Meme - Sub at Titanic wreck: "JUST IMAGINE WHAT IT MUST'VE BEEN LIKE..."
*BZZKT* *sub loses power*
Meme - "Y all are super judgy about this submarine thingy looking for the titanic considering most of you will ride a Ferris Wheel that a meth-head with three teeth set up in a grocery store parking lot in a half hour."
Interview with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush - YouTube - "When I started business one of the things you'll find there are other sub operators out there but they they typically um have uh gentlemen who are ex-military submariners and they, you'll see a whole bunch of 50 year old white guys. I wanted our team to be younger to be inspirational"
Why Stockton Rush didn't hire '50-year-old white guys' for Titanic sub tours - "Stockton Rush, 61, added that such expertise was unnecessary because “anybody can drive the sub” with a $30 video game controller."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Search for the missing Titanic submarine - "‘The experience going down was very relaxing. This is, it's a beautifully designed submarine that feels almost spa-like on the inside. So even though there's five people just sitting on the floor of something that's about the size of the minivan, it's very comfortable and it's very relaxing and, I fell asleep on the way down. It's just two and a half hours uh of dropping in utter quiet and, there is a porthole but all you see is blackness going down and then when we touch bottom, we knew we were within 500 meters of the Titanic. But we didn't know in what direction and we spent a good 90 minutes just sort of doing a random walk on the bottom of the ocean just flailing around trying to find, you know, the biggest boat in the world is somewhere near us but we couldn't see it in the darkness… with 20 minutes left, 20 minutes before we had to resurface we finally saw the Titanic and I have to say it was just enough in our case for a highlights tour. We just got there, looked at the anchor, looked at the porthole, looked at the bow of the ship and then we had to go back up and it shows you the unpredictability of it all and that the next day they sent another five passengers down to see it. And they had a good three hours to explore the Titanic.’"
Titanic submersible: documents reveal multiple concerns raised over safety of vessel - "The expedition that the Titan submersible and its crew were undergoing was tremendously risky, according to industry experts and former passengers. The Titan had to withstand the pressure from being almost 4,000 metres (13,100ft) below sea level – the depth at which the Titanic came to rest – and faced the threat of getting lost or losing contact with the surface. While it is too early to say what happened to the vessel, experts have raised questions over whether all appropriate safety measures were followed... the New York Times published a letter written in 2018 by industry leaders in the submersible vessel field, warning Rush of possible “catastrophic” problems with Titan’s development. The Marine Technology Society, an industry group made up of ocean engineers, technologists, policymakers and educators, expressed “concern regarding the development of Titan and the planned Titanic expeditions” and warned against the “current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate”. At issue was whether the Titan vessel would be independently assessed by industry regulators or risk assessors. The Marine Technology Society was critical of OceanGate issuing marketing material that stated the Titan design would “meet or exceed the DNV-GL safety standards” while apparently not intending to have the vessel assessed by that same organisation... Almost a year after the Marine Technology Society letter was sent, OceanGate published a blogpost explaining why it would not have Titan certified. In the post, the company acknowledged that classification assures “vessels are designed, constructed and inspected to accepted standards”, but claimed it did little to “weed out sub-par vessel operators”. The company claimed “operator error” was responsible for the vast majority of accidents. OceanGate was also concerned that the classing process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said. In an interview with the Smithsonian magazine in 2019, Rush complained that the commercial sub industry had not “innovated or grown – because they have all these regulations”... In defending its decision not to have the Titan classed, the company highlighted what it said were safety innovations onboard, including “carbon fiber pressure vessels and a real-time (RTM) hull health monitoring system”."
Titanic Sub Avoided Safety Rules by Diving in International Waters: Experts - "In a 2022 CBS report, journalist David Pogue was made to sign a waiver before embarking on a Titanic expedition on the submersible saying that the Titan was an "experimental vessel" that had not been "approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma or death." In the report, Rush insisted that submersible travel was safe, yet admitted there were risks involved. "You know, there's a limit. You know, at some point, safety just is pure waste. I mean, if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed," he said. "Don't get in your car. Don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules," Rush told the outlet."
Damn government getting in the way of innovation! The private sector is always superior!
Missing Titanic Sub Once Faced Massive Lawsuit Over Depths It Could Safely Travel To - "in a 2018 case, OceanGate employee David Lochridge, a submersible pilot, voiced concerns about the safety of the sub. According to a press release, Lochridge was director of marine operations at the time, “responsible for the safety of all crew and clients.” The concerns Lochridge voiced came to light as part of a breach of contract case related to Lochridge refusing to greenlight manned tests of the early models of the submersible over safety concerns. Lochridge was fired, and then OceanGate sued him for disclosing confidential information about the Titan submersible. In response, Lochridge filed a compulsory counterclaim where he alleged wrongful termination over being a whistleblower about the quality and safety of the submersible...
