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Forgive me if somebody else has already posted about this. What’s going on with that submarine that tried to tour the titanic wreckage?
Is it a stupid idea in the first place? Is there any chance they’ll be rescued?
I’ve been fascinated by the fact that even the richest among us are only surviving because Mother Earth decided not to crush them today. Seems like these people just had their luck run out, and maybe made a really stupid decision?
The more I read about it, the more idiotic it seems.
First, using the Titanic site as a tourist destination seems a little tacky. It's a gravesite, after all. But hey, Modern Times, make money out of dead men's bones, why not?
Then the details of "billionaire paid to go on trip" and the cost, and the details that they used a repurposed game controller to drive the thing.
Now, maybe that's actually feasible, but somehow it doesn't give me a good impression of the entire operation.
I hope the people are rescued, I don't want any deaths, but I also hope this stops this kind of ghoulish monetisation.
This was an excellent decision. Using the two millionth product of some mass-manufactured part, under shirtsleeve conditions like those where the part has already been heavily used, is almost always going to be more reliable than using the first or second product of some custom design.
The stories from David Lochridge and David Pogue, on the other hand, suggest many other much, much less excellent decisions. Normalization-of-deviance is a slippery slope.
I dunno, were I in a tin can going to crush depth, I think I'd prefer if they steered the death trap with something a bit more advanced than "Oh crap, the wifi's dropped out, gimme a sec" (not even a tin can, they were using carbon fibre or something?)
Aside from all that, the stepson of the British billionaire (queried) is reaching Hunter Biden levels of "dude, what the hell?" He has no right to be surprised when the will is read and he is cut off with a shilling, since he can't even bring himself to pretend to care about what is going on. Instead of being at home with his mother, sister and half-brothers in some kind of show of family unity, he's heading off to concerts and messaging Only Fans and the like.
It's /r/Drama but honestly, this is indeed tabloid territory and the best place for it. How stupid is this guy? Has he no self-awareness? "Oh, (Step)Dad is probably dying horribly right this minute, I guess Mom and my brothers will be really upset about that - well, time for me to head out and have fun! All in the name of self-care!"
As long as you have backups and appropriate procedures for them, the use of commercial game controllers is not by itself a problem. There are several good reasons that serious (indoors) military hardware is starting to do this and even better reasons for any organization smaller than that to, vs trying to develop their own hardware which can be much more stupid and dangerous. It's similar to the reason why billionaires, princes and presidents all use the exact same iPhone you can buy at the drug store.
Potential problems around it are:
Bluetooth. Insane.
Passing it around in that insanely cramped space, both because it could be dropped (especially with those huge stick extensions), and in apparently giving control over to passengers (depends on particulars of their culture around this, but no clues are public that it was very good)
No alternate backup control system. Uncertain that this is the case but looks likely. The problem here would not be not having something "more advanced", but rather not having something that's much simpler.
... okay maybe there could conceivably be some issues about its functioning in weird atmospheric conditions, it really depends on the specifics which I don't know, maybe it's just perfectly normal surface temperature/pressure/humidity/composition and fine. But the problem wouldn't be that they used the controller, it would be whether and how they tested it.
Perhaps the most telling indication about any of this is the story of how they didn't discover some thrusters were installed in the wrong orientation until they were already down at the Titanic. With a culture like that, it’s possible that their fatal error was something more mundane than anyone is imagining.
(but it was probably just the hull)
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