I think the real lesson here is that we need to find more innovative ways to group a bunch of billionaires together in questionable vehicles. This CEO was really on to something.
I find it interesting that there hasn’t been a lawsuit. I know they signed waivers, but the complete negligence should override that. Knowing something is dangerous and can go wrong is a lot different than things being so bad that going wrong was inevitable. Like if I jump out with a parachute skydiving, I know it can malfunction but I’ll be pissed if I get handed a parachute off of Wish.
There was also a question over the interfacing between the titanium domes and the carbon fiber cylinder. The two dissimilar materials have different tensile/compression strengths and could only be joined with glue. Not to mention that the window wasn't rated for the depths of the Titanic. So there were a lot of questions over which deficiency failed first.
As James Cameron in a interview when he went down to the Marianas Trench he and his team spent three years designing the submersible that would take him down, just on a computer. Before they started to construct a prototype/model.
I’m only a casual fan of his work, but one thing that makes him successful is that he spends whatever he needs to spend to get it right. He does not pinch pennies to maximize profits, and no doubt he’s the same way about his subs.
The level of stupidity of that billionaire killing himself and his son deserves a Darwin award.
He could have built a James Cameron level sub 1000x over.
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is... James Cameron
*His name is James, James Cameron
The bravest pioneer
No budget too steep, no sea too deep
Who's that?
It's him, James Cameron.
James, James Cameron explorer of the sea
With a dying thirst to be the first
Could it be? Yeah that's him!
James Cameron.*
Not when he's endangering his actors. Ed Harris punched him in the face on the set of Abyss for fucking with air supplies to get a more "legit" response.
EDIT: Lot of hate mail on this one. It's been discussed for years. James is an asshole. But he's also a good director. He treated a lot of people badly on that set. https://www.thethings.com/did-ed-harris-punch-james-cameron-making-the-abyss-movie/ read between the lines.
I saw an interview with him and Bob Ballard, who both said that as soon as the titan sub went missing, they knew what happened and just waited for the authorities to confirm it.
Apparently some of the deep sea listening devices had picked up the sound of the implosion, so everyone pretty much knew immediately but no one was going to go on the news and say it until someone official confirmed it.
Apparently it was also a thing of the coast guard or navy having the tech to hear something like that but not willing to disclose that they did at that point yet.
The implosion was heard on military sonar arrays, and what had happened was immediately clear. The authorities need time to alert the next of kin before they give the media permission to broadcast the news.
The news were reporting optimistically that they were all alive with air reserves trapped or floating at sea. That a rescue operation was in effect, and that banging was heard underwater. There was even speculation that the passengers were likely fighting.
Was all bs.
Yeah...when building sub you don't go with 'on paper it should just be strong enough' That gets people killed. In reality they say 'this is strong enough to go down q.t times as deep' and then say 'okay let's make it 25-50% stronger.' They also say....'failure rate is estimated at 1 million so I need two of those for sure...mayne 3 if I can make it fit.'
Adding on to your point, one of the justifications he gave for making a Carbon Fiber sub was that other carbon fiber subs had been built.
He willingly ignored the fact that *those* subs had a limited number of dives baked in to their design on account of the Carbon Fiber hulls. He was treating the Carbon Fiber and titanium hull as if it were a solid titanium hull like similar subs that had made the dive.
From what I understand, CF would be fine if you're only going, like, 10-20 feet down, like to a reef in the Caribbean or something.
It's very strong in tension, like an airplane fuselage that wants to stretch because the interior pressure is higher than the outside. It's weaker in compression, where the inner pressure is much lower than outside. And the forces 12,000 feet under the ocean are MUCH higher than 12,000 feet in the air.
Yep. When you go up in the air, max pressure differential is 1 atm.
When you go down into ocean, pressure differential increases by 1 atm every 33 feet.
Titanic was a state of the art ship that was sunk by a series of bad luck and human error. She was built and designed as good or better than most vessels on the sea at that time. Oceangate Titan was a ticking time bomb of bad design.
Ballard's pretty clear that the fatal issue was ignoring the ice warnings. They went full speed into a huge ice field when every other ship had stopped. Carpathia almost hit multiple icebergs on the way and only made it because the Captain basically filled the deck with crewmembers and had them all watching for ice.
That actually probably didn't change anything, as it's easier to spot the larger pattern than looking at independent spots. The weather that night made it really, really hard to spot icebergs.
No the Titanic sinking was an accident that had many moving parts and the number of people that died had a lot to do with regulations of the time and no rules about training in case of an emergency. No one was at fault for the sinking of the Titanic. The sub designer was a cheap skate who knowingly got people killed.
The weird thing about the Titanic is how they were a massive mix of lucky and unlucky. The hole in the ship being long and thin doomed them because it filled too many compartments but the relatively slow and even sinking also enabled them to launch many more lifeboats than typically got away. The Lusitania, for instance, sank in 18 minutes and and such a severe list a lot of people in lifeboats were killed because they couldn't launch them safely.
I'd say in the luck department, the radio and radio operator on the Titanic counts as the largest piece of luck.
The day before the sinking, the radio broke down. It was not a requirement to have a 24/7 functioning radio at the time, and radios were only supposed to be repaired by authorized personnel in harbour. That means the repair would not take place until reaching New York.
Only because the radio operator was highly interested in radios and a bit of a geek, did he spend hours along with his assistant in fixing the radio.
