Ohio billionaire Larry Connor said he wants to prove that the imploded Titan sub "was a contraption" and that the ocean can be "kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way."
Billionaires are partially responsible for every workplace death that occurs due to inadequate safety. It's less wishing death and more vengeful thoughts.
I mean, he'll probably be okay. Deep sea submersible technology is pretty nailed down at this point.
What happened with the Titan is the Ocean Gate guy thought he was smarter than everyone else and could make a deep sea submersible with non-standard components (carbon fiber that had passed it's expiration date, off-the-shelf electronics, oh and a window not rated for the depths it was going). And to be fair the out of the 15 attempted dives down to the Titanic only one of them catastrophically failed. A 6.6% failure rate isn't too bad... for some applications.
Honestly if it was just a drone it would have been pretty respectable. Using otherwise less desirable tech and materials to achieve a goal equivalent to high tech shit is pretty impressive. But they just gad to put people in it.
Every new detail I learn about the engineering of the Titan submersible takes me to a yet more profound depth of claustrophobia I did not know was possible.
I'm amazed that the local military is still mulling over the investigation to recommend criminal charges. Seems open and shut to me. Criminal negligence at least, multiple homicide well within reason. People were even warning him not to put people in an untested carbon fiber submarine before it's journey resulted in failure.
Yeah, I came here to make pretty much the same comment. Submarines aren't exactly the most difficult things in the world to buy or build, the OceanGate guy was just a catastrophic moron with a heart of rot.
But what makes you think this particular billionaire doesn't also suffer from delusions of grandeur and thinks he too can make a submarine with parts bought at home Depot?
the ocean can be "kind of life-changing if you go about it the right way."
yeah, like if you make a series of staged* test dives to determine the vessel's endurance and viability before filling it with a group of rich dummies and going straight to the bottom in one go.
*"staged" as in test diving in successive stages of increasing depth, not "staged" as in "faked"
This guy seems to be taking safety slightly more seriously with his sub plans than the last guy. Which is unfortunate for people looking forward to more billionaires transforming themselves into paste.
Right? I know we don’t like reading the articles around here, but this is about a $20 million submersible being commissioned from a company that has successfully gone down to Challenger Deep before.
It’s still billionaire wankery, but it’s much more reasonable in its budget.
This billionaire, rather than trying to wing-it and design his own submarine, is enlisting the services of a company that has already designed, built, and used a number of record setting deep-sea manned submarines.
Hey. me too! I started tests using rocks. I figure, if a rock attached with a string can reach the bottom, then I should be able to go inside a larger rock and reach the bottom too!