Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 129 posts

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#111

Post by marcosdumay »

twh270 wrote: post #105
marcosdumay wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not right. "Settlement" does really say a judge oversaw the entire thing while a corporation bullied somebody working for the public interest into silence.

The lawsuit was settled out of court ( https://www.wsbradio.com/news/national/documents-detail/VUTB... ). Reading between the lines, I'm guessing OceanGate (a company with substantial financial resources) would have buried Lochbridge (an individual with substantially fewer financial resources) in lawsuits if he had not settled. (Not to mention the stress, hardship, and real-or-perceived threat of jail time for Lochbr…

> OceanGate would have buried Lochbridge in lawsuits

So it's not a single judge, but the Judiciary Power collectively was absolutely complicit on the deed.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#112

Post by coldtea »

ubermonkey wrote: post #110
criddell wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn't heard that before. Did Oceangate lie about or understate the risks?

I mean, did you read the article?

No, it's under a paywall.

But I have read several articles on the story and show a dozen or more videos, so.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#113

Post by coldtea »

criddell wrote: post #104
coldtea wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easy (and legally advised) to have a waiver mentioning all the risks, while also totally downplaying them in your sales pitch and live communications that go on before such a thing gets signed.

Sure, but did they do that? I've seen plenty of reporting about the extensive and blunt waiver but nothing about them misleading passengers or, as you said, hand-waiving the risks away.

I'm pretty sure they did exactly that, seeing the way the owner talked about their "innovations" and blatant disregard for safety. James Cameron also alluded to that.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#114

Post by upon_drumhead »

em-bee wrote: post #96
lacksconfidence wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly the DeepSea Challenger was only $10M as well. Thats certainly a ton of money, but it's in the same ballpark as what ocean gate spent.

i guess the difference was that ocean gate needed to recoup the expense and make a profit as fast as possible whereas the deepsea challenger didn't. so they could take their time and do it right without pressure.

If you get the chance to watch Deepsea Challenge[1], it's worth the time. They were under a lot of pressure, which James Cameron was very proud of and the source of. They had more problems then you think, but was able to make it work.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2332883/

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#115

Post by coldtea »

sgarland wrote: post #107
coldtea wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ocean, even the deep, is orders of magnitude easier and less dangerous than space...

As a former submariner (but not an astronaut, tbf), I think they’re on-par. They both actively want to kill you at all times.

In total failure mode, yes.

But with one of the two though there are other humans not far away to send help, and land/open sea to rise up if you see a problem emerging.

In space it can be nightmare to get any help or get back if something goes wrong.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#116

Post by em-bee »

upon_drumhead wrote: post #114
em-bee wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i guess the difference was that ocean gate needed to recoup the expense and make a profit as fast as possible whereas the deepsea challenger didn't. so they could take their time and do it right without pressure.

If you get the chance to watch Deepsea Challenge[1], it's worth the time. They were under a lot of pressure, which James Cameron was very proud of and the source of. They had more problems then you think, but was able to make it work. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2332883/

of course. i meant they weren't under pressure to cut corners and ignore problems in order to make a profit. it was a different kind of pressure, to make sure they didn't miss any problems and to eliminate any risks, and possibly they risked the project being aborted if they could not solve all the problems.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#117

Post by FabHK »

coldtea wrote: post #92
gonzo41 wrote: post #12

Respect the ocean, Space is somewhat mild in comparison.

The ocean, even the deep, is orders of magnitude easier and less dangerous than space...

Until fairly recently, more people had been on the moon than at the bottom of the Mariana trench.

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#118

Post by oska »

ubermonkey wrote: post #26

Is it "more disturbing," though, really? I mean, privileged rich dude who thinks he knows better than experts wins Darwin award, and some people dumb enough to trust him got to go along for the (one way) ride. I'm not any more disturbed by it now than I was a year ago, and a year ago it barely moved the needle. And then it was only about the 19 year old son of one of the passengers -- even at that age, a child ought…

I wouldn't perhaps have expressed myself as callously as you, and I think the 'Darwin award' is a silly concept that doesn't deserve referencing but I do agree with your general sentiment. To directly reference the sensationalising Wired headline, no, this incident did not 'shock the world' and it is not really very disturbing (because the failings of those involved are very well known human traits).

I personally paid scant attention to this story, mostly only observing how much of a media frenzy there was around it. Sure, it's fine to write up a story on what led up to the failure of the sub and fine for ppl to be interested in that story. But it's not a 'world shocking' nor particularly disturbing story. (I can think of things going on right now that are both shocking the world and truly disturbing, but I won't go there. Suffice to say that we devalue language when we use it sensationally.)

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#119

Post by sillywalk »

gusfoo wrote: post #103
lacksconfidence wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprisingly the DeepSea Challenger was only $10M as well. Thats certainly a ton of money, but it's in the same ballpark as what ocean gate spent.

True but Ocean Gate were planning on multiple use, surely a higher bar.

> Ocean Gate were planning on multiple use,

FTA: "up to 10,000 times, according to internal design documents."

That seems like an absurdly high amount.

> surely a higher bar

was that a pun?

Re: The Titan Submersible Disaster. The Inside Story Is More Disturbing

#120

Post by southernplaces7 »

throwup238 wrote: post #73
southernplaces7 wrote: post #61

The Wired article clearly paints Rush as someone who was irresponsible and cavalier about even the basics of good engineering before testing a complex thing with real human lives that trusted him too much. In the essence of that argument at least, they're right. His using a prototype he knew to be a failure to then explore the ocean with customers aboard, under the same conditions as those that caused its test failur…

> In the world of exploring extremely harsh environments, some heavy risk is inevitable even if you do everything you know of right. In such contexts, something could go catastrophically wrong just as easily as it could all end successfully and a narrative will be constructed for why either was the case even if either outcome was interchangeably plausible.. That implies that what they were doing was somehow pioneerin…

I don't disagree. In the case of Thurston Rush, what he did was absurdly negligent, in multiple instances across a long stretch of opportunities to simply do basic due diligence with testing and redesign. For whatever reasons of his own, he didn't and died horribly along with those others.

My wider point was more about how in certain fields, those who strive for certain achievements often do similarly risky things and only get called out if there is a catastrophic failure. If they succeed, they're often lauded. Also, in some areas it really is impossible to avoid mistakes, and those who get criticized for making them are often only those who got unlucky instead of actually negligent. This doesn't apply in the case of Titan though, since he made multiple glaring mistakes that he could have corrected and was urged to do so by known experts in parts design.

Post reply on HN