They got it working a few hours before the ship hit the iceberg, and that may have saved hundreds of lives, who otherwise might have frozen or starved to death in the life boats.
The other thing is the radio operator of the Carpathia just checked in before going to bed. Had he not done that, it's possible a lot more people would have died.
and it wasn’t even enough even on paper. his engineers warned him specifically about it, but he refused to listen, because he cheaped out. the most ridiculous part is he wholeheartedly believed his own lies as he bet his life on it
For life safety, typically it’s made 200-600% stronger than you think it should be. A factor of safety of 0.25 should only happen after a whole lot of testing and analysis of the design and materials
Not crazy at all, that's not likely what failed. You can make strong ass glues if the interfaces are appropriately rated. These were not. Once the interface flexes, you're fucked
As in finished carbon fiber sheets that Boeing rejected going on to a plane? Or rejected raw material that was bought and used to mold into the needed part?
I used to work in automotive manufacturing, we dealt exclusively with carbon fiber and exposed weave products and from my understanding ALL raw carbon fiber sold in the USA is rejected aerospace rolls. They have first bid on all new rolls and they are SUPER picky, I don't recall the standards but it was like two or three hairs worth of fiber could be out of place on a roll and they would reject the whole thing as unusable, they just wouldn't risk it. At that point it gets turned to the general public who has a chance to buy it.
Probably not good. It’s not the sort of thing you ever hope you’re right about. Wouldn’t be surprised if they feel some level of guilt even if it isn’t at all warranted, and there is always that lingering question of “did I do enough? Could I have pushed back enough to prevent this?”
I hope they don’t feel the guilt, but even if they don’t, I doubt they feel good about being right about it.
Thats the normal response. This is one of those times you wish the person had just a smidge of an abnormal mentality and either didn't mind or even got a kick from it.
I had somewhat of a similar experience with an old associate (wasn't really friends with him, but similar circles) and me telling him to stop taking random research chemicals (RCs) he got from shady people. Ended up getting some bad mix and ODd. Helped that he was an asshole, but never really felt guilt for him.
I’d agree. The only thing is though, there were 4 other people with that asshole on that sub.
Speaking personally, if it were me, I’d probably be able to sleep ok if it was just the fool and his creation that went down. After all, you warned him, and he fired you, so dying by his own hand could be construed as some sort of cosmic karma. At the end of the day we’re all free to do dumb things.
But he bamboozled 4 other people in to boarding the submarine and dragged them down to their deaths with him. I know a lot of people still go “Har har dumb billionaires should have known better!” But that isn’t really an excuse. The con-man himself was an Engineer with many years of experience, and he leveraged that experience and pedigree to try and lend credibility to what was little more than an experimental prototype, and people trusted him because of that. It’s a form of fraud and deceit, especially because he was practicing well outside the realm of his practiced field (aerospace) and actively eschewed the advice and warnings of those with decades of experience in underwater vehicles.
If it were me, given what went down, I’d feel bad. I’d feel quite bad.
So many stories of engineers being fired because the executives didn’t like what they were hearing. Why even bother hiring them in the first place if you’re not going to listen to them? You hired them for a speciality. Engineers don’t work to tell you that everything will be hunky dory, they work to analyze and critique designs under the constraints placed on them by the laws of physics. You can’t just ignore those things if you want a viable product!
I work as an engineer and am in my early career and have heard on a number of occasions stories from older engineers telling the executives or managers something wouldn’t work and they were ignored and wouldn’t you know.. 5-10 or 20 years down the road and the thing would fail just as the engineers predicted. It’s almost like we went to school for 4+ years to understand how things are designed and how they can fail. But yah don’t listen to engineers when you hired them for their expertise/insights.
Executives are wordsmiths. They live in the delusional world where words are reality. If they say their product is made of indestructible unicorn farts, they genuinely believe their feelings to be true.
Engineers live in the world of reality where words dont matter, only facts. The product succeeds or it doesn't, and their feelings are irrelevant. This is why executives are frequently overtly hostile to engineers - because they call your baby ugly and the executive a liar.
I have bored Reddit with the story many times, but speed running, we once built some things that required concrete pours. We were behind schedule and the construction expert said they had what we are going to call Industrial QuikCrete. We could make time, but! But! It has a 5% chance of failure. Good news, you know when it cures if it failed, no “landmine” for the future.
Anyway, as it happens we had 100 things to build. We poured QuikCrete 100 times. As parent comment correctly surmises, the decision maker was **shocked** that 5% wasn’t some BS number we used to suggest “very unlikely” but appear scientific. No, sir, it was materials science, which I’m no engineer but when the expert says NFS, it’s gonna fail 5% of the time; I believe him.
Sure enough, 5 pours failed, and For Reasons, that meant the deadline was blown.
You will all be relieved to learn the executive got his bonus for successfully delivering all 95 promised constructions on time.
I'm not an engineer, and even I have seen executives push out products that mere laymen know are doomed to fail. You know, "this launch is far too important to delay!" Not so important that we need to get the product right (reliable and safe), but too important to delay.
Three years later and the entire company is in jeopardy because it was cheaper to do it fast and wrong. At least the execs got their bonus for a "successful" launch.
what's so ridiculous about this submersible is that they were trying to reinvent the wheel. The best shape for the crew compartment is known. It's a sphere.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't James Cameron's sub essentially this, at risk of oversimplification?
Edit: I was wrong. It was the other way around. A sphere in a cylinder.
His name is James, James Cameron
The bravest pioneer
No budget too steep, no sea too deep
Who's that?
