Debris from the OceanGate Expeditions Titan submersible was found Yesterday. As feared, all five of those on board perished. There has been a splash of ethics-related matters in the wake of the disaster:
1. Former US President Barack Obama, once again proving the hoary “stopped clock” metaphor’s accuracy, criticized Western media hypocrisy for making a missing submersible carrying five wealthy would-be adventurers on a tour of the Titanic’s wreckage a sensational news story while giving little coverage to a refugee-filled trawler sinking off Greece with up to 700 people on board. At least 82 people died in that tragedy this week, and hundreds more are feared to have drowned. The incident off Greece was completely overshadowed by the Titan rescue operation as soon as news of its disappearance surfaced. BBC, CNN, the New York Times covered the Titan rescue operation minute by minute. Meanwhile, no survivors or bodies have been found since the trawler sank carrying an estimated 750 men, women and children from Syria, Egypt, Palestine and Pakistan.
Of course the disparity in news coverage is due to commerce and profits blotting out journalism as well as decency. “Titanic” is a magic word that generates clicks and TV ratings, and despite their pretenses at other times, the news media knows that its readers are more interested in the fate of five rich people on a high-priced, high-tech junket than 750 poor refugees on a trawler. If journalists were the professionals they claim to be, they would report the news according to its obvious human and international priorities, and let the clicks fall where they may. But they aren’t. As we know.
Obama is right.
2. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), in contrast, decided to politicize the Titan’s fate with an absurd partisan cheap shot, blaming the five deaths on the U.S. Coast Guard after pieces of the submersible were found on the ocean floor. Things might have turned out differently, he said ludicrously, if leadership “had just acted sooner.” “What appears to be the case is epic failure in leadership,” Crenshaw claimed. “Where exactly that leadership failure is, I don’t know. Is it the White House, Coast Guard, Navy? I’m not sure.”
The vessel was just shy of 10,000 feet below the surface when the massive water pressure together with a weakness, crack or fissure in the submersible’s hull probably caused it to implode. Experts say that such an implosion would occur “within a millisecond, if not a nanosecond” and everyone would have been obliterated before they knew what had happened.
But surely if “leadership” at the White House, Coast Guard, or Navy had been on their toes, everyone might have been saved, right, Dan?
Let’s remember Crenshaw’s flagrant hindsight bias the next time a Democrat exploits a mass shooting to call for “sensible gun reforms” that wouldn’t have stopped it.
3. Then there is this “Get woke, get squished” note: OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who died in his company’s vessel along with the other four passengers, once told an interviewer he didn’t want to hire a bunch of “50-year-old white guys” like other submarine companies do because he wanted his team to be “inspirational.”
“When I started the business, one of the things you’ll find, there are other sub operators out there but they typically have gentlemen who are ex-military submariners, and you’ll see a whole bunch of 50-year-old white guys,” Rush said in 2020. “I wanted our team to be younger, to be inspirational…So we’ve really tried to to get very intelligent, motivated, younger individuals involved because we’re doing things that are completely new. We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, [are] related to safety and some of the the preponderance of checklist things we do for risk assessments and things like that, that are more aviation-related than ocean related and we can train people to do that. We can train someone to pilot the sub, we use a game controller so anybody can drive the sub.” [Pointer: Cathammer]
Ethics Alarms 
And the quickness with which the world produced memes a simultaneously demoralizing and… well… I’m not gonna say I didn’t crack a smile.
How about the “expert” tendency to always hedge a statement.
“At those depths, the pressures would cause a catastrophic and nearly instantaneous collapse of the submarines structure with the likelihood of survival nearing zero.”
Nearing zero.
Experts always making sure they can’t be accused of making an absolute statement.
I’m sure at this point there will still be “experts” saying “at this point, they have almost certainly perished.”
Or, as one political pundit titled his piece and wrote:
Distraction? Questions Swirl Over Timing Of Sub Story As Biden Bombshells Hit Target
As two IRS whistleblowers prepared to go public with more damning information implicating the Biden administration in a scheme to bury evidence of Hunter Biden’s tax crimes – as well as the revelation that Joe Biden was ‘in the room’ when Hunter shot a threatening message to a Chinese business associate demanding payment, a story which some have called “the biggest political scandal this country has ever seen”, another story captivated the nation: the deaths of missing submarine passengers who set off last weekend to see the Titanic, only to lose contact shortly into the trip.
Not to be insensitive, but this struck me:
“we’re doing things that are completely new. We’re taking approaches that are used largely in the aerospace industry, [are] related to safety and some of the the preponderance of checklist things we do for risk assessments and things like that, that are more aviation-related than ocean related”
Doing things “completely new” is not always that smart (cf. “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”).
