The Titan Submersible Was “An Accident Waiting to Happen”

[swader999]

I'm sure most of us have been on projects where similar bad engineering decisions were made. It's depressing how common these attitudes are. At least death isn't a possibility with the projects I've left in disgust.

[Grimburger]

Titan is fairly akin to modern software engineering, there's a lot of behaviours in the company that certainly resonates. Mechanical and structural engineers don't behave like this 99% of the time.

[nirui]

Maybe somewhat off-topic, but if you don't know, there is a video on YouTube published 11 months ago by "CBC NL - Newfoundland and Labrador" titled "This submersible takes passengers to The Titanic wreck. Climb in!" (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClkytJa0ghc)

If I put myself 11 months in the past watching that video, I would probably think this company OceanGate is so professional with zero possibility of merging and mixing their passengers with whatever content in that tiny toilet box.

In my mind, all 5 lost souls are explorers. But 11 months... that's long enough time for someone to generate doubts on the thing to either fix it or speak out.

[nelox]

None of them were explorers. The wreck of the Titanic is not a new discovery. They were paying passengers in an underwater ocean tourism venture.

[tweetle_beetle]

I'm not sure the word explorer should ever be diluted to be just sitting down in a vehicle as a passenger. At worst, they sat on a plane to Newfoundland for a number of hours, sat on a boat to get to the launch site and sat in a submarine for a few hours (assuming a successful itinerary).

Mitigating factors for an explorer should be (imho): novel destination, novel experience of natural forces, novel challenge of actively piloting/driving, unusual physical hardship, unusual mental hardship, novel engineering challenge, unusual training requirements, committing to significant unknowns, etc.

[CaptainZapp]

> But 11 months... that's long enough time for someone to generate doubts on the thing to either fix it or speak out.

There were enough doubts and enough competent people speaking out in the five previous years.

The problem seems that Mr. Rush was just not willing to listen.

You don't fuck with physics, especially not in 4000 metres depth.

Reading this (excellent) story I caught myself almost permanently shaking my head about the callousy of that guy.

[Xen9]

This isn't off-topic. I find your recommendation very therapeutic to watch.

[xeonmc]

> Soon afterward, Rush asked OceanGate’s director of finance and administration whether she’d like to take over as chief submersible pilot. “It freaked me out that he would want me to be head pilot, since my background is in accounting,” she told me. She added that several of the engineers were in their late teens and early twenties, and were at one point being paid fifteen dollars an hour. Without Lochridge around, “I could not work for Stockton,” she said. “I did not trust him.” As soon as she was able to line up a new job, she quit.

[Animats]

Photos of the recovered debris show an intact titanium end bell being lifted by a strap through where the acrylic porthole was. No sign of porthole or carbon fiber tube. Not yet clear what failed first, the tube or the porthole.

[userbinator]

The porthole was made to withstand outside pressure, not inside, so if the tube failed --- which seems most likely given the extensive analysis about the carbon fiber --- the momentary burst of internal pressure would probably have been enough to blow the porthole out.

[Bluecobra]

The article mentions that at one point the viewport only had a depth rating only 1,300 meters, but it’s not clear if it was upgraded later on. The more I think about it, would it have been able to withstand even the first dive to Titanic depths without it being upgraded?

[justrealist]

I mean, I get it, it was a clown show. And yes, give it 15 minutes of fame, because it's the Titanic and all.

But I feel like some people care about this far more than I can understand, and the news cycle on this is quite protracted. People die in stupid ways every day and this doesn't seem more egregious than most.

[abnry]

If you mean that the event isn't significant in a societal sense, I totally agree. I don't really think there is any big moral conclusion to take from it. However, the story just has so many fascinating elements to it. The whole titanic story is fascinating, and it is incredible people found the wreck and can observe it. The technology is incredible. Then there is the thrill of exploration and the natural danger to it, but there is also the hubris of the OceanGate CEO, significant enough that he was blind to his own danger, which resulted in the deaths of more people than him. And what was the moment like? An implosion in an instant of a second... as opposed to being trapped and slowly suffocating. Those are two images hard to get out of one's head.

[ummonk]

Engineering disasters (e.g. the FIU bridge, the Boeing 737 MAX, the Miami condo collapse, and now the Titan submersible) are rightly subjects of significant interest in the press in general and hacker news specifically.

And rightly so - one can derive lessons on organizational culture and risk management from such incidents that are applicable to one's own life and career.

[vikramkr]

Sure but we're in a string of silicon valley come to Jesus moments and finally having a case where the founder was so deluded they got even themselves killed is going to get airtime. I don't think there's be nearly as much interest in this story if we weren't in also dealing with Theranos and FTX and the aftereffects of Cambridge analytica etc etc

[hadlock]

The summer is historically a Very Slow News Season, they are going to milk this for all they can get. There are a handful of meaningful elections in 2023, and the legislature is on vacation through the middle of August.

[voidfunc]

Most people that die in stupid ways aren't rich. That's the difference

[no_butterscotch]

I agree. I actually rolled my eyes when people initially complained that the Greek migrant boat collapse wasn't getting as much attention. This is a one off whereas migrants die all the time.

However as time goes on and the articles are STILL ongoing, after as you say the 15 minutes of fame, I have to agree that at this point in time any writer still writing about this is worthy of an eye-roll in the other direction.