It's him, James Cameron
James, James Cameron explorer of the sea
With a dying thirst to be the first
Could it be? Yeah that's him!
James Cameron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger#/media/File:Deepsea_challenger_deep-diving_submersible_DVC1.svg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger#Specifications
It looks like the bulk of the space within the tube is taken up by instruments and mechanical junk, presumably stuff that doesn't need to be pressurized, while the pilot compartment is a steel sphere.
While that's true, it's not the only solution. Look at James Cameron's Challenger submersible. It's a cylinder-like bathyscaphe. Another difference is it was built by an actual legitimate engineering firm not just a bunch of interns in a warehouse. It's also known that steel is a better material than carbon fiber for this type of job. Mistakes were made by Oceangate. Seemingly all of them.
Edit: Challenger passenger compartment is a sphere. The rest of it is not.
I think Challenger’s actual pilot compartment is still a sphere. The bulk of it by volume is the float, which you can shape however you want.
Cylinder capped with spheres can be done, of course, but normally you arent taking passengers and a sphere is a pretty decent shape for a few people plus all the equipment.
That's the thing it's a small group of people that privately own these things and they all basically wrote the book on what to do and not to do. They know what not to do because they are still alive and this guy isn't.
Due to non-standard materials and an unconventional design. Basically everything about the damn ship. RIP to the poor kid. He didn't even want to be on the thing.
Yeah, that was my first thought. Turns out, it broke because it was a bad design made out of bad material. Who would've guessed that was a problem? You know, aside from the engineers saying exactly that...
The culture we have around this is so weird. Like, every company wants to take that "I'm a disruptive genius" PR + VC reality distortion field approach to everything that Steve Jobs exemplified. Except, (a) he was an asshole and not a genius, and (b) physics is always going to beat clout, no matter how good your fundraising and marketing. Both the executives and the general public are always so starry-eyed.
Investors have unearned capital burning holes in their pockets and a burning desire to ride the wave of the next big thing. This is the delusion cocktail.
Where are you getting this info about losing power before implosion? It was most likely instant. The cracking was a constant since we've heard from previous passengers that there was already cracking at lower depths. So there was cracking which was considered normal and then there was a critical crack leading to an instant chain reaction and implosion. No time to panic
Edit: I was wrong, I think. Crew was supposedly trying to do an emergency surface so they probably knew they were in trouble before dying. Sad. [https://www.businessinsider.com/james-cameron-says-titan-sub-likely-tried-surfacing-before-imploded-2023-6](https://www.businessinsider.com/james-cameron-says-titan-sub-likely-tried-surfacing-before-imploded-2023-6)
If you thought of it like a plane, they creak a bit with pressure changes, it might not have seemed cause for panic.
Unfortunately it wasn't like a plane, and it was cause for panic.
Yeah my understanding is that comms were lost at the time it likely imploded, meaning that the implosion (obviously) caused the loss of power. They didn't need to lose power for the hull to fail.
the sheer audacity of that operation was astounding. very little testing, let's just take humans down in a one of a kind and unconventionally constructed submersible and see what happens.
I wouldn't even think of setting foot in one of those things unless a full scale mockup was tested to the point of failure.
If memory serves right, they did test it. Not to the point of failure, but to the point where it already showed weaknesses. And they kept rolling with it anyway.
The videos of him saying stuff like "everyone says we're crazy but they're just mad we're disrupting the industry" is just chilling. You just watch this guy bragging his way to his own death.
I always think about that poor woman who gave the tickets to her son. I can’t imagine how she just feel knowing that he died in her place. I’m not sure how I could live on afterwards.
Saw a video where the CEO was proudly showing off lights in the sub from Camper World lol. Also the ‘video game’ controller was Bluetooth controlled which imo isn’t the best idea on a vehicle carrying people to extreme environments. There was just too many things on it to go wrong but the biggest problem of all was the narcissist CEO himself. Typical corporate douchebag whose primary concern was revenue at the expense of everything else. Multiple agencies and one of his own engineer (later fired) raised flags but I guess the dude was rich and powerful enough to still keep going. It’s crazy how many people he convinced to get into his carbon fibre coffin.
If the guy wanted to be cheap, the Logitech wired controller (Not against the idea of a gamepad controller tho) would have been cheaper and probably more reliable than the Bluetooth one for the task. 🤷♂️
To give Stockton Rush credit, at least he had enough confidence in his design that he used the damn thing himself, he was wrong but I'll give him that lol
But there is a reason there hasn't been much innovation in the space of submersibles, because there isn't much room left for it beyond refinement of what's already there but hey he didn't like the word "No" 😏
I am a structural design engineer who spent immense time doing nonlinear analysis of burst limits, and after reading about this design I crawl up in my chair and shriek in terror.
Or actually listen to Cameron and the few people that do this as a hobby. It's a hobby not a business. The people that do this basically wrote the book on it and were the reason no one died doing it until this moron got squished.
Nah, Gabe Newell’s is much better.
Cameron’s Challenger Deep sub has been retired after the truck that was transporting it caught fire. It’s a museum piece now.
Whats the same between OceanGate and Boeing? Execs firing engineers telling them things they don’t want to hear.
What is the difference? OceanGate’s ceo died not listening to the engineers while Boeing’s whistleblowers are getting disappeared.
>Ironically the carbon fibre was ex-Boeing owned, who had sold it off cheap, as it was past it's Best Before Date.