Now, granted, I am not an aerospace engineer, or whatever the comparable underwater person would be, but it seems fundamentally stupid to use “up in the air” people to do “under the water” type of work. The up in the air people want to keep the air inside from going outside; the under the water people want to keep the water outside from getting inside. The balances of pressures are going in completely opposite directions.
Seriously, do you expect aerospace engineers to be focused on preventing airplanes from imploding mid-flight? Of course not! And they do an excellent job at not imploding airplanes in mid-flight. Those skills apparently do not transfer over to the design of submersibles. I just have to wonder if they put those little drop down breathing tubes in the submersible in case there was a “loss in cabin pressure” like they do in airplanes. THAT would be “completely new.”
-Jut
Sounds like the CEO is all washed up.
doing things completely new is how we make progress, even in engineering.
And aren’t we lucky to live in an age where robots are off the shelf technology so fewer people are lost to the completely new.
I’m not judging the lost submersible. Maybe someone will pick up the pieces and tell us what went wrong, then we can make judgements. Till then the loss of life and the sensationalism are both tragic.
May King Neptune treat them with kindness in his watery halls.
I dunno….he’s the same guy that killed all those people in “No Country for Old Men”…
I disagree.
Progress is rarely accomplished by completely new; it is accomplished by innovation.
You don’t reinvent the wheel, you improve it.
-Jut
https://gizmodo.com/square-wheeled-bicycle-bike-pedal-tank-wheels-the-q-1850332349
I feel like if someone showed up with this “innovation” in ancient Greece, they’d have been forced to drink poison.
My review of various reports in the Wall Street Journal suggests that the dive vessel that imploded this week was built on the cheap. Additionally, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush was warned his selection of carbon fiber for the hull was dangerous. Despite warnings from experts Rush also declined to submit the vessel to independent safety testing. Since Rush died in the sub this week, I would conclude he believed in the sub’s design and did everything he could to realize his vision.
Regarding his dig against old white guys, as a significantly older than 50 white guy I will explain why we should at least be consulted. It is a fact that old people have been able to live a long life despite their stupidity or the world’s efforts to eliminate them. They are not necessarily intellectually superior to anyone. I also concede that some of their survivals of perilous events could be chalked up to pure luck. However, with longevity comes experience and experience is an unforgiving teacher. If you are smart enough and lucky enough with experience will come wisdom. A friend once said to me he wished he had my wisdom. I responded I didn’t wish him that much pain. On a parting thought;
“The only source of knowledge is experience “– Albert Einstein
He used carbon fiber for the hull? What an idiot. No wonder he didn’t have any 50 year old white guys around, they might have stopped him. Those 25 year olds with little knowledge and no experience didn’t think about the fact that carbon fiber handles strain very poorly.
Speaking of stuff associated with airplanes — submariners were the folks who invented checklists. It was a useful concept that was later picked up by the Air Force and other folks.
I have no problem with innovation as long as we remember that there are actually risks involved. Being a test pilot, for the Air Force or for the Navy is an inherently risky business. Have you ever read about the guys who tested rocket sleds for the Air Force. They were trying to determine the effects of acceleration on the human body and their literally sacrificed their bodies while doing the testing. The NFL is like touch football in comparison.
The only problem I have with Obama’s statement is he is one of the people who fans the flames when a black person is shot by police and it gets splashed all over the media. But says nothing if a white person is shot by police and it is thus ignored.
But otherwise, yes, it’s a sad state that clicks and money drive a lot of the “news”
On the flip side, this is what the consumer wants. It’s not just the news, but the people reading these news. If they were interested in a migrant boat going down, it would be shown.
The newspaper business is called a business for a reason.
“Citizen Kane” came out in 1941. And there’s always “ink-stained wretches,” which I much prefer over “the fourth estate.” As does Hollywood, the news media have a self-promotion and self-importance problem that is basically fatal.
And there is also news floating around that the fate of the submersible and its inhabitants was known days ago but authorities did not release the information, allowing it to dominate news.
I would also add to Michael West’s post about memes being so disheartening. Social media is full of people disparaging the victims of the implosion because they were billionaires. Of course, the fandom of “Star Trek” whose most famous captain said in an episode, “Risk is part of our business” has been deploring the victims because “Infinite diversity in Infinite Combinations” only applies to non-billionaires, among others, I guess. More than a few fans are lamenting the lack of compassion.
I think that’s another reason it dominated the news, a mean-spirted desire to see if those billionaires got what was coming to them. There’s an attitude on social media (Reddit, I’m looking at you, for one) that you can’t possibly be rich without being evil, therefore anything that befalls you is to be celebrated. It’s all you deserve, after all.
They said the Navy detected a possible implosion in the area, and shared that news with the Coast Guard immediately. The implosion could not be confirmed to be submersible under the wreckage was found.
