Private enterprise sub, taking people down for “visits” to the wreck site. Costs around $250K each. One of the people on board is a billionaire who also paid to go into space…
The whole thing sounds dodgy as fuck, from the way it was built, to how it operates, to how passengers are literally sealed in from the outside, this meaning that if the stupid thing surfaces, unless the mothership picks them up in time, they still die…
It’s such a comedy of errors, it’s the kind of shit that only the very rich, and the very naïve, could have allowed to happen…
Anyway, fuck knows, I hope they turn up alive and well, but damn… Next time someone proposes an extreme deep sea sub held together with parts from Walmart (quite literally), steered by a video game controller, and which apparently cannot communicate with the outside world while deep-submerged, and wants to charge $250K to go gawk at Titanic, maybe society should think twice..?
I mean, come on… 🤦🏻♂️
Good way to kill a billionaire without any repercussions. Also a good way to fake your own death as a billionaire.
James Cameron was probably involved.
It’s just so insane, though… Like, I actually cannot believe that anyone was stupid enough to believe the thing would survive, let alone trust their life to it…
Which suggests you may be right. But that’s like… Well, a suicide bomber or something. Because it’s five people in there…
If, as you say, no fakery was involved…
I haven't seen anything on the craft itself. Are you saying it wasn't manufactured by a submersible company that sells these things as its primary business?
Oh, you definitely should look up the apogee (CBS) article on it…
It’s a jerry-rig. Like, pretty much, shiny bells and whistles, and otherwise cheap parts to keep cost down…
So I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic, but no, this is… DIY rich-man tech, essentially…
Worse, they sell this as an "experimental" thing implying its something no one has done before. But manned subs that go to these depths do exist and have a ton of thoroughly tested safety features. (see: Alvin). how can someone pay 250k for a tour in this coffin without doing any due diligence is beyond me.
I'll look into it. No sarcasm intended. I just assumed that all these science vessels with submersibles bought them from one or two companies that specialized in their construction.
I definitely wouldn't board some asshole's homemade sub and descend to the depths the Titanic is at.
Little historical aside:
One of the first deep sea vessels was made by General Mills because they had their own machining and fabrication operation to build I don't know, threshers or corn flakes rollers or whatever the fuck General Mills uses to make products.
None of the usual heavy industry manufacturers would go near it because an admiral (rickover?) thought exploration was a waste of money and everyone wanted in on naval contracts
You may be thinking about Aluminaut, made by by Reynolds Metals Company.
No, I looked it up. It was Allvyn. Wiki says she's owned by the navy though. Can't think where I picked up the rest of the story though
LMFAO!!!
Goddamn that's a hilarious sentence and I'm not sure why--maybe "corn flakes rollers" HAW!
For that depth there really aren't COTS solutions. There are companies that make ROVs for that depth, but anything manned is going to be a custom built with WHOI and FNRS having the most experience at it.
As a side note, the Alvin is now 100% ship of theseus; nothing on it remains from the original 1964 build.
Oddly, though, the Peter Madsen/Kim Wall affair suggests that this is not the first time some “mad genius” has created a fully workable DIY sub, with funding, and then… Let’s say “done things” with it…
(Obviously Cousteau also invented one, but thankfully he didn’t kill anyone…)
It just takes idiots to throw money at it.
What is unusual is how blatantly shitty the build quality of this one is, at least internally, and the fact that it is going down further than almost any sub before it…
Your mention of DIY makes me wonder if the Colombians are still using cocaine-smuggling subs.
Evidently they're still in use and confounding the navy and coast guard: "According to Robert J. Bunker, senior fellow with Small Wars Journal El Centro, 'Hundreds of these vessels have been built over the last three decades with likely dozens of narco subs operating at any one time. Hundreds of tons of cocaine is transported from Latin America up to Central America and Mexico each year using this method.'"
My archive thing will not save this fascinating article so here's the title from the NY Post: "How drug runners use ‘narco submarines’ to traffic cocaine, money & more"
By Michael Kaplan March 12, 2022
For a good commentary video from an expert, look up Sub Brief - The Titan Tragedy on YouTube. Edit: the owner of the company called the average marine engineering company "a bunch of 50 year old white guys" and talked about diversity and inclusion and inspiring young persons.
https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac
Very knowledgeable guy. Worth following for naval stuff.
You could have offered me a billion dollars to go on that thing, and I would have laughed in your face
Thank you, I was on mobile and couldn't get links to work. I have been watching Sub Brief since he was Jive Turkey and was doing Cold Waters how tos and playthroughs. Great guy, and his sense of humor is perfect.