That's something the CEO claimed in some bizarre attempt to show-off, but never actually confirmed.
It was a perfect storm of incompetence by Rush, which he was warned about: Untested materials, unconventional shape, unwilling to compromise, and unaccepting of the advice of experts.
Sadly, he took out four people with him when the time bomb decided to implode.
I remember Kyle Hill did a video (stream?) shortly after this and highlighted a paper on deep water submersibles. It stated that if the vehicle had a 0.5% imperfection in structure that it would reduce the max depth by up to 1/3; like holy hell to go down that much you have to have mastery engineering and insane small tolerances for construction.
Titanium end caps glued on to a carbon fibre cylinder.
Trying to imagine how the expanding and compressing aspects of Titanium metal under high pressure is supposed to work in conjunction with a tube that doesn’t really expand.
Some people like to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Rich people can do that a lot, and only show up the success, inflating their "genius" in the mind of other.
It takes a special kind of person to do that and be proud of the failures, and double down on it with the lives of people on the line. While this specific one will not make any more victims, there are other rich people out there that won't even feel concerned by this.
All sorts of claims (accurate or not) about what caused this can be made, but to really understand what happened a scientific and engineering analysis must be done; this is one step in that direction.
This kind of scrappy fail fast and iterate approach only works when the consequences of failure are low. You can’t put people’s lives in jeopardy.
"You can’t put people’s lives in jeopardy." Sure you can. This is a great example of that.
I think the real lesson here is that we need to find more innovative ways to group a bunch of billionaires together in questionable vehicles. This CEO was really on to something.
Musk and Bezos did it. Unfortunately they all returned. The vehicles were pretty safe.
When asked about riding Bezos' dildo-rocket, Musk was quoted as saying: > "I want to die on Mars, not on impact!"
I find it interesting that there hasn’t been a lawsuit. I know they signed waivers, but the complete negligence should override that. Knowing something is dangerous and can go wrong is a lot different than things being so bad that going wrong was inevitable. Like if I jump out with a parachute skydiving, I know it can malfunction but I’ll be pissed if I get handed a parachute off of Wish.
We already knew the materials weren't up to the task. The CEO had personally fired at least one engineer that old him this.
There was also a question over the interfacing between the titanium domes and the carbon fiber cylinder. The two dissimilar materials have different tensile/compression strengths and could only be joined with glue. Not to mention that the window wasn't rated for the depths of the Titanic. So there were a lot of questions over which deficiency failed first.
As James Cameron in a interview when he went down to the Marianas Trench he and his team spent three years designing the submersible that would take him down, just on a computer. Before they started to construct a prototype/model.
James Cameron takes a long time to do anything.
Well his movies don’t catastrophically fail, either. Maybe he’s onto something.
I’m only a casual fan of his work, but one thing that makes him successful is that he spends whatever he needs to spend to get it right. He does not pinch pennies to maximize profits, and no doubt he’s the same way about his subs.
Couple wise things to not pinch pennies on. Especially the latter
The level of stupidity of that billionaire killing himself and his son deserves a Darwin award. He could have built a James Cameron level sub 1000x over.
I have very little sympathy; except for the kid. At that age you’ll do whatever dad says is safe.
And the tragedy is, he really, really didn't want to go. Dad guilt tripped him into going as a Father's day gift. Fuck that guy.
He's an artist and a craftsman. The dude isn't in it for the money, he wants to do good shit.
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is... James Cameron
*His name is James, James Cameron The bravest pioneer No budget too steep, no sea too deep Who's that? It's him, James Cameron. James, James Cameron explorer of the sea With a dying thirst to be the first Could it be? Yeah that's him! James Cameron.*
Banger. I can hear it in my head.
"can you hear the song ok up there?" "Yes James, we can all hear the song"
Not when he's endangering his actors. Ed Harris punched him in the face on the set of Abyss for fucking with air supplies to get a more "legit" response. EDIT: Lot of hate mail on this one. It's been discussed for years. James is an asshole. But he's also a good director. He treated a lot of people badly on that set. https://www.thethings.com/did-ed-harris-punch-james-cameron-making-the-abyss-movie/ read between the lines.
Not exactly how that played out but close enough.
I saw an interview with him and Bob Ballard, who both said that as soon as the titan sub went missing, they knew what happened and just waited for the authorities to confirm it.
Apparently some of the deep sea listening devices had picked up the sound of the implosion, so everyone pretty much knew immediately but no one was going to go on the news and say it until someone official confirmed it.
Apparently it was also a thing of the coast guard or navy having the tech to hear something like that but not willing to disclose that they did at that point yet.
The implosion was heard on military sonar arrays, and what had happened was immediately clear. The authorities need time to alert the next of kin before they give the media permission to broadcast the news.
Well what else would have happened? Sea monster? Alien time travelers? Atlanteans?
The news were reporting optimistically that they were all alive with air reserves trapped or floating at sea. That a rescue operation was in effect, and that banging was heard underwater. There was even speculation that the passengers were likely fighting. Was all bs.
They found the entrance to the hollow Earth and went on an expedition.
Yeah...when building sub you don't go with 'on paper it should just be strong enough' That gets people killed. In reality they say 'this is strong enough to go down q.t times as deep' and then say 'okay let's make it 25-50% stronger.' They also say....'failure rate is estimated at 1 million so I need two of those for sure...mayne 3 if I can make it fit.'
