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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

#531

Post by greiskul »

nonethewiser wrote: post #396
cpleppert wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Xbox controllers are used to control the periscope which is not a safety critical device. Regardless, the navy uses wired controllers and did extensive testing and verification. This outfit didn't do anything like that; in one video with a journalist the bluetooth controller was a 'feature' because they could pass it around the sub.

I'm just imagining it running out of batteries. Then the user non-chalantly asks the pilot/guide for the spares. But they get a blank look. They repeat themselves. They must not have heard. They get a grimace this time and they suddenly realize what a precarious situation they were in all along.

They had spare controllers. Part of the idea of using off the shelf components like this, is the ease of replacement. If you have a 100k controller, and it fails, you need to think how to fix it. If your controller costs 30 bucks, throw it away and change for a new one.

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

#532

Post by brutusborn »

phs318u wrote: post #496
brutusborn wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.

A “risk assessment” by customers is typically based on attestations to safety made by the company. If the company is hiding or misrepresenting pertinent information then the customers have been denied the opportunity to make a reasonable assessment. At best it’s a case of gaining money by deception. At worst the company principals will be liable for deaths the deaths of those customers.

I completely agree that if the company lied they should be liable. Truth is essential.

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

#533

Post by omginternets »

ethbr0 wrote: post #51
addaon wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and what would that change? Suitability for purpose. Some obvious ones: Defined and validated environmentals (temperature, voltage, and in this case pressure). Qualified components — capacitors chosen for lifetime rather than shaving a cent, perhaps avoidance of MEMS oscillators with helium sensitivity. Failure analysis. Low and understood probability of fail-unsafe conditions (short circuit), mitigation for those…

Yes, if one had the budget to do all those things, from scratch, better than an existing component manufacturer. Not many companies have NASA levels of "throw money at it until it works, and every part has been signed off on five times." Absent that, I'm having trouble seeing how custom > COTS. In all probability, anything in-house would have been worse and added new failure modes. Better to buy, analyze, and adapt a…

You’re conducting a technical analysis that overlooks the legal analysis around fitness for a particular purpose.

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

#534

Post by peterashford »

brutusborn wrote: post #408
Aeolun wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’d expect companies that sell these kinds of tours for 250k a pop to be vetted though? If it’s uncle bob in his garage I’d be fine with lack of regulation, but when he starts commercially selling his trips he’d need to pass safety standards.

No, you’d only expect that if you have authoritarian values. In a truly free world, people are allowed to make dumb, risky decisions.

Having rules does not make you authoritarian.

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

#535

Post by vel0city »

silisili wrote: post #418
vel0city wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the drift would be like if you released a buoy 2 miles below the surface. You could theoretically have the last estimated location of the sub, but even then that's largely an estimate as its not like the sub actually has a GPS fix its all dead reckoning. They already know about where the sub should be, somewhere around the Titanic wreck. If an untethered buoy pops up a few miles away, does it really do…

I tried to research, but it's not clear. It says the gulf stream can reach 5mph, but also that that is near the surface, and it's slower the deeper you go. A buoy ascends at 2.8 m/s. 3000m would yield, meaning about 18 minutes of rise time. If we assume that water is at max speed the whole way through, we'd be talking about 1-2 miles. Realistically, because most of its rise is in deep sea conditions, I imagine it'd b…

That's neat, thanks for that information. This suggests such a buoy probably would be useful.

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

#536

Post by [deleted] »

peterashford wrote: post #523
brutusborn wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.

I totally think it matters, philosophically. Clearly there's a moral difference between risking your own life and profiting off risking other people's lives.

[deleted]

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

#537

Post by stOneskull »

rdtsc wrote: post #475
brutusborn wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is definitely a difference, but it doesn’t really matter philosophically speaking. If people want to take huge risks, then so be it. Whether they build the sub themselves or pay and give that responsibility to a proxy, it is still up to them to make their own risk assessment.

It's one thing for them to take the risk for themselves, but it's a whole other level selling to others. For example, if someone wants to drink a refreshing glass of strychnine soda, it's hard to stop them. But opening a stand and selling at the street corner is a bit different.

the CEO is drinking one with them

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

#538

Post by howenterprisey »

Aperocky wrote: post #511
wongarsu wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sub has already survived multiple dives to 4000 meters, and so far nobody has come out with reports of any apparent problems with the viewport. Maybe it failed from an impact or from accumulated fractures from all these pressure cycles, but I'm also completely willing to believe that the depth-rating for human occupancy has enough of a safety factor that going 3 times deeper doesn't lead to failure. From the pre-…

If the banging sound article was correct, it sounds like they had a failure of the ballast not coming off... I wonder how many layer of safety there is, there should probably be at least 3 independent ways that ballast can come off when your life depends on it..

Which article?

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

#539

Post by karmelapple »

twbarr wrote: post #91
tredre3 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally believe using mass market makes sense. I don't understand the criticism I've seen on this website for using off the shelf controllers or camping lights (what do you expect, an LED strip magically engineered by a large aeronautics firm specifically for the sub? and what would that change?). That being said, the difference between a Microsoft controller and a third party is that Microsoft very certainly di…

There's a middle ground between "hardware store crap" and "custom." The aviation industry has plenty of standard interior lighting and environmental control system that's known not to light people on fire or short out or otherwise fail and kill somebody. https://www.collinsaerospace.com/what-we-do/industries/busin... These are still COTS products.

Absolutely. Former avionics company employee here - not only do companies like Collins have COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) products to buy, but they themselves are frequently made of at least some COTS components. So each of those components have been tested and put into production by a company who's laser focused on the safety and reliability of that part.

You only need to spend a little time with a reliability engineer and see some of the calculations they do to start realizing how when even one or two components in a system have little corners cut, how it can drastically impact the overall safety of the system.

With the amount of corners cut on this submarine, I am unfortunately less than surprised at both the failure in the article and the crisis happening to it right now.

I hope all the souls aboard can somehow get home safe, and I hope the people who put them into this seemingly corners-cut vessel do not get to float any more craft, and that they didn't undersell the riskiness of this venture... although I'm unfortunately not optimistic about any of that.

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

#540

Post by prawn »

elzbardico wrote: post #530
prawn wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I can see how patrons might look at their $250k fee (or whatever it was) and assume that price signals an absolutely premium and safe product, where really the bulk of it just signals that it's a difficult, risky, remote and rare expedition.

For this kind of thing? I would suspect 250k is too cheap to be good.

I'm not sure the average person is in a brilliant position to judge. The explorers would be driven by adventure to overlook some risk, researchers might figure "I get a $250k experience for nothing" and business people tagging along might consider "Well, if the other guys are going along, it must be OK. And what else am I going to do with this money?"
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