Come on bro just admit you were too lazy lol
Look, I was in a meeting, and my phone auto plays YouTube videos. Alright? There, I admit it, I was posting subversive content on company time!
Holy shit it's the Blancolirio of subs.
The most confusing part is the Mad Catz PS1 controller.
That's actually pretty normal. The military guys flying around drones use Xbox and Playstation controllers because that is what they spent their childhood training with.
Yeah but of the drone controller fails, you plug in another one. Idk what happens on the sub, but you have a lot fewer options and higher stakes.
The “CEO” bragged about how there is only one button onboard (to the journalist who previously went on it) and everything else is touchscreen-operated, with no apparent manual failsafes…
It got lost for two hours, even on that first trip. I see that it has worked out, uhh, swimmingly for them, once again…
Good one
I just don't think the taxpayer should be on the hook for any of their shenanigans. If these guys had/have plenty of money, they ought to be paying for this predictable rescue.
It's a Logitech F710. I haven't used that one, but I've got an F310, and it's a really good deal for a budget PC controller. At one time, back when I got mine, it was the only good deal if you didn't want to fight with Joy2Key or Microsoft's shitty 360 controller drivers.
But if you're on a tight budget when designing a submarine, maybe just don't fucking design a submarine.
Reading about how it was made and operated makes me question the judgement of anyone that rides that thing any deeper than they can swim.
It's literally made of surplus titanium pipe, doesn't have independent navigation equipment and relies on texting the surface ship for navigation.
I'm medium foolish but not insane.
Dude it's fucking nuts! Some people just have no sense.
Holy shit I heard about this incident but I didn't look into how rinky-dink the sub was until now. I would not get in that thing and shut the door on dry land. Hopefully it folded and crushed everyone inside instantly because slowly drowning in that tin can while 4 other people claw at you for their last breath of air is a fate I would not wish on anyone.
I'd trust the lego submarine guy on youtube way ahead of this thing.
They're not even using a good brand name game controller, it's some shit logitech thing that could fuck off any moment. I wouldn't trust that thing in a super mario speedrun let alone life and death. EDIT: hooooly fuck it was wireless too. Imagine drowning to death because of some blue tooth bullshittery.
I just can't believe that they didn't get a proper control setup with with at least a hobby grade dual flight sim stick setup literally just a couple thousand dollars and you get high end self calibrating hall effect sensors that won't fail in 50 years of intensive use.
Honestly, everything I have read suggests that they were obsessed with saving every dollar possible, so that’s how we get Walmart/Hobby Shop parts and Logitech controllers…
I think everyone would just go to sleep. You would't suffocate a la a plastic bag on your head. There is gas. You'd just keep breathing until you die.
Yeah if it just lost mobility and they sat there till the air ran out. But what if it sprung small leak and slowly filled up with water. Or if the window caved in and the whole thing bobbed vertically like a cork while everyone fought over the tiny air bubble at the top.
That's one of the best parts. The door can only be opened/closed from the outside.
Seriously.
It's so crazy to think these guys could be on the surface right now, having drifted off course in the night from heavy seas, or whatever, and they're still as good as dead because they can't open the door unless someone does it for them.
They are not missing, they are dead. At the depth communication was lost, any incident is fatal.
I suppose you could say their remains are missing, but then there's also the distinct possibility that whatever's left of them is now scattered across the bottom of the ocean with the rest of the submarine. At this point it's not a rescue mission, it's a recovery and I doubt they're going to find anything.
Implosions at extreme depth don't leave remains, the people inside a sub became paste instantly when the hull let go. If the sub is still intact, there will be bodies inside, but good luck finding it without a homing signal. Then, what do you do if you do get lucky and find it?
Money doesn't buy intelligence it looks like I mean if I wanted to take a sub down I'd want SOME way of internal escape as a last resort, but then I'm happier using drones to see underwater wreaks than go down there as drowning under immense pressure or just slowly suffercating seems the worst way to go
Also how do you lose it in the first place, with all modern tracking gear surely there's tracking devices you can easily attach to it as it wasn't military?
This is one area where I'm perfectly fine with them only using robots for exploration. At least until they start building underwater cities like in SeaQuest DSV.
Nah, 2 birds one stone. I want them to build Atlantis from Stargate that way we can explore both ocean AND space.
You're not going to be able to manually operate an escape hatch until you're on the surface anyway - the inside of the submersible is almost certainly going to be at a lower pressure than the outside so you don't have to worry about giving everyone the bends coming back up.