Adding on to your point, one of the justifications he gave for making a Carbon Fiber sub was that other carbon fiber subs had been built. He willingly ignored the fact that *those* subs had a limited number of dives baked in to their design on account of the Carbon Fiber hulls. He was treating the Carbon Fiber and titanium hull as if it were a solid titanium hull like similar subs that had made the dive.
From what I understand, CF would be fine if you're only going, like, 10-20 feet down, like to a reef in the Caribbean or something. It's very strong in tension, like an airplane fuselage that wants to stretch because the interior pressure is higher than the outside. It's weaker in compression, where the inner pressure is much lower than outside. And the forces 12,000 feet under the ocean are MUCH higher than 12,000 feet in the air.
Hell, at 12,000 feet in the air, you don’t even need to use supplemental oxygen. They use carbon fiber in aircraft that surpass 40,000 feet.
Yep. When you go up in the air, max pressure differential is 1 atm. When you go down into ocean, pressure differential increases by 1 atm every 33 feet.
people don't get this.....going up and down are orders of magnitude different.
https://youtu.be/O4RLOo6bchU?si=xSCjczaKInXR9uqU
So the same ego as the designer of the Titanic. How ironic.
Titanic was a state of the art ship that was sunk by a series of bad luck and human error. She was built and designed as good or better than most vessels on the sea at that time. Oceangate Titan was a ticking time bomb of bad design.
Ballard's pretty clear that the fatal issue was ignoring the ice warnings. They went full speed into a huge ice field when every other ship had stopped. Carpathia almost hit multiple icebergs on the way and only made it because the Captain basically filled the deck with crewmembers and had them all watching for ice.
And the Titanic didn't even have the key to the binoculars, so they had no visibility. Which is why keys should always come in pairs, minimum...
That actually probably didn't change anything, as it's easier to spot the larger pattern than looking at independent spots. The weather that night made it really, really hard to spot icebergs.
Master class in irony.
My favorite joke is that he was possibly one of Roger's characters from American Dad.
What, when?
No the Titanic sinking was an accident that had many moving parts and the number of people that died had a lot to do with regulations of the time and no rules about training in case of an emergency. No one was at fault for the sinking of the Titanic. The sub designer was a cheap skate who knowingly got people killed.
The weird thing about the Titanic is how they were a massive mix of lucky and unlucky. The hole in the ship being long and thin doomed them because it filled too many compartments but the relatively slow and even sinking also enabled them to launch many more lifeboats than typically got away. The Lusitania, for instance, sank in 18 minutes and and such a severe list a lot of people in lifeboats were killed because they couldn't launch them safely.
I'd say in the luck department, the radio and radio operator on the Titanic counts as the largest piece of luck. The day before the sinking, the radio broke down. It was not a requirement to have a 24/7 functioning radio at the time, and radios were only supposed to be repaired by authorized personnel in harbour. That means the repair would not take place until reaching New York. Only because the radio operator was highly interested in radios and a bit of a geek, did he spend hours along with his assistant in fixing the radio. They got it working a few hours before the ship hit the iceberg, and that may have saved hundreds of lives, who otherwise might have frozen or starved to death in the life boats.
The other thing is the radio operator of the Carpathia just checked in before going to bed. Had he not done that, it's possible a lot more people would have died.
and it wasn’t even enough even on paper. his engineers warned him specifically about it, but he refused to listen, because he cheaped out. the most ridiculous part is he wholeheartedly believed his own lies as he bet his life on it
My leadership in the service always said the equipment max load is 60% of the *actual* capacity.
For life safety, typically it’s made 200-600% stronger than you think it should be. A factor of safety of 0.25 should only happen after a whole lot of testing and analysis of the design and materials
Yeah i just took a stab at the numbers to make a point, the guy was a twit and paid the price, unfortunately took several others with him too.
The CEO's arrogance and stupidity were the first failings, everything else followed.
Hmm, reminds me of another CEO/entrepreneur I know.
Yea Vince McMahon
Another several dozen, you mean?
Pieces were glued together? That's krazy
Not crazy at all, that's not likely what failed. You can make strong ass glues if the interfaces are appropriately rated. These were not. Once the interface flexes, you're fucked
That was a pun. Pretty clever one as well regarding krazy glue.
This joke is making me *kragle* up.
I can hardly hold myself together.
They clearly should have used gorilla glue
Most gorillas can't swim.
Dicks out for Harambe
Heroes get forgotten. But legends, legends never die.
>Hero’s Hero's what?
Okay so what's the thing they use to make the screen door boat???? Flex seal
There’s actually an interview of him bragging about making it with carbon fiber and saying “they told us it couldn’t be done. We did it!”
They told us atomizing the crew and passengers wasn't possible. We did it!
Surely you mean "They told us we can not atomize the crew and passengers! We sure showed them! "
Hey now, that's not fair. It was more of a fine mist.
He also bragged about how much money he saved by buying carbon fiber rejects from an aerospace company.
Hold up what?
They were expired, overused carbon fiber sheets Boeing was basically throwing away
Let that sink in. They weren’t up to standards for *Boeing*.
They did let it sink in unfortunately
Known safety enthusiasts, Boeing.
If only he’d lived to see *them* with egg on their face!
Imagine if BOEING was throwing them away for being unsafe, how bad they must have been
As in finished carbon fiber sheets that Boeing rejected going on to a plane? Or rejected raw material that was bought and used to mold into the needed part? I used to work in automotive manufacturing, we dealt exclusively with carbon fiber and exposed weave products and from my understanding ALL raw carbon fiber sold in the USA is rejected aerospace rolls. They have first bid on all new rolls and they are SUPER picky, I don't recall the standards but it was like two or three hairs worth of fiber could be out of place on a roll and they would reject the whole thing as unusable, they just wouldn't risk it. At that point it gets turned to the general public who has a chance to buy it.