'Given the prevalent flaws in the previously tested 1/3 scale model, and the visible flaws in the carbon end samples for the Titan, Lochridge again stressed the potential danger to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths. The constant pressure cycling weakens existing flaws resulting in large tears of the carbon. Non-destructive testing was critical to detect such potentially existing flaws in order to ensure a solid and safe product for the safety of the passengers and crew.'...
'At the meeting Lochridge discovered why he had been denied access to the viewport information from the Engineering department—the viewport at the forward of the submersible was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers down to depths of 4,000 meters. Lochridge learned that the viewport manufacturer would only certify to a depth of 1,300 meters due to experimental design of the viewport supplied by OceanGate, which was out of the Pressure Vessels for Human Occupancy (“PVHO”) standards. OceanGate refused to pay for the manufacturer to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters.'...
Paying passengers wouldn’t know or be informed about Lochridge’s concerns, according to his complaints. They also wouldn’t be informed “that hazardous flammable materials were being used within the submersible.”"
OceanGate Accountant Said She Quit When Asked to Be Chief Sub Pilot - "A former director of finance and administration for OceanGate said the company's CEO, Stockton Rush, asked her in 2018 to become the chief pilot for the Titan submersible — a suggestion that led to her quitting her job. The former director — who was not named — talked to The New Yorker's Ben Taub about her encounter with Rush. Rush asked her about becoming the submersible's head pilot after firing David Lochridge, the submarine pilot originally billed for the role, she told Taub... Soon after Lochridge was fired, Rush asked the finance director to fill in for the pilot, she told Taub. "It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting," she told the New Yorker... The former director added that some of OceanGate's engineers were teenagers when they worked for the company, while others were in their early twenties, the New Yorker reported. Some of the engineers were also paid $15 per hour at one point, the former director told Taub."
The game controller on the missing Titanic sub, explained - The Washington Post - "video game controllers have been used in real-life vehicles all over the world for more than a decade, often by the military... Military sources around the world all tend to cite the same reason: Younger recruits are intimately familiar with the user interface and ergonomics of a video game controller. And because Microsoft owns the Xbox brand, Xbox controllers are compatible with a variety of computer operating systems such as Windows... What is notable, however, is the specific kind of controller the Titanic vessel used. It’s been identified as a Logitech G-F710 controller, released in 2011. Logitech is known for high-quality video game paraphernalia. The most worrying detail of the controller is that it operates wirelessly through Bluetooth. All of the military applications described above have controllers wired in, so there’s no risk of disconnection and any issues regarding radio transmission... Amazon reviews for the controller, which retails at $29.99, are hit or miss. The controller generally works, but a few reviews note its wireless nature leads to disconnection issues."
Matt Walsh on Twitter - "There is a very large contingent of people who laugh gleefully when one of Elon Musk's rockets explode on takeoff or a submersible with wealthy adventurers is lost to the sea. These are people whose envy and dissatisfaction with their own mediocre, unimpressive lives have driven them to despise anyone who does anything different, bold, or daring. They take pleasure in failure because they will never have any successes of their own to celebrate. I guess pathetic assholes of this type have always existed. But it worries me that they are so numerous in our culture, and that over time they are only becoming more and more cartoonishly sadistic."
Some people claim that they deserve to be mocked because they did stupid things. Presumably poor people who do stupid things should be mocked too. One claimed that they knew what they were doing was dangerous so they deserved it. I asked what other cases counted, and if that extended to girls who wear short skirts and go into dark alleys at night, but didn't get an answer
Titanic Director Criticizes OceanGate's Ignored Warnings: A Tragedy Repeated? - "James Cameron, the acclaimed director of the film Titanic, recently spoke out about the OceanGate expedition, expressing regret for not being more vocal about his concerns prior to the Titan submersible’s ill-fated journey... Drawing a chilling parallel between the Titan tragedy and the sinking of the Titanic, Cameron said, “It’s about warnings that were ignored.” He told Reuters that the Titanic is at the bottom of the ocean not due to the materials it was made from but because of “bad seamanship.” Cameron recounted how the Titanic’s captain was warned of icebergs ahead on a moonless night, yet chose to proceed at full speed for reasons still debated. This, he points out, reflects a haunting similarity to the recent tragedy involving the Titan submersible. In a scathing remark, Cameron emphasized the tragic irony by saying that now, in the same spot, “there’s one wreck lying next to the other wreck, for the same damn reason.”"
If he had said anything, he would've been dismissed with "OK, boomer"
Meme - "'Titanic' director James Cameron on the 'catastrophic implosion' of Titan submersible: "I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field.""
GayLumberjack @gay_lumberj...: "Noted submarine expert James Cameron"
Luath @Luath9: "Literally has dived to the Titanic on multiple occasions, made the highest grossing movie ever about the Titanic, built his own fucking submarine, that worked, and most notably for our purposes, did not get turned into human salsa by his own invention."
