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Notes -
The Titan submersible suddenly became very hot culture war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Titan_submersible_incident
The wikipedia link is quite thorough.
TLDR as of 2023-06-22 000000z seems to be:
5 people are trapped on a submersible that has lost contact with the outside world.
It was trying to visit the wreck of The Titanic.
Major effort rescue is on under way.
They are running out of air in the next couple of hours.
The name of the vessel is Titan (come on, no one can be that brazen, you are tempting fate)
The people are couple of billionaires, explorer, and the CEO of the company
The vessel can be opened only from outside.
The vessel used some off the shelf parts (like a logitech controller) and somewhat exotic materials.
Now comes the culture war
Somewhat lack of empathy for the people there because of their status in the crazier places of the internet.
The way the vessel was built and operated embodied the SV ethos. There are reports that it was not certified or audited by anyone, that the hull testing procedures were not adequate, that the company moved fast and broke things. So right now said ethos is having torn a new one.
Surfaced a recording of the CEO bragging how they don't want to hire 50 years old white guys because they are not inspiring.
To me actually 2 is the most interesting one out there - 1 is just internet being the internet, 3 - if a small error could lead to death - hire the most safety oriented, pedantic and boring people there are to design your product.
But with silicon valley moving more and more prone to overtaking the meatspace - their physical products kinda suck. From smart thermostats to fridges to whatever we actually have degradation of the experience. So I think we are in a rough ride. And the more products they make smarter or move fast - the more human lives will be at stakes.
there have probably been thousands of dives since the 80s. something like this was inevitable given the inherent risks. the problem with engineering are the unknown unknowns. Maybe some corrosion or weakness in a wire caused the sub to fail--something that hardly anyone considers and seemingly mundane...like a piece of foam hitting a tile at takeoff, a piece of metal on a runway, a rubber seal leaking due to unforeseen cold, etc.. Had this occurred 20+ years ago, it would have gotten a lot of media coverage but not like we are seeing now. twitter as always showing its power to create news cycles in and of itself.
If you read the history of the vessel - I am sure it was the known knowns. So was the challenger - they knew it was too cold for launch. They knew about the o ring erosion that shouldn't be happening. And in the foam case - they knew there were debris. I have been trying to explain for a long time to people I work with - if it works and you don't know why or in a way you haven't anticipated - that it is just trouble waiting to happen. Even the 737 max was quite easily predictable, and on the A440 that crashed over the Atlantic was from known issue.
In the deep you have completely different envelope - mostly your weight is virtually unlimited compared to aerospace. Which can get a lot more leeway to design first the oh-shit modes and then the normal ones. Proper real time communication with the mothership, more supplies, hatch opening from inside, spare logitech controller. I know that all of sudden all internet virologists and trans/gender scientists right now took a fast phd in submarine design - but this project specifically seems to have had a lot of bad ideas and practices from the start.
This would require a cable connection which gets tricky for 4000 meter deep dives. Radio communication rather famously doesn't work underwater. You can only get ground to sub data transmission at a few bits per second and even that requires tens of kilometer long antennas with megawatts of transmission power.
If the ship was directly above, I don't see why a few kilometres of cable wouldn't work.
Alternatively, acoustic communication.
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