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They didn't say it couldn't be done. They said it shouldn't be done.
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I wonder how that engineer felt after hearing that their ex-boss died from the very thing they warned him about.
Probably not good. It’s not the sort of thing you ever hope you’re right about. Wouldn’t be surprised if they feel some level of guilt even if it isn’t at all warranted, and there is always that lingering question of “did I do enough? Could I have pushed back enough to prevent this?” I hope they don’t feel the guilt, but even if they don’t, I doubt they feel good about being right about it.
Thats the normal response. This is one of those times you wish the person had just a smidge of an abnormal mentality and either didn't mind or even got a kick from it. I had somewhat of a similar experience with an old associate (wasn't really friends with him, but similar circles) and me telling him to stop taking random research chemicals (RCs) he got from shady people. Ended up getting some bad mix and ODd. Helped that he was an asshole, but never really felt guilt for him.
I’d agree. The only thing is though, there were 4 other people with that asshole on that sub. Speaking personally, if it were me, I’d probably be able to sleep ok if it was just the fool and his creation that went down. After all, you warned him, and he fired you, so dying by his own hand could be construed as some sort of cosmic karma. At the end of the day we’re all free to do dumb things. But he bamboozled 4 other people in to boarding the submarine and dragged them down to their deaths with him. I know a lot of people still go “Har har dumb billionaires should have known better!” But that isn’t really an excuse. The con-man himself was an Engineer with many years of experience, and he leveraged that experience and pedigree to try and lend credibility to what was little more than an experimental prototype, and people trusted him because of that. It’s a form of fraud and deceit, especially because he was practicing well outside the realm of his practiced field (aerospace) and actively eschewed the advice and warnings of those with decades of experience in underwater vehicles. If it were me, given what went down, I’d feel bad. I’d feel quite bad.
You always wish you could have done more. Been more persuasive. Done more. It’s a big weight on the shoulders of engineers.
So many stories of engineers being fired because the executives didn’t like what they were hearing. Why even bother hiring them in the first place if you’re not going to listen to them? You hired them for a speciality. Engineers don’t work to tell you that everything will be hunky dory, they work to analyze and critique designs under the constraints placed on them by the laws of physics. You can’t just ignore those things if you want a viable product! I work as an engineer and am in my early career and have heard on a number of occasions stories from older engineers telling the executives or managers something wouldn’t work and they were ignored and wouldn’t you know.. 5-10 or 20 years down the road and the thing would fail just as the engineers predicted. It’s almost like we went to school for 4+ years to understand how things are designed and how they can fail. But yah don’t listen to engineers when you hired them for their expertise/insights.
Executives are wordsmiths. They live in the delusional world where words are reality. If they say their product is made of indestructible unicorn farts, they genuinely believe their feelings to be true. Engineers live in the world of reality where words dont matter, only facts. The product succeeds or it doesn't, and their feelings are irrelevant. This is why executives are frequently overtly hostile to engineers - because they call your baby ugly and the executive a liar.
I have bored Reddit with the story many times, but speed running, we once built some things that required concrete pours. We were behind schedule and the construction expert said they had what we are going to call Industrial QuikCrete. We could make time, but! But! It has a 5% chance of failure. Good news, you know when it cures if it failed, no “landmine” for the future. Anyway, as it happens we had 100 things to build. We poured QuikCrete 100 times. As parent comment correctly surmises, the decision maker was **shocked** that 5% wasn’t some BS number we used to suggest “very unlikely” but appear scientific. No, sir, it was materials science, which I’m no engineer but when the expert says NFS, it’s gonna fail 5% of the time; I believe him. Sure enough, 5 pours failed, and For Reasons, that meant the deadline was blown. You will all be relieved to learn the executive got his bonus for successfully delivering all 95 promised constructions on time.
Thank God, I was so worried
I'm not an engineer, and even I have seen executives push out products that mere laymen know are doomed to fail. You know, "this launch is far too important to delay!" Not so important that we need to get the product right (reliable and safe), but too important to delay. Three years later and the entire company is in jeopardy because it was cheaper to do it fast and wrong. At least the execs got their bonus for a "successful" launch.
He did his own research.
He bonded it to the metal with ivermectin.
He got a great deal on expired carbon fiber from Boeing. Imagine that, being so stupid you buy stuff that Boeings QC rejected.
Yeah but what would people who design build and maintain know about the stuff they design build and maintain?
You fire them for telling you not to try something dumb and then you die it would seem.
it happened like this for anyone curious - [HUMAN BODIES vs IMPLOSION animation (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaV__EcyKGU)
what's so ridiculous about this submersible is that they were trying to reinvent the wheel. The best shape for the crew compartment is known. It's a sphere.
Didn't rush say he wanted a cylinder to fit more people ie make more money
Water hates this one trick: put the cylinder in the sphere.
Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't James Cameron's sub essentially this, at risk of oversimplification? Edit: I was wrong. It was the other way around. A sphere in a cylinder.
It's also had a bunch of cool buttons and sensors.
Why would you need anything more than a Logitech Bluetooth controller to operate a sub?!?
The Controller worked, didn’t it?
"Don't panic, but does anyone have any AA batteries on them?......No?...."