GayLumberjack @gay_lumberjack: "are you his publicist?"
stonking.com on Twitter - "CEO Stockton Rush: "I have broken some rules to make this. (…) The carbon fibre and titanium there is a rule that you don’t do that. Well, I did.“ #Titanic #OceanGate #Titan"
stonking.com on Twitter - "This is so messed up, poor kid :( The 19-year-old ended up going aboard OceanGate's 22-foot submersible because the trip fell over Father's Day weekend and he was eager to please his dad, who was passionate about the lore of the Titanic Azmeh Dawood — the older sister of Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood — told NBC News that her nephew, Suleman, informed a relative that he "wasn't very up for it" and felt "terrified" about the trip to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. Source: NBC News"
I saw leftists cheering the deaths because the passengers were foolhardy and chose to go on the trip and signed waivers. I wonder how they feel about celebrating the deaths of Muslim People of Colour. And if a poor person signs a waiver, does that still absolve a company of legal liability for negligence?
Meme - "MEMES OF 2023
January Maegan Hall
February Chinese Balloon
March Silicon Valley Bank
April Bud Light
May Gorlock the Destroyer
June Titanic Submarine"
‘You know who’s not at the bottom of the ocean?’: Women say they never would have boarded the OceanGate sub - "In a TikTok posted on Wednesday, GiGi Marie says she wants to "point out one minor detail that nobody's talking about with this whole submarine thing." "You know who's not at the bottom of the ocean?" GiGi Marie says in her video, which on Thursday had over 3 million views. "Women." Many female commenters said that her video resonated with them... However, women have already ventured to the ruins of the Titanic: In 2022, Chelsea Kellogg went on an OceanGate voyage"
When you explain the gender wage gap
Meme - "I want you to assemble a rescue team and find the Titanl
Oh fuck, you're gonna make me dive
100 METERS LATER
Fuck, it's so deep!
Wanna try the other window?
Team, I think we can go deeper
Oh fuck put us back up!"
Meme - "I find rich ppl die on water plane funny
Because I am full of envy and have no sense of personal achievement
Death of human good because they have more money than me"
Meme - "Do submersibles have something similar to an aircraft's Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) that could be detected by searchers?"
David Pogue @Pogue: "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..."
"Could you elaborate on how you got lost for 5 hours? What was that experience like and how were you able to surface?"
David Pogue @Pogue: "To be clear, I was not on the sub that day-! 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."
"Is there a reason that detail didn't make it into the show?"
CBS News' David Pogue defends OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush after Titan tragedy: "Nobody thought anything at the time" - "Pogue expressed uncertainty about why information about the Navy's knowledge that it detected "an acoustic anomaly consistent with an implosion" wasn't announced earlier, potentially saving additional search and rescue resources. "It would have been nice for the Navy to let people know," Pogue said. "But think of all those planes flying back and forth, spending millions of tax dollars searching on the surface. All of that could have been avoided. I don't know the internal workings of the Navy, but personally, I think I would have informed the searchers."... A clip has resurfaced of sub pilot and OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush giving an interview in 2021, in which he says he's "broken some rules" to make trips to the Titanic possible for his company. The interview was done with vlogger Alan Estrada, who joined him on a trip that year to the Titanic wreck aboard the Titan vessel. "I'd like to be remembered as an innovator. I think it was General [Douglas] MacArthur who said, 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said. "And I've broken some rules to make this. I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me."... "This was a Princeton-educated aerospace engineer. He built and designed his own airplanes. He built and designed previous submersibles. This one was designed in conjunction with NASA. It had been to the sea floor 20 times without incident," he said. "Yes, it looks terrible now, and yes, we see things that were missed, but at the time, nobody thought anything at the time.""
What happened to the missing Titanic sub? Our reporter who rode on vessel explains possible scenarios - "Even if the vessel is on the surface, it cannot be opened from the inside, so air supply would still be an issue... Pogue said "things go wrong all the time in this business," and that one attempt he made to see the wreck site last year "only lasted 37 feet down" before the vessel encountered a mechanical problem and had to be hoisted out of the water."
Meme - Narwitz @SophiaNarwitz: "The Blizzard developer who previously went on a moral crusade against the video game Six Days In Fallujah, going so far as to ask governments to ban it is... *checks notes* openly celebrating the deaths of five people. One of which is a 19 year old."
Osama Dorias @osamadorias: "Billionaires are a cancer. Their existence is an act of extreme violence. Their deaths are a cause for celebration."
Daniel Shipwreck @mxdshipwreck: "People asking "why do people hate billionaires?" a lot during the submersible discussion and here's the core of it for me: Every day the mega-rich could vastly reduce or even end mass suffering on a global scale with little cost to themselves. Every day they choose not to."
