Per wikipedia there were thirteen successful “tourist” dives to the Titanic in the period 2021-2022. This was dive #14 - there were no previous dives in 2023 due to weather cancellations.
Earlier dives would have been for testing only.
Titanic tourist submarine missing 6-19-2023 (Debris field found, passengers presumed dead. 06-22-23)
The Apollo moon lander due to weight constraints, the pressure hull itself, the compartment they inhabited was chemically milled ribbed aluminium varying in thickness down to as little as .012" thick, and pressurized to 5 psi., the astronauts said it would make “oilcan” crinkling and popping noises as temperature changed! Like being in a beer can, maybe a little thicker. Old school beer can maybe.
Thanks. That’s a lot more than I thought, or had been reported.
Even a billionaire may have problems liquidating cash like that. I was involved in motor fleet management and many large fleets self-insure for run-of-the-mill claims, but they do carry insurance for the really big claims.
Imagine the claim, if one of your drivers swerved into a line of newly-qualified young doctors, maiming and killing several.
I don’t know about fleet insurance, but personal auto liability insurance generally tops out at $3 or $4 million or so. There’s always going to be some astronomically unlikely theoretical event that exceeds one’s coverage.
I thought I read earlier in a news article when this was still up in the air that Suleman didn’t want to go on this trip. It might have been his aunt who said it but I can’t remember. Now there’s a new article out with his mother, and she said he did want to go and was planning to solve Rubik’s cube down at the Titanic to break a world record. Teenager on sub took Rubik’s cube
I guess it’s a bit less tragic if he wasn’t an unwilling passenger, going for his father’s sake alone. Still terribly tragic, but well, I don’t know. Not sure how to phrase what I mean.
I’m afraid your source is all wrong. Titan did not conduct “tourist” dives. It went on expeditions with mission specialists. Huuuuuuge difference. 
Hardly conclusive. Maybe he just put on a brave face for his dad? Stiff upper lip, put on a good show for his Father’s Day “gift” and what not.
I was waiting in the car for my wife, listening to a Canadian radio station, while she was in the hardware store. They had an advert for a museum, about the museum’s ‘underwater experience’ that featured a virtuatl ‘deep dive’ (I think) to Titanic. The timing seems poor.
I don’t really understand why I find some of these errors and omissions so interesting, but I do.
Some of the reports indicate the hull was “downgraded” at one point in terms of rated safe diving depth. They are a little vague on details but claim the hull itself was either repaired or replaced.
Big difference. I tend to doubt it was completely replaced, other sources claim they were unable to source the carbon fiber due to global supply chain issues ongoing at that time. So somebody “repaired” it, (Flexseal amiright?) and presumably it was considered (by whom?) to be fully operational at the rated depth for dives to the Titanic. I guess. Yeesh.
Oceangate made quite a few claims about partnerships with various firms, universities, and even NASA, who to their credit are all quickly putting statements out similar to “Who? Never heard of the guy.” insofar as possible.
True, but the controller (along with all the other, many budget greebles) is an indicator of the level of attention to quality and risk management in the whole setup, which general disdain for doing things properly, likely did have something to do with the implosion.
I don’t see how that’s “to their credit”. I mean, if they had nothing to do with the sub, sure, they don’t want to be dragged in the mud for something they didn’t do. I’d they did partner in any way, well, they deserve some fallout. And i suspect that even groups that might have talked with the company are trying to back away from it now.
Would you rig your parachute to deploy via a bluetooth connected button? Neither would I. Certain tasks are a ‘belt and suspenders’ operation. Air travel, space travel, skydiving, fall into that category, as should submarining of all types.
All of this keeps reminding me of the half-assed job done by the flat flat-Earth steam rocket guy. (He really could have benefited from redundancy in the parachute deployment area.)
The sub was never “rated” for any depth by anyone whose opinion actually carried weight and expertise.
Well, hell, anyone can call Boeing or any other company and ask whomever answers the phone questions. In this link to the one and only Straight Dope column I helped with there’s a mention about calling Goodyear. Doesn’t mean you’ll get anything useful, but you can certainly call them. With luck you might even get a human being.
I don’t doubt that Rush contacted various entities, and to that extent he can say he “consulted” with them, but that doesn’t mean the other party actually wanted to engage with an amateur sub builder, or did so with anything more than the most cursory information they might give to any general inquiry from the general public. Rush apparently got some expired carbon fiber materials from Boeing but Boeing was probably selling it as scrap (my guess - I don’t actually know for sure).
Bottom line - Rush probably made some phone calls or e-mails, then exaggerated what he got in return because it made for better PR and marketing. He fudged a little, then a little more, and next thing you know he’s elaborated far more about this “relationship” than he ever should have.
Yes, but that guy was only endangering himself. He didn’t have 4 other people sitting behind him, much less charging for the trip.
Boeing disputes this, says they have no record of selling carbon fiber to Mr. Rush or anyone associated with him.
OK, it’s possible that it was sold to a third party who then sold it to Rush.
Or Rush lied.
Or Boeing is lying.
So many possibilities.
I imagine they could still control the sub via the keyboard on the computer the game controller was connected to, but that was also just consumer grade kit - not rugged or fire rated or anything special.
I appreciate everything we’re now hearing is cherry-picked and filtered through the lens of hindsight, but there seems to be enough of it to demonstrate that Rush was that sort of entrepreneurial type that builds a business up from nothing by playing fast and loose with the rules. When you do that and it’s a normal business, it may succeed, at the cost of pain, unpaid overtime, near-miss incidents and the like, for all of the employees - if the product doesn’t work properly, you make promises, throw a bit of money at the problem, blame IT, try again.
When you’re making a product that needs to work properly in order for the end users to remain alive, it can’t really be run like that, at least not indefinitely.
That he dismissed the notion of getting his subs tested and certified on the basis that ‘operator error is responsible for the vast majority of accidents’ is just an insane level of hubris and dissonance. The precise reason that operator error is a major cause of accidents in certified vessels is that they generally don’t fucking implode.
The old familiar
Just noting that The Straight Dope is referenced in the article.
In 1996, The Straight Dope newspaper column proposed that another possible explanation for this phenomenon would be survivorship bias.
- “Do cats always land unharmed on their feet, no matter how far they fall?”. The Straight Dope. July 19, 1996. Archived from the original on 2012-04-16. Retrieved 2008-03-13.
It’s an operator error to operate a vehicle that hasn’t passed inspection. This is also true when the reason it hasn’t passed inspection is that the operator has refused to have it inspected.