Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)

I think that was Hamish’s son. He can’t give consent to such an activity, you’d argue?

Your recurrent use of the word “should” here is rather insidiously ambiguous. Are you suggesting that there should be legislation banning excursions like this one, or the suborbital flights that Bezos set up with Blue Origin? Or any such future endeavors? I don’t. I simply believe that the extent of legal mandates should be the same as for people entering into financial arrangements that may potentially be risky: the provider has an obligation to inform their customers of the risks and, if appropriate, even to take reasonable care to ensure that such communication is understood, but nothing more. In financial situations the usual risk statement is in the form of a prospectus, which is legally required to be accurate and complete, but the obligations of the offer provider end there.

Yeah–I do some pretty risky shit, guided and unguided. I appreciate the regulations about helicopter skiing, but I’d be pretty pissed off if it was banned. And SCUBA.

Yes. Parents have a lot of authority, but they don’t have the authority to put their child in real danger. That’s when the child is in need of protection and child protection agencies get involved.

It’s easier to build a spacecraft than a submersible. A spacecraft only has to withstand one atmosphere.

As explained on Futurama.

Seems simplistic. A spacecraft also needs to be light. A submersible does not.

I’m not meaning to suggest that lack of weight restriction solves all problems, but what is easier and what is harder is a far more complex calculation.

What non-essential activities do you engage in, so that I can point out the dangers inherent in them that you are too habituated to notice?

A spacecraft needs to be light, but it doesn’t need to be heavy for 1000 millibars. A submarine can be heavy, but it has to withstand thousands of pounds of pressure. Maintaining less than one atmosphere of pressure in a vacuum is trivial. The only other ‘special’ accommodation for a spacecraft is the heat shield, and those are well-developed. I still contend that it’s easier to build a spacecraft than a submersible.

I feel like its my life and I can pretty much do with it as I choose. However when my lifestyle risks the health and well being of others by putting these others at serious peril in rescuing me from or aiding me in my activity, then I have a moral responsibility to minimize that risk for these others as much as possible. Having wealth such that I can afford to carelessly risk the life of others is, to my way of thinking, immoral.

I wonder how that worked in the past, I do remember seeing in documentaries that even in the 50s the Triestre, that did go deeper than the missing sub, had hatches that the crew could open (although the videos and images could only show one part of the process and the hatches of previous deep subs could be bolted from the outside later).

I would be even less willing to do a trip on a sub that could surface in an emergency, but that could suffocate me after reaching the surface.

Virgin Galactic is scheduled to launch it’s first space tourism flight later this month, and then more starting in August. I am not sure of the pricing, but I think that it is now over $250K. While I hope that these flights operate safely, I think it’s inevitable that there will be fatalities at some point, it’s just the nature of space flight. If rich people want to do it, then have at it. But once the fatalities happen, the business plan goes to hell.

Moderating:

This post and the several replies about what kinds of tourism are acceptable risks is a hijack of what’s really a breaking news thread. If y’all want to continue this conversation, start an IMHO thread. (If you want me to start it by moving these posts, drop me a note. But it’s too late as night for me to do it now.)

Either way, please drop the subject in this thread.

A couple of threads from a Navy sub vet about why this sub was a bad idea, and what’s probably happening onboard right now.

https://twitter.com/ceparmele/status/1670997982131662848

https://twitter.com/ceparmele/status/1671010206099337216

But unless a spacecraft is one that is going to operate purely in space, it has to withstand other forces besides internal air pressure and yet must be light, which is an engineering challenge.

There’s a lot of emotion and speculation there, but not much by way of actual solid facts about why it was a bad idea. It may have been a bad idea but if you want facts about it, you will need to look elsewhere.

He grandstands about “people risking lives” to save those on board engaging in recreation - people go to sea for recreation constantly, and get into trouble continually, and search and rescue operations occur continually. People climb mountains constantly and same thing.

There’s always a keyboard hero who wants to talk up their expertise, and armchair pontificate about such things.

This may not be the best time to point out that the piloting mechanism for the vessel is literally an off-brand Playstation controller.

PlayStation controllers are an excellent input device for controlling motion.

And if they have reliability issues do you know there are no backup ways of making inputs? Seems vanishingly unlikely.

Edited to add: actually a cursory glance shows two keyboards. Have you heard the anecdote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance about the beer can shim?

It seems vanishingly unlikely that they’d build a sub with no backup, no tether, no external communications, and a hatch that can only be opened from the outside, but here we are.

And yet see the edit to my post. You clearly are too busy armchair hooting at others’ perceived incompetence to even examine your own photo closely.