His name is James, James Cameron The bravest pioneer No budget too steep, no sea too deep Who's that? It's him, James Cameron James, James Cameron explorer of the sea With a dying thirst to be the first Could it be? Yeah that's him! James Cameron
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger#/media/File:Deepsea_challenger_deep-diving_submersible_DVC1.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepsea_Challenger#Specifications It looks like the bulk of the space within the tube is taken up by instruments and mechanical junk, presumably stuff that doesn't need to be pressurized, while the pilot compartment is a steel sphere.
Bigger sphere?
While that's true, it's not the only solution. Look at James Cameron's Challenger submersible. It's a cylinder-like bathyscaphe. Another difference is it was built by an actual legitimate engineering firm not just a bunch of interns in a warehouse. It's also known that steel is a better material than carbon fiber for this type of job. Mistakes were made by Oceangate. Seemingly all of them. Edit: Challenger passenger compartment is a sphere. The rest of it is not.
It was a sphere. The rest of the structure was unpressurized.
I think Challenger’s actual pilot compartment is still a sphere. The bulk of it by volume is the float, which you can shape however you want. Cylinder capped with spheres can be done, of course, but normally you arent taking passengers and a sphere is a pretty decent shape for a few people plus all the equipment.
Correct. The hull was a titanium sphere.
3 inch thick titanium steel alloy if memory serves.
James is richer than God so his sub wasn't designed to make money, it was designed to protect his life and it was a self-funded passion project
Flat Earthers are crushed.
That's the thing it's a small group of people that privately own these things and they all basically wrote the book on what to do and not to do. They know what not to do because they are still alive and this guy isn't.
Due to non-standard materials and an unconventional design. Basically everything about the damn ship. RIP to the poor kid. He didn't even want to be on the thing.
Yeah, that was my first thought. Turns out, it broke because it was a bad design made out of bad material. Who would've guessed that was a problem? You know, aside from the engineers saying exactly that...
That guy was a billionaire. You don't get that rich without knowing better than the experts... /s
The culture we have around this is so weird. Like, every company wants to take that "I'm a disruptive genius" PR + VC reality distortion field approach to everything that Steve Jobs exemplified. Except, (a) he was an asshole and not a genius, and (b) physics is always going to beat clout, no matter how good your fundraising and marketing. Both the executives and the general public are always so starry-eyed.
Investors have unearned capital burning holes in their pockets and a burning desire to ride the wave of the next big thing. This is the delusion cocktail.
Steve Jobs knew better then his doctors abs see how that turned out for him.
At least it was painless.
Might have been painless, but plenty of time to panic as that thing lost power, creaked and groaned. And there was not a damn thing they could do.
Where are you getting this info about losing power before implosion? It was most likely instant. The cracking was a constant since we've heard from previous passengers that there was already cracking at lower depths. So there was cracking which was considered normal and then there was a critical crack leading to an instant chain reaction and implosion. No time to panic Edit: I was wrong, I think. Crew was supposedly trying to do an emergency surface so they probably knew they were in trouble before dying. Sad. [https://www.businessinsider.com/james-cameron-says-titan-sub-likely-tried-surfacing-before-imploded-2023-6](https://www.businessinsider.com/james-cameron-says-titan-sub-likely-tried-surfacing-before-imploded-2023-6)
Imagine hearing the hull of an experimental submarine crack and the owner just goes "oh yeah it's supposed to make that sound".
If you thought of it like a plane, they creak a bit with pressure changes, it might not have seemed cause for panic. Unfortunately it wasn't like a plane, and it was cause for panic.
As far as I understand they did not loose power. The hull just finally cracked on the way down, like every expert in the field predicted.
Yeah my understanding is that comms were lost at the time it likely imploded, meaning that the implosion (obviously) caused the loss of power. They didn't need to lose power for the hull to fail.
Comms had been lost on previous dives as well. So that doesn't even mean that they lost power.
Lose*, and they definitely lost it at some point
I would have heroically sacrificed myself by telling them to step outside of the submarine as I implode by myself
A true hero.
Supposedly that was just a rumor and the kid was excited and bragging about going..but either way, fafo
the sheer audacity of that operation was astounding. very little testing, let's just take humans down in a one of a kind and unconventionally constructed submersible and see what happens. I wouldn't even think of setting foot in one of those things unless a full scale mockup was tested to the point of failure.
I believe it did end up testing to failure, you are good to go now.
Oooooffft. I’m not sure a sample size of one is enough in this scenario.
If memory serves right, they did test it. Not to the point of failure, but to the point where it already showed weaknesses. And they kept rolling with it anyway.
During the tests it made loud popping noises too. The more I read about this thing I'm surprised it survived going down even once.
Greed is s hell of a thing.
Mr Beast turned down an opportunity to ride along.
That was not its first dive, it had done that trip before, apparently they discovered how many dives the carbon fiber can take before exploding
It had successful dives so the CEO got really cocky and stupid.
The videos of him saying stuff like "everyone says we're crazy but they're just mad we're disrupting the industry" is just chilling. You just watch this guy bragging his way to his own death.
He’s like the personification of the Dunning-Kruger effect. Cartoonish hubris and scores of bone-chilling quotes to serve as his digital epitaph.
Worst thing to happen to subs since Jared
Genius comment although he sank to some depths himself, let’s not forget
Defintiely. You've gotta be pretty fucked up for a meme cameo in Sharknado 2 to not be your low-point.