OceanGate CEO Knew in 2021 He'd 'Broken Some Rules' With Titanic Sub - "Years before the tragedy, Rush said in a 2021 interview with the Spanish YouTuber alanxelmundo that he hoped to be remembered as an innovator. "I think it was General MacArthur who said: 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said, smiling. The CEO acknowledged that he'd "broken some rules" with the Titan's manufacturing but was confident that his design was sound. "I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fiber and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that," he told alanxelmundo. "Well, I did." The Titan's hull, which was made to withstand crushing deep-sea pressure, was constructed with aerospace-grade carbon fiber that OceanGate said was designed under an agreement with NASA. But submersible hulls are typically made using solid metals like steel or titanium. In 2017, Rush told the magazine CompositesWorld that he used carbon fiber for the Titan — then called the Cyclops 2 — because it would eliminate the need for syntactic foam, an expensive but durable material often used to make submersibles. In his 2021 interview with alanxelmundo, Rush said the choice of material was more about pioneering ocean exploration. "It's picking the rules that you break that are the ones that will add value to others and add value to society," Rush said. "And that really, to me, is about innovation." Rush expressed excitement about the possibilities that his submersible could offer humanity in the deep ocean... The CEO was confronted in 2018 with multiple concerns about the Titan's safety... Rush was sent a letter from the Marine Technology Society, a leading group of experts who expressed "unanimous concern" about the "experimental approach" of the Titan. And in 2017, a consultant for OceanGate told Bloomberg that he left the company in its early years because he felt Rush was a "full-speed-ahead, damn-the-torpedoes kind of guy" in an industry that required absolute precision. It's unclear whether any of these concerns were addressed by OceanGate later, but Rush has previously complained about safety measures and regulations."
OceanGate CEO Said Titan Built With Old Boeing Material: Would-Be Passenger - "OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush told him that for the vessel's hull, the company used cut-price Boeing carbon fiber that was past its airplane shelf life... Boeing initially declined to comment, but later said the company "has found no record of any sale of composite material to OceanGate or its CEO."... OceanGate's website previously claimed that the vessel was designed and engineered "in collaboration" with Boeing. Boeing has denied any involvement in the design of the Titan... Rush previously touted the cost-saving benefits of carbon fiber versus the standard titanium and claimed in a 2021 presentation that "carbon fiber is three times better on a strength-to-buoyancy basis than titanium." "And underwater, that's what you care about," he added. A 2017 CompositesWorld report said the initial carbon-fiber hull design was prepared on just a six-week deadline, though GeekWire reported the vessel was rebuilt later. Before the tragic trip, Rush publicly discussed taking risks to pursue what he called "innovation," saying in 2021 that he knew he had "broken some rules" by using a carbon-fiber hull for the vessel."
Former Titan Passenger Said Sub Lost Communication 'Every Single Time' - "A former passenger of the Titan submersible said he took four dives in it, including to the Titanic shipwreck, and that there were communication issues on every one of them... As a submersible, the Titan could not launch and return to port the way a submarine can and instead relied on a surface vessel to carry it to and from the dive spot. The submersible also relied on the surface ship for navigation, as GPS is not an option 13,000 feet below sea level. The surface vessel sent text messages to people in the submersible, who then used a video-game controller to navigate according to the instructions."
Meme - Marxist777: "Why the Titanic Submarine Incident will be a Victory for the working class
Here is a thread:
(As of this tweet they have 5 Hours of oxygen left)
Every single billionaire is an enemy of the people, who's entire life has been spent exploiting the working class masses. Billionaire's luxurious and lavish lifestyles are a direct result of the exploitation of the common working class person.
You should feel no sympathy for these people, they have caused the suffering of millions of people across the entire planet.
Also the notion that it is any different if one of them is a 'child' is completely absurd. A 19 year old is no child, and has actively taken part in the exploitation of millions via his father. *Guillotine* REWARD THEM FOR THE WORLD THEY CREATED."
Weird. Liberals keep telling us wokeness is about empathy
Meme - "IT IS TIME TO GO."
"Was I a good submarine?"
"YOU KILLED FIVE BILLIONAIRES. YOU WERE THE BEST."
Naturally, the commies want to censor others for inciting violence
Meme - "Claim: OceanGate, the company behind the submersible that went missing in June 2023 on a Titanic wreckage exploration, relied on Elon Musk's Starlink satellites to provide communications during the expedition.
Rating: True
Context: Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs. However, we do not know how much Starlink is responsible for the loss of contact with the submersible, nor the reasons behind that loss of contact.
Claim: OceanGate's submersible that went missing in June 2023 on a Titanic wreckage exploration relied on Elon Musk's SpaceX-run Starlink satellites to provide communications during the expedition.