…so when is “Voyage of the Titan Submersible” coming to Netflix Streaming?
(ARRGH! I owe you an email!)
I wish Obama would simply STFU and go away, now that he and that vile wife of his had stuff some which wealth that will last generations to come. But since he opened his mouth again to crap on the west, I would ask him if he feels that the western media is equally despicable for wasting so much time and effort covering a low life like George Floyd (who almost definitely from overdose) and use him as excuse for vilifying the police and the US as a whole while ignoring the 1000s of black men killed by other black men. But I digress
From the Obama article:
“Journalists, activists and others have expressed outrage at how the boat incident off Greece was completely overshadowed by the Titan rescue operation as soon as news of its disappearance surfaced.”
“Surfaced”?
Poor choice of words?
Or deliberate play on words?
-Jut
I’ll never tell….
Even without knowing the facts, what happened is known. The submarine underwent catastrophic hull failure resulting in implosion and destruction. This can be caused mainly by three types of things:
1. Hull integrity problem;
2. Defective design of the control or safety system;
3. Operator error.
That’s basically it. When I was on submarines in the 1980’s, we had an unexpected depth excursion to test depth caused by crew error. Submarines are necessarily complex and inherently dangerous vehicles — as evidence, consider the obvious fact that they are already sunk.
Based on how all this went down, my expectation is that the submarine experienced a system failure or operator error that caused it to exceed it’s design depth by so much it imploded. It is unlikely that the hull merely failed, although that is certainly possible. Engineers design generous safety margins into submarines, and maintenance requirements for submersibles (assuming a clear understanding of and commitment to submersible design and maintenance) includes frequent NDT of the hull.
So while we don’t know for sure, my money is on improper operation or a control system/design problem rather than a defect in the hull. Trust me, even the best Naval designers can’t make a foolproof submersible, but lots of people can make and test hull designs sufficient to depth envelope operations.
But human attention does waver and control systems that are designed to ensure the submersible operates in its envelope can and do fail, and if the design lacked sufficient redundancy to respond to a control or operator induced casualty, this is the inevitable result.
He never had this submarine certified. This was the only deep-sea sub that wasn’t certified and inspected. I suspect he used a lesser safety margin than most people, just from the way he seemed to operate. The carbon fiber component of the hull is a problem. Every time it is stressed, it is likely some of the carbon-carbon bonds broke when the hull strained. Every time it went down, more damage was done until there wasn’t enough intact carbon fiber to withstand the pressure. The stress-strain line for carbon fiber is very steep, but not much strain is needed for failure. That is just a guess. I would be willing to wager $50 bucks on it (but no more) with decent odds.
Carbon fiber is not a good idea for hull material, and I didn’t know he used it. That would be, in my view, design insanity. He should’ve known that submarine hulls shrink slightly under pressure, and such movement, depending on where the carbon fiber was used, could require much more frequent NDT, which would’ve detected any weakness caused by fibers breaking, and hull maintenance including the replacement of the carbon fiber sections since it cannot be repaired like steel or titanium.
Novel hull designs in submarines are flagrant malpractice if not properly and exhaustively tested under multiple excursions and controlled conditions. That’s why the Navy doesn’t use them in their combat designs yet, and may never do so in my lifetime.
Titanium is a proven design for the hull. The Soviet Union used a titanium design in it’s Alpha-class attack subs back during the cold war, but the number of dives that design could withstand was much more limited due to what we just discussed. It could go far deeper than US designs, but it’s life was substantially shorter without major hull maintenance. I had imagined he used titanium, not carbon fiber.
The bottom line: If this guy cut corners as you describe, he is guilty of absolute criminal negligence regardless of the waivers signed. I hope he gets sued into poverty, and imprisoned.
Yeah, but the design was “inspirational,” so there’s that….
{Cough, cough}… Inspirational… of course.
You might add a “4 Collision with External Force”. There may be circumstances outside of the operator’s control that damage the hull mid-voyage
I consider that a very unlikely possibility at the depths at which they were purported to be operating. I believe that area of the ocean is pretty well charted for undersea mountains and what not.
But it is possible, however unlikely. Perhaps some sea creature fouled the propulsion or dragged it down. A giant squid would never create much trouble for a military submarine, but for this one it could be catastrophic.
You linked on Facebook the Wikipedia article of inventors killed by their own inventions.
I’m always intrigued by the Eiffel Tower ‘parachute’ guy and here’s Wikipedia’s excerpt regarding him:
He wasn’t lying to the authorities.
You have my address, right? To send the new keyboard?
Would you like a simple keyboard that clacks loudly with each stroke or one of the cool ones that backlights the keys and supports gaming?
Oh, it may not matter, given how dead it has been around Ethics Alarms today. If a keyboard gets spit-on and nobody reads the blog anyway, did it really happen?