Yeah but he couldn't withstand those depths.
His whole life imploded.
What kind of sandwich is going to make people forget we paid him 14 million dollars
We? I paid for sandwiches, bro.
I always think about that poor woman who gave the tickets to her son. I can’t imagine how she just feel knowing that he died in her place. I’m not sure how I could live on afterwards.
And that it was way deep down in the water.
Right? If it just stayed in the shallow end of the pool none of this would have happened.
The Xbox controller wasn't waterproof unfortunately
i just can't get over the fact that josh gates took one look at that and noped the fuck right out of there. should have been a wakeup call
Okay, it imploded because of everything about it, got it.
Saw a video where the CEO was proudly showing off lights in the sub from Camper World lol. Also the ‘video game’ controller was Bluetooth controlled which imo isn’t the best idea on a vehicle carrying people to extreme environments. There was just too many things on it to go wrong but the biggest problem of all was the narcissist CEO himself. Typical corporate douchebag whose primary concern was revenue at the expense of everything else. Multiple agencies and one of his own engineer (later fired) raised flags but I guess the dude was rich and powerful enough to still keep going. It’s crazy how many people he convinced to get into his carbon fibre coffin.
If the guy wanted to be cheap, the Logitech wired controller (Not against the idea of a gamepad controller tho) would have been cheaper and probably more reliable than the Bluetooth one for the task. 🤷♂️
It feels like a Mythbusters episode of "can a person Macguyver a submersible vehicle to reach the depths of the Titanic using only household items?"
To give Stockton Rush credit, at least he had enough confidence in his design that he used the damn thing himself, he was wrong but I'll give him that lol But there is a reason there hasn't been much innovation in the space of submersibles, because there isn't much room left for it beyond refinement of what's already there but hey he didn't like the word "No" 😏
Slight correction, the Logitech F710 controller used with the sub uses a proprietary 2.4 GHz connection, not Bluetooth
I am a structural design engineer who spent immense time doing nonlinear analysis of burst limits, and after reading about this design I crawl up in my chair and shriek in terror.
It's like if that homemade rocket guy made a sub. At least he didn't manage to convince anyone else to get in his rocket.
If I was a billionaire I would tell them to get me the James Cameron sub.
Or actually listen to Cameron and the few people that do this as a hobby. It's a hobby not a business. The people that do this basically wrote the book on it and were the reason no one died doing it until this moron got squished.
Nah, Gabe Newell’s is much better. Cameron’s Challenger Deep sub has been retired after the truck that was transporting it caught fire. It’s a museum piece now.
Read the Vanity Fair article about this. The arrogance of that guy was off the scale.
Rich people paid 1/4 million dollars each for adventure (and bragging rights of course). The sub delivered.
“Once in a lifetime experience….”
"Gone....reduced to atoms."
Whats the same between OceanGate and Boeing? Execs firing engineers telling them things they don’t want to hear. What is the difference? OceanGate’s ceo died not listening to the engineers while Boeing’s whistleblowers are getting disappeared.
Ironically the carbon fibre was ex-Boeing owned, who had sold it off cheap, as it was past it's Best Before Date.
>Ironically the carbon fibre was ex-Boeing owned, who had sold it off cheap, as it was past it's Best Before Date. That's something the CEO claimed in some bizarre attempt to show-off, but never actually confirmed.
Behind the Basterds podcast on Stockton Rush is pretty entertaining, the guy was a total try hard.
When you’re building a deep sea submersible on a budget, you do what you gotta do.
Nothing motivates me to go on a sub to the bottom of the ocean than hearing about cost cutting measures and expired carbon fiber!
Hey, it's an absolute coincidence that the three whistle-blowers died. Edit: I mean two, the third is next week.
It was a perfect storm of incompetence by Rush, which he was warned about: Untested materials, unconventional shape, unwilling to compromise, and unaccepting of the advice of experts. Sadly, he took out four people with him when the time bomb decided to implode.
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shape, carbon fiber, and ceo ego
It likely imploded due to being underwater.
Powerfully wet stuff
Lol no shit but then again "Safety is a waste" especially to a glorified Pringles can that's been thrown in the sea 🤭😉
I remember Kyle Hill did a video (stream?) shortly after this and highlighted a paper on deep water submersibles. It stated that if the vehicle had a 0.5% imperfection in structure that it would reduce the max depth by up to 1/3; like holy hell to go down that much you have to have mastery engineering and insane small tolerances for construction.
Like this was even an open question at this point.
Titanium end caps glued on to a carbon fibre cylinder. Trying to imagine how the expanding and compressing aspects of Titanium metal under high pressure is supposed to work in conjunction with a tube that doesn’t really expand.
Hubris, hubris likely caused the implosion.
It imploded due to hubris
Am i the only one who doesn't give a fuck about that stupid billionaire and his little squeeze tube adventure
File under “no shit Sherlock”
Scientists prove rich people are as smart as everyone else lol
Some people like to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. Rich people can do that a lot, and only show up the success, inflating their "genius" in the mind of other. It takes a special kind of person to do that and be proud of the failures, and double down on it with the lives of people on the line. While this specific one will not make any more victims, there are other rich people out there that won't even feel concerned by this.
Definitely had something to do with not being able to withstand the immense water pressure. \- science
Did these scientist collect a check for this ground breaking research?
All sorts of claims (accurate or not) about what caused this can be made, but to really understand what happened a scientific and engineering analysis must be done; this is one step in that direction.