Rating: Unproven
Context: Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs, and OceanGate indeed said it was relying on the company for the exhibition, which included the submersible and a mothership - that is, a vessel that stays above water to navigate and communicate with land during the exhibition. It's unknown if, or to what extent, Starlink was used by the submersible itself at any point, or whether it was only used by the mothership. That said, we do not know how much Starlink is responsible for the loss of contact with the submersible, nor the reasons behind that loss of contact.
Claim: OceanGate's submersible that went missing in June 2023 on a Titanic wreckage exploration relied on Elon Musk's SpaceX-run Starlink satellites to provide communications during the expedition.
Rating: False
Context: Starlink is a subsidiary of SpaceX, which Elon Musk runs, and OceanGate indeed said it was relying on the company for the expedition, which included the submersible and a mothership - that is, a vessel that stays above water to navigate and communicate with land during the expedition, However, scientists have pointed out that the submersible would have had an acoustic link with the surface vessel and could not have relied on satellite internet to communicate with the surface. How, or under what circumstances, the mothership used Starlink technology during the exhibition remained unknown."
Ahh... Snopes does it again! In the space of a day, too
Some people defended Snopes by claiming it was good they corrected themselves, not seeing that this shows the contingency of "fact" checking, realising that this shows that "fact checkers" aren't the gospel truth or grasping that they had no idea what they were talking about and if they were, they wouldn't have needed to change it twice (since the truth was apparent from the start). Of course, this won't step them from throwing out "fact checks" to shut down debate
Journal of Scientific Shitposting (JoSS) - "Turns out that there's nothing wrong with shitposting about the Titan sub. In fact, we're part of a storied practice dating back over a hundred years ago. They were shitposting about the Titanic back then too!"
Yesterday's Print on Twitter - "The Evening News, Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, April 25, 1912" (Thread)
Meme - Paul-Henri Nargeolet: "I was one of the first explorers of the titanic and served 22 years in the navy"
Shahzada and Suleman Dawood: "Mine and my fathers family supported charities. And formed a trust to help disadvantaged young people become farmers and learn about agriculture"
Hamish Harding: "I established a non-profit dedicated to world exploration and science-related education for youth"
Leftist: "I think rich people die on sea plane funny because i am jealous hateful and contribute nothing to society"
Meme - Jonathan Snow: "I dove much deeper than the Titanic in April. Every aspect of the operation was marked by the highest degree of professionalism and attention to safety shown by the JAMSTEC team. My/our scientific mission was a smashing success due to the skill of the pilots and the excellent engineering and execution of the submersible and the dives. The pressure hull had been tested to *twice* the depth I dove to, every eventuality plotted out and planned for, every system specifically designed and redesigned over the years to deliver optimum performance and safety. Tiny little details were seen to with great care. Everything was multiply redundant. The location of the sub was known to a few meters in real time at all times. There was active telemetry in both directions, voice communication and images. In the case of an anomaly, the ship has the ability to retrieve the sub unaided. The sub has 5+ days of air, food and water aboard. The statement by Stockton rush that every submersible is an experimental prototype is a lie. Successful programs running 50 years and more back in history have seen multiple iterations of design, each building on the last. Safety is not overrated, it's job one."
Meme - Rob McCallum: "... you are wanting to use a prototype un-classed technology in a very hostile place. As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk."
Stockton Rush: "I know that our engineering focused, innovative approach (as opposed to an existing standards compliance focused design process) flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation... I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. Since Guillermo and I started OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of "you are going to kill someone" way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult."
Rob McCallum: "I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients ina dangerous dynamic. Ironically, in your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry "she is unsinkable". Having dived the Titanic, and having stood in a Coroners Court as a technical expert, it would be remiss of me not to bring this to your attention"
Titanic soars into top ten on Amazon Prime as viewers are reminded by unfolding submarine tragedy - "The Titanic Wikipedia page also saw a surge in clicks this week, FlixPatrol reports. This comes after Titanic director James Cameron, who has visited the world's most famous seawreck 30 times, said the tragedy this week has parallels with the Titanic disaster, where the captain repeatedly ignored warnings about an incoming iceberg but carried on at top speed."
The final moments in that doomed submarine - "I'm indignant how tragedy has once again demonstrated that the depths of man's depravity, the pit of man's hatred for his neighbor, runs far deeper than the lost ruins of Titanic. What better place to see this truth amplified than the streets of social media. MSNBC commentator Elie Mystal used the tragedy as an opportunity to make the discussion about his two favorite topics: race and politics.
'Next time some rich white person wants to take Sam Alito on an expensive trip, please take him to see the Titanic'
He tweeted this, after everyone on the left, including those at his own network, just got done hand-wringing over the fact that Joe Rogan's debate challenge to a doctor notorious for spreading Covid misinformation inspired some lunatic to show up at the doctor's door. The "we must watch our rhetoric because there are crazy folks out there" crowd sure seems selective in their outrage. But things went well beyond Mystal's standard political race-hustling, plunging into unrestrained giddiness over the prospect of these four men and a teenager dying."
