either nothing is significant or everything is. As a matter of faith I chose the later. You are welcome to chose the former.

I wouldn't go a surgeon named Butcher or a financial advisor named Broke, would you?

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#63

Post by joelegner »

Johnny555 wrote: post #53
playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

Given that he was in the submersible himself, I don't think he was lying, I think he really believed he was taking reasonable risks with cutting edge engineering.

I have this vague idea that a person’s beliefs are not truly known until they use them as the basis to bet something of value. This guy bet his own life, so I agree with you. He believed what he was saying.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#64

Post by tgamblin »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #25
playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

Not really. He thought it was safer than it was. But I don't think he thought it was close to a 0% chance of death. It's clear that he knew it was somewhat risky. It failed after like 25 dives which means around a ~4% failure rate. I'd hope he thought it had less than a 1% failure rate. Who knows what the true failure rate is. Maybe they got really lucky, and it actually had a higher failure rate. Maybe they got extr…

"It failed after 25 dives" is not a 4% failure rate if the failure was caused by deterioration over time (as it likely was here). It's a 100% failure rate over the full life of any given Titan sub. They'll all implode, given enough trips.

Moreover, both 1% and 4% are horrible failure rates for anything meant to carry passengers. Example: the risk of dying in a commercial plane crash is 1 in 11 million [1]. The risk of dying while skydiving is less than 1 in 300,000 per jump.

This guy was taking extremely unreasonable risks.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/planecrash/risky.html

[2] https://dzoneskydiving.com/articles/how-many-people-die-skyd...

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#65

Post by iJohnDoe »

I wonder if Rush had a death wish or other motive for potentially dying while on a dive.

Or this is really an extreme example of past successes fueling further trips. However, it seems like basic knowledge Rush should have known is to inspect the vessel after each dive. Since people have said it’s extremely difficult and expensive to inspect carbon fiber, then maybe Rush/Oceangate couldn’t afford it. Maybe do enough trips until they could afford and build a new vessel. Who knows, but it seems like deeper internal decisions were being made here.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#66

Post by the-printer »

jeffbee wrote: post #42

Clearly nobody stopped this guy, so what was he whining about? It sounds like he was opposed to some completely illusory regulation.

I think that you’re on to something. There is a certain angst that it seems like he possessed, not so much as hubris.

If I may adjust my metaphorical armchair and say that I’m patiently waiting for the feature piece on his life to be published in the next few months to a year or so, that will uncover something to the tune of anxiety, self-doubt, estranged familial ties or an addiction to an obscure pharmaceutical commonly used on narcoleptic koala bears.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#67

Post by belter »

jjulius wrote: post #17

An excerpt from an email Stockton Rush sent out, according to the article (emphasis mine): >I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. Since Guillermo and I started OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of "you are going to kill someone" way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult. Just... wow.

That is what a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University gives you...

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#68

Post by joelegner »

908B64B197 wrote: post #4

"The OceanGate CEO who is trapped on a 22-foot submersible on an ill-fated voyage to see the Titanic wreck once explained how he didn’t hire “50-year-old white guys” with military experience to captain his vessels because they weren’t “inspirational.” The CEO, Stockton Rush, added that “expertise was unnecessary” because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller." [0] [0] https://www.outkick.com/tr…

May Stockton Rush become a synonym for dangerous hubris, for the benefit of future generations.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#69

Post by notJim »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #25
playa1 wrote: post #5

When CEOs make statements like this I assume they know they are lying for sake of the company. What makes this more interesting is that he clearly believed it was safe. So he wasn’t necessarily unethical. It is more that he was a bad engineer and a poor judge of risk.

Not really. He thought it was safer than it was. But I don't think he thought it was close to a 0% chance of death. It's clear that he knew it was somewhat risky. It failed after like 25 dives which means around a ~4% failure rate. I'd hope he thought it had less than a 1% failure rate. Who knows what the true failure rate is. Maybe they got really lucky, and it actually had a higher failure rate. Maybe they got extr…

> I'd hope he thought it had less than a 1% failure rate.

I take your meaning, but I'm just laughing at the idea of a 1% failure rate. If airliners had a 1% failure rate, there would be hundreds of thousands of crashes every year. Experimental craft don't need airliner failure rates of course, but 1% still seems too high for anything with human passengers.

Re: Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

#70

Post by plagiarist »

Nux wrote: post #36
jjulius wrote: post #17

An excerpt from an email Stockton Rush sent out, according to the article (emphasis mine): >I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. Since Guillermo and I started OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of "you are going to kill someone" way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult. Just... wow.

A bet gone wrong.. Many innovations started off in a similar manner, ignoring or challenging the status quo.. That said, it's mighty spectacular and sad the way he was proven wrong. rip.

It is challenging the status quo when it's an economic or sociology argument against your product. When there is a mechanical engineering argument against your product, that is something else.
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