When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. The Kraken got them.
So every time Imp gets banned there's a hentacle party somewhere in Japan? 🤔
Minor nitpick: The billionaire involved was on Jeff Bezos's NS-21 flight. That is to say he paid to go above the Karman line. He didn't really go to space. It's like saying you are going swimming, and then standing around wading in calf high water.
The original way it was phrased made me thing something happened to Yusaku Maezawa or Jared Isaacman, who both are scheduled for important future SpaceX missions. Maezawa is flying and sponsoring dearMoon, which is scheduled to go around the moon sometime in the next 2 years (yeah right, more like 3-4). Isaacman is flying and sponsoring Polaris Dawn which will be the furthest any human has been from Earth since the Apollo program. It's currently scheduled for September.
Which is almost as dumb a way to waste money as this. I'll give a pass to someone old like Shatner - he could die at any minute and doesn't know when else he'll get the chance. Most people with money should be waiting for an orbital flight. Though I think Tito did both experiences so I guess he's up for anything.
Some people are just adventurers, and that is great. We will need more like that for Mars colonization.
The guys shouldn't be 100 for colonization. If they send just the rich it's not gonma work.
Meh, if I had endless money I might consider doing that even if it isn't really "being in space."
The view still looks awesome and I'm sure it's quite the experience.
And less completely batshit insane and illogical than this “sub” thing, too…
We’ll call this doing a Kursk… Or a Kim Wall, if you prefer (darkly)…
Obviously this doesn’t apply to Kursk, but, FFS, if some rich man says “Come for a ride in my DIY submarine”, at this point, even if you are a journalist, or even if you are paying, just…
Don’t do it. Just don’t.
This isn’t SpaceX. Hell, it’s not even fucking James Cameron, as mentioned by Terp.
As the Transport Accident Commission says in their ads: Don’t Get In.
I was suspicious at first, waiting to here the information that this billionaire was some sort of person people with power would have wanted to get rid of, but I didn't see anything of intrigue in my limited research. However, it is entirely possible there was a sealing issue with the pressure, and when the submersible reached that depth, the part simply broke, and poof, everyone is flat as a pancake.
You could argue sabotage, but as of now, it does seem like just a billionaire choosing to spend his money with people that he definitely should not have spent his money with.
The hatch is literally bolted on, just imagine if the bolts weren't torqued down in the proper order, any slight imbalance could easily cause excess pressure on that titanium ring and cause it to crack, causing a total implosion.
Bolts lmao these guys needed to learn a very important lesson.
Do you guys remember ages ago there was some bullshit story the media started peddling about a Mars expedition of some kind where they were trying to allegedly look for astronauts with zero experience to sign up for a colony on Mars?
It turned out it was all fake and of course the media quickly shut up about it even though they promoted it, there were quite a number of people who didn't think anything of it at all and did try signing up. Yes, people are this retarded, of course they're going to pay money to go into a death trap submarine if they'll sign up for a one way ticket to Mars.
Was it Mars One? I do remember the media hyping that up and then nothing. I should watch the video to find out what happened.
There's interviews of people on youtube who talk about their experience of getting selected and there's massive red flags of being a scam right from the start.
Think so.
The amount of time between something happening at depth and the atmosphere inside the vessel combusting during an implosion is measured in tenths of a second.
Probably the best way to go imo. So quick that your nerves dont have time to send any pain signals to the brain. Not even time for an "oh shit!"
found the following video that plays an alledged recording of the ceo saying he doesnt want to hire "a bunch of 50yo white guys."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dka29FSZac&t=325s
Someone gonna say Habib here deserves to be a billionaire.
There's a picture of the submarine thing 42 seconds into this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uv4_YVC2Jdo
Does anyone know if that entire vehicle goes to the bottom or is it a launching platform in the water?
I have a good friend who worked for the company. It's next to a nice pub and grub place. It's basically a billionaires tax write off hobby. She hasn't talked to anyone about it, and I think their is a bit of shock.
The company has had several setbacks, including a sub getting struck by lightning. However, they did do good work. We are complaining because it failed, and ignoring all the times it worked.
I'd love to hear your rebuttal to that video. I know it covers a lot so I don't expect a point by point takedown, but give us something because from where I'm sitting your claim sounds asinine.
How about Dunning Krueger effect? You just had someone whose actually been in the facility and knows stuff say the newspapers, which you know lies, is wrong.
You're dealing with something personal. I would recommend looking g in the mirror for your answers.