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

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 1001 posts

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

#371

Post by andrewflnr »

javajosh wrote: post #356
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-…

>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…

FWIW I read that statement as "I can't believe they didn't flame out before they got this far". Which is also, well, I won't call it naive, but it's wrong for trickier reasons. You can get lucky for a long time before it runs out in a bad situation.

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

#372

Post by eropple »

ekianjo wrote: post #333
jmount wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, everything working should be the goal- not a mere nice to have.

> everything working should be the goal It's probably the goal, but complex endeavors mean you need to iterate to get there

The iteration has already been done. Safety rules exist because somebody has died and had it written in their blood. Failure to read the literature gets people killed.

This is reckless and it is stupid and excusemaking for it has no moral grounds.

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

#374

Post by JBiserkov »

From David Pogue's Twitter:

> This submersible does not have any kind of beacon like that. On my expedition last summer, they did indeed get lost for about 5 hours, and adding such a beacon was discussed…

> To be clear, I was not on the sub that day—I was on the ship at the surface, in the control room. They could still send short texts to the sub, but did not know where it was. It was quiet and very tense, and they shut off the ship’s internet to prevent us from tweeting.

https://twitter.com/Pogue/status/1670826522138091521

https://twitter.com/Pogue/status/1670835763536183297

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

#375

Post by sixQuarks »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #290
chinchilla2020 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Tesla spends enormous manufacturing cost on aesthetics. Where this sub looks like a bucket of bolts.

I own a Tesla, and I can tell you that the aesthetics are only aesthetics. The beauty is literally skin-deep. Inside, the car is bodged together to make manufacturing as cheap as possible and with no other considerations. Tesla likes to boast about the safety of their cars, and while I don't deny this, I believe that the safety is an accidental side-effect of the inherent properties of building a car with no explosiv…

If safety is an accidental side effect, then why are no other electric vehicles ranked as high in safety?

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

#376

Post by gbear605 »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #301
xenadu02 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hardly think that is fair. Tesla hasn't re-invented the wheel on life-critical safety systems. They use off the shelf airbags and brakes. Their software on the steering, braking, etc control loops are more or less standard for embedded vehicle systems. The linux PC running the touch screen is not the system controlling the brakes. The failure modes for a vehicle are also a lot simpler than a sub. If the interior st…

> Tesla hasn't re-invented the wheel on life-critical safety systems. Haven't they? They've removed radar from their cars and now the AEB system uses image recognition. Does any other manufacturer do that?

Most cars don’t have radar at all, so it’s hardly like they’re sacrificing consumers by not including it.

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

#377

Post by ehnto »

hunson_abadeer wrote: post #341
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…

Maybe so, but it's easy to say this after the fact. When kludges like this work, we admire "scrappy" and "ingenious" engineers who are finding ways to launch rockets or build submarines or medical devices or whatever for fraction the price. It's only when it blows up that it turns from "ingenuity" into "amateur hour". People who participated in this knew the risks. They fucked up. None of us would have designed a bet…

The major difference is serving the public I suppose. I would admire a scrappy vessel for research (SV Seeker for example) but if you are essentially building a transport service for the consumers, you are now being irresponsible.

All credit to SV Seeker, it is a wildly impressive project, but I don't think they would be mad if I suggest they had the resolver spirit while putting that vessel together.

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

#378

Post by ethbr0 »

giantg2 wrote: post #238
ethbr0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." Did they? I might have missed that part.

>> OceanGate says it is an experimental vessel, and when CBS travelled onboard the correspondent had to sign a waiver accepting that it "has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65960217

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=29co_Hksk6o

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

#379

Post by venusenvy47 »

dmonitor wrote: post #265
ethbr0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That's an awful lot of keyboard engineering, given nobody knows what happened yet. Unless I'm mistaken, the subject article starts with the words "Submarine missing". The fact that the whole thing was jury rigged and double checked by nobody with certifications is enough to start pointing fingers at the engineers. This isn't the company's first trip either. They've taken multiple trips down and have almost lost the…

I'm also annoyed at the company for all the public emergency resources being forced to help rescue this contraption.

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

#380

Post by ethbr0 »

neither_color wrote: post #359
ethbr0 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If they said they were, and I did, presumably.
Post reply on HN