While it was news it was worth covering. Now, if you're a journalist and you're still covering it, then I do think you're a piece of **.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/23/world/europe/titan-sub-gr...)

[eternityforest]

People die in stupid ways, and a lot of them have aspects in common with this.

It's a pretty interesting case study on safety culture. Dying in a stupid way is often preventable, and yet we just accept it, for probably some of the same reasons Rush did.

[dudeinjapan]

I think this is pretty well established by now.

[Maxion]

This is the New Yorker, you don’t read it for the headlines. There was a fair bit of new stuff in the article.

[anonu]

I am curious to see if a Coast Guard report gets published on all of this. I am particularly interested in the decision making that lead up to the event.

[majikaja]

All these people knew about it but didn't make any public warnings?

The pilot is somewhat aware but says nothing to the customers?

[Maxion]

One guy did, he got sued by OceanGate and withdrew his complaint as he didn't wanna spend his life being litigated against.

[pixl97]

They didn't want the risk of being sued for defamation in court before it was a proven danger. The US generally is not kind to whistle blowers.

[dvt]

Off topic, but interesting to me: not sure if I've ever seen an editing mistake in The New Yorker before, and I've been reading it since I was a teenager. In a quote, "Ocean Gate" should be "OceanGate" or at the very least should include a "[sic]".

[Chaosvex]

It's not a mistake if it's verbatim. The [sic] is usually to show that the mistake isn't by the publisher but adding an additional space in a company name probably isn't egregious enough to warrant it.

[dwohnitmok]

> Anyone who has worked on a challenging project has heard concerns like this at various stages. It's absurd to conclude the project was doomed or reckless, just because someone expresseed concerns about success or not enough precaution.

This is almost certainly what Rush told people and a refutation of this claim is exactly why I think stories like this are valuable.

It's all a matter of degree. When one or two people tell you your ambitious project is doomed or reckless, there's some room for doubt. At some point though the scale tips. When your chief pilot writes a formal document refusing to pilot your vehicle, the overwhelming majority of your close peers tell you in no uncertain terms that you are going to kill someone, a group letter from people ranging from the Coast Guard to other experts again implore you not to dive, then the scale has definitely been tipped.

It is especially frustrating to see the CEO respond to these concerns as "a serious personal insult" as this is an extremely common pattern for how safety gets compromised.

Even if you think that people's safety concerns are overwrought, the absolute worst reaction is to take it as a personal affront, especially if it's coming from all directions. You think they're naive, you think they're not informed, whatever sure maybe. But you think that by raising safety concerns they're insulting you? That is a blaring red flag to me.

Whether you think this story is overplayed or not, in isolation, this article is hardly irresponsible journalism. It is a sober look at how safety gets compromised in the real world.

[jherico]

This wasn't some new gig economy venture, or some software idea. This was a submarine carrying tourists to one of the most dangerous places on earth.

There are companies dedicated to certifying maritime vehicles and standards against which they need to be built and tested, and Stockton Rush explicitly rejected them because he felt that they were stifling to innovation. Additionally, the people who told him that he was needlessly endangering people's lives were experts in their fields. And again, it wasn't just "someone", it was virtually everyone with experience in super-deep submersible operation.

The idea that just because there are often naysayers who claim some big projects are impossible doesn't mean that there aren't situations where they should absolutely be listened to and taking passengers on a submersible down to the Titanic is absolutely one of them. This guy played fast and loose with safety and if it had just been him down there, that would be fine, but he managed to bamboozle a bunch of innocent people into it as well.

[58028641]

If a project puts lives at risk, it absolutely is reckless to proceed until concerns are addressed.

[ergocoder]

Everything is an accident waiting to happen, just with different probability. Waiting long enough and it will happen.

[croes]

That's why the phrase is used when the probability is high

[mvdtnz]

We can say with certainty that the probability in this case is 1.

[jaimex2]

Everything is an accident waiting to happen. That's what an accident is.

Driving to work, that's an accident waiting to happen. Consider all the poorly signed roads, drivers of various states of sobriety and rage.

The sub was in use for years, they did well to engineer within their budget. There's always someone pointing out something wrong, nothing would get done if you actioned every single 'concern'

[mcpackieh]

> There's always someone pointing out something wrong, nothing would get done if you actioned every single 'concern'

> someone [...] single concern

"That spring, more than three dozen industry experts sent a letter to OceanGate, expressing their “unanimous concern” about its upcoming Titanic expedition—for which it had already sold places."

More than three dozen someones. More than three dozen concerns.

[croes]

You do know that phrases like that are used when the chance of an accident is considered pretty high?

Language also has a subtext that expresses more than just what the words mean.

[mvdtnz]

Hey man just letting you know in case you missed it, but this submarine catastrophically failed, killing 5 people. For this reason, I think it's a good idea to consider the reasons people called out concerns about its safety instead of brushing them off. That's just my opinion, though.

[curtis3389]

The ghost of Stockton Rush is posting in HN!

[eternityforest]

The FAA seems to action a lot of concerns... And stuff does get done, planes improve all the time, and it's very safe.

Perhaps this wouldn't have been possible on their budget... But I think I'd rather have no sub than a sub full of dead people.

[andreskytt]

Read Nancy Levesons work on system safety and you’ll see things are not necessarily so

[ornornor]

Negligence and contempt plays a big part in the odds though.