Meme - Autumn @clockygf: "imagine being a billionaire who's gotten everything you've ever wanted your entire life and now you're trapped in here as the lights inevitability flicker out and you're just sitting there in complete and total darkness as the realization sets in that no one is coming for you"
Ur Ellie @ellienotnora: "do u think that thing has a black box i wana hear their last moments down there so bad"
Meme - Broccoli rob @turnip_tops: "sorry you can't understand the core concept "it's good when bad things happen to bad people""
Matt Mulligan @mullymt: "Why are they bad?"
broccoli rob @turnip_tops: "billionaires are ontologically evil, hope this helps"
Meme - "Kind of loving how much the ocean has decided to just murder the rich"
1984's George Whorewell @Ewdats...: "A sub went missing full of people who paid 160k-200k to take a tour of the titanic wreckage. The ocean is just eating the rich for us these days"
Meme - Jane Eyre Jordan: "Dying in an ocean as deep as your pockets...in a vessel as tiny as the shanty houses you turned your noses up at....ln a darkness as expansive as your ego...going to see the final resting place of the souls whom you disturbed with your curiosity, but they still eagerly welcomed you."
Meme - "Ok so finally something I have some actual expertise on, structural carbon fiber. i have dealt with it doing outside plant and building wide fiber optics cable laying. One thing I learned is to never pierce carbon fiber tubing - you pierce a separate piece of the material and then you bind the piece to the tubing using the same matrix (usually epoxy) as the tubing itself. This creates a chemical bond that doesnt affect the integrity of either piece. Cabon fiber is an incredible material - much stronger by weight than almost anything, being able to be field shaped much more easily than metal, uses chemical processes to bind so requires less energy etc. But one of its interesting qualities is that since it is essentially a buch of fibers in a matrix, it shares structural handling with wood and textiles, rathen crystal latices like metal, cement, or concrete. This means that when building with it, you have to "sew", glue, or chemically bind it, or you will change its integrity. You can indeed use screws and other binders like with wood, but that is not relevant here - we do not make pressure vessels out of pure wood for good reasons. When used in ductile form or in a pressure vessel like the sub, when it is structural, as opposed to as a coating or covering, any modification to the molded form will have exponential impacts on the whole form's ability to perform as intended. A weak spot in a crystal lattice like metal or cement or concrete its vastly more selfhealing, as the loss is distribute fairly evenly across the lattice. This is why metal armor works even after multiple shots, but carbon fiber loses protection much quicker (a reason aramids are the prefered option over carbon fiber for armor). Think about it this way - you make a hole to hang, say, a computer monitor arm in a cement or brick wall. If done correctly, that will not deteriorate the wall at all, and if it does it would take years, and if you excert pressure on either side of the hole, the hole wont expand catasthropically. The building will not fall on you. You would need pressures similar to those needed to being down the structure even if it didnt have the hole. So it is is fairly safe to in a properly built cement wall, to do this. Now, if you pierce a hole on a tshirt or sock or other textile, fairly quickly the fibers will seprate, and if you excert pressure on the side of the holes, the whole shirt will rip way more easily than without that hole. By orders of magnitude of force. A tiny piercing that breaks a few fibers of the textile will lead to vast loss of structural integrity. The mechanical engineering of carbon fiber is well understood, with established practices decades old, and while there have been advancements in materials and technicques, it is an extremely mature trade - people who do this for a living know exactly what to do and not to do and why that is the case. Which bring us to pressure vessels. As James Cameron (gratefully) communicated, pressure vessel engineering - for deep sea exploration specifically, but also in general - it is even more mature. Pressure differential physics, the most important ones in a pressure vessel such a submarine, are some of the best understood physics in physics. We understand it mathematically even better than we understand gravity. It is a solid science that is already established and with very little fundamental research to be uncovered, if any. It is also a science for which extremely precise computer simulations exist. The physics of which are so precise the only type of physical testing being done on pressure vessels today is if new materials are introduced - to understand its behavior to then plug it into a computer - and fully built prototypes as part of testing before production. Everything else is computer based. It is basically one of the few physics that are so deeply and completely and pratically simulated. With the correct material data inputs, you can very accurately and precisely simulate a pressure vessel's abilit to whithstand pressure differentials. In other words, the depths to which you can take any pressure vessel are very much accurately predicted via computer simulations, and until this last incident, the field had a zero implosion losses above predicted total crush depth. All submarine loses via implosion (ie pressure vessel failing) have been of submarines that sank beyond rated crush depth. And mind you this includes those made before the computer simulation era - because the math was already understood, done by hand, and the vessels over-engineered just in case. So that brings us to this picture. For what we know of how this sub was constructed, it was made of carbon fiber as the main pressure bearing material. This is a relatively new field for carbon fiber, and the material sciences for its preformance as a pressure vessel are less understood than for other materials. We know it works to a degree - it has been used sucessfully by this and other companies. One thing we do understand is that principle I spoke about around the structural integrity of carbon fiber being exponentially weakened by piercing or weak spots as compared to other materials. In traditional submarines, even with traditional materials, the pressure vessel or pressure hull is not used or modified in any way. For example they have a spherical or cylindrical shape with hemispherical ends, so if you need a more hydrodynamic shape, you build an outer hull over the pressure vessel - as is done in military submarines. Even the conning towers are physically separate from the pressure vessel and are either seprate pressure vessels themselves or flooded to the hatch. Everyone who builds submarines knows this. So this picture shows a disregard of the unique qualities of the carbon fiber material plus disregarding well understood pressure vessel physics, and that leading to them thinking bolting a monitor arm was a good idea. In a metal pressure vessel, unless it went deeper than a certain limit, at worse it would have crushed the bolts and then when surfacing the arm would fall, as the bolts would now be smaller than the holes. In a carbon fiber pressure vessel, this would have weakened the entire vessel, and is a very good candidate for where the failure point lies. Safety is not some bureaucratic encumberment - it is hard cold science. But this also shows how intuitive expertise in a field doesn't translate into another We need to respect the authority of the baker when it comes to baking. One of the terrible idiocies of the "disruptive" religion in the corporate ideology is thinking smarts translate directly - or that what works in one case works in everything. The logic here clearly was that since bolting monitor arms works in my office wall, it can work in the submarines wall. So what killed this sub was not just hubris, but Dunning Kruger."
"NEW: photo reveals the monitor in the doomed Titanic sub was *screwed into* the carbon fiber hull..."
I saw someone claiming that it was good they didn't have hardwired controls because that would require drilling in the hull, which would weaken it. So much for the monitor
A former OceanGate advisor said everyone was drinking the Kool-Aid even though 'there were multiple points of failure' with their sub - "An expert in deep sea expeditions said when he visited the workshop of OceanGate Expeditions, everyone seemed to be on board with the operations — despite what he saw as clear problems. "Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation," Rob McCallum, a co-founder of EYOS Expeditions, told the New Yorker's Ben Taub, referring to the use of a video game controller in the company's submersibles — one of which eventually became the ill-fated Titan submersible. McCallum is also an expedition consultant who had given OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush advice on marketing and logistics before visiting the workshop, located outside Seattle. McCallum said he was disturbed by the visit, during which he examined the submersible known as Cyclops I. OceanGate's next iteration was still in planning: Cyclops II, eventually renamed the Titan. "And I said at the time, 'Does Sony know that it's been used for this application? Because, you know, this is not what it was designed for.' And now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub's thrusters," McCallum said. "There were multiple points of failure." McCallum said he was also concerned when Rush told him the system ran on Bluetooth, telling the New Yorker "every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason — that if the signal drops out, you're not fucked."... McCallum would go one to express his many concerns with OceanGate's operations to Rush, who largely rebuffed him. He told The New Yorker he finally cut ties with OceanGate when he learned Rush was not going to have his vessel classed by a marine-certification agency. McCallum was among the dozens of industry experts who sent a letter to OceanGate expressing concerns about their planned Titanic voyages. While some OceanGate employees can be seen in promotional videos touting the safety of the company's operations, others who worked at or closely with OceanGate also expressed safety concerns. David Lochridge, former director of marine operations for OceanGate, has said he was fired after expressing safety concerns about the Titan. And the company's former finance director told The New Yorker she quit shortly after Rush asked her to become the Titan's chief pilot despite not having any experience manning submersibles."
The Titan Submersible Implosion Was “an Accident Waiting to Happen” | The New Yorker - "Until June 18th, a manned deep-ocean submersible had never imploded... As they mourned Nargeolet and the other passengers, they decided to reveal OceanGate’s history of knowingly shoddy design and construction. “You can’t cut corners in the deep,” McCallum had told Rush. “It’s not about being a disruptor. It’s about the laws of physics.”... “Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid and saying how cool they were with a Sony PlayStation,” he told me. “And I said at the time, ‘Does Sony know that it’s been used for this application? Because, you know, this is not what it was designed for.’ And now you have the hand controller talking to a Wi-Fi unit, which is talking to a black box, which is talking to the sub’s thrusters. There were multiple points of failure.” The system ran on Bluetooth, according to Rush. But, McCallum continued, “every sub in the world has hardwired controls for a reason—that if the signal drops out, you’re not fucked.”... during the harbor trial, the Cyclops got stuck in shallow water. “It was hilarious, because there were four very experienced operators in the sub, stuck at twenty or twenty-five feet, and we had to sit there for a few hours while they worked it out,” McCallum recalled. He liked and trusted Lochridge. But, of the sub, he said, “This thing is a mutt.” Rush eventually decided that he would not attempt to have the Titanic-bound vehicle classed by a marine-certification agency such as DNV. He had no interest in welcoming into the project an external evaluator who would, as he saw it, “need to first be educated before being qualified to ‘validate’ any innovations.” That marked the end of McCallum’s desire to be associated with the project... "‘Look, I am involved with other projects that are building classed subs’—of course, I was talking about the Limiting Factor—‘and I can tell you that the class society has been nothing but supportive. They are actually part of our innovation process. We’re using the brainpower of their engineers to feed into our design. “Stockton didn’t like that,” McCallum continued. “He didn’t like to be told that he was on the fringe.” As word got out that Rush planned to take tourists to the Titanic, McCallum recalled, “people would ring me, and say, ‘We’ve always wanted to go to Titanic. What do you think?’ And I would tell them, ‘Never get in an unclassed sub. I wouldn’t do it, and you shouldn’t, either.’ ”... Whatever his differences with Rush, McCallum wanted the venture to succeed; the submersible industry is small, and a single disaster could destroy it. But the only way forward without a catastrophic operational failure—which he had been told was “certain,” he wrote—was for OceanGate to redesign the submersible in coördination with a classification society... “Do you think the sub could be made safe to dive, or is it a complete lemon?” McCallum replied. “You will get a lot of support from people in the industry . . . . everyone is watching and waiting and quietly shitting their pants.” “It’s a lemon.”... Lochridge studied each major component, and found several critical aspects to be defective or unproven. He drafted a detailed report, which has not previously been made public, and attached photographs of the elements of greatest concern. Glue was coming away from the seams of ballast bags, and mounting bolts threatened to rupture them; both sealing faces had errant plunge holes and O-ring grooves that deviated from standard design parameters. The exostructure and electrical pods used different metals, which could result in galvanic corrosion when exposed to seawater. The thruster cables posed “snagging hazards”; the iridium satellite beacon, to transmit the submersible’s position after surfacing, was attached with zip ties. The flooring was highly flammable; the interior vinyl wrapping emitted “highly toxic gasses upon ignition.” To assess the carbon-fibre hull, Lochridge examined a small cross-section of material. He found that it had “very visible signs of delamination and porosity”—it seemed possible that, after repeated dives, it would come apart. He shone a light at the sample from behind, and photographed beams streaming through splits in the midsection in a disturbing, irregular pattern. The only safe way to dive, Lochridge concluded, was to first carry out a full scan of the hull... For the next two hours, the OceanGate leadership insisted that no hull testing was necessary—an acoustic monitoring system, to detect fraying fibres, would serve in its place. According to the company, the system would alert the pilot to the possibility of catastrophic failure “with enough time to arrest the descent and safely return to surface.” But, in a court filing, Lochridge’s lawyer wrote, “this type of acoustic analysis would only show when a component is about to fail—often milliseconds before an implosion—and would not detect any existing flaws prior to putting pressure onto the hull.” A former senior employee who was present at the meeting told me, “We didn’t even have a baseline. We didn’t know what it would sound like if something went wrong.”... “I would consider myself pretty ballsy when it comes to doing things that are dangerous, but that sub is an accident waiting to happen,” Lochridge wrote to McCallum, two weeks later. “There’s no way on earth you could have paid me to dive the thing.” Of Rush, he added, “I don’t want to be seen as a Tattle tale but I’m so worried he kills himself and others in the quest to boost his ego.”... OceanGate claimed that Cyclops II had “the first pressure vessel of its kind in the world.” But there’s a reason that Triton and other manufacturers don’t use carbon fibre in their hulls. Under compression, “it’s a capricious fucking material, which is the last fucking thing you want to associate with a pressure boundary”... “With titanium, there’s a purpose to a pressure test that goes beyond just seeing whether it will survive,” John Ramsay, the designer of the Limiting Factor, explained. The metal gradually strengthens under repeated exposure to incredible stresses. With carbon fibre, however, pressure testing slowly breaks the hull, fibre by tiny fibre. “If you’re repeatedly nearing the threshold of the material, then there’s just no way of knowing how many cycles it will survive”... Rush asked McCallum to work for him—then threatened him with a lawsuit, in an effort to silence him, when he declined... He spoke of signs of hull breakage as if it were perfectly routine... Fibres do not regenerate between dives. Nevertheless, Rush seemed unconcerned... It’s not clear that Rush could always stop his descent... “If you’re not breaking things, you’re not innovating,” Rush said, at the GeekWire Summit last fall. “If you’re operating within a known environment, as most submersible manufacturers do—they don’t break things. To me, the more stuff you’ve broken, the more innovative you’ve been.” The Titan’s viewport was made of acrylic and seven inches thick. “That’s another thing where I broke the rules”... it seems as though Rush did not understand how acrylic limits are calculated."
Skin in the game doesn't save you from ego
