Quoted:
Edit:  and I’m not blaming the young and diverse engineers who signed on to that shitshow. This all rests on the CEO, who is now resting on the ocean floor.

Quoted:
How much equity do you have in oceangate? lol

The entire submersible industry wrote this clown a letter telling him his submersible was unsafe which he ignored. There was legal action which provided a lot of facts around the firing of an engineer who said the craft was unsafe including information saying parts weren't certified to anywhere near the depth this submersible was going. There are interviews with multiple people who either didn't go on the craft because it was unsafe or had a variety of issues including mission aborts.

I don't think you understand risk and negligence at all in this context.

Quoted:
Given that the R&D is already "done" and the molds are cast, it's probably cheaper to just rebuild the hull and test it under controlled conditions cycling it through the depths.  I think that will yield the answer and at lower cost than going through the whole bit of searching, piecing together the pieces, sending recovery ships all over the place etc.

I imagine someone will likely do just that and we'll get our answer as to how it failed.

Quoted:
If I design a car, and my lead engineer, and other engineers with extensive experience and designing cars insist that there are critical flaws in my design that would likely result in fatalities, and I turn around and sell tickets to use the car insisting to customers that the car design is safe, that's a different story.

Quoted:

I disagree with you.  They had 1 job to do.  Design a sub that can take these tourists to the titanic and get them back safely.  They completely failed, in the worst way possible.  They were too busy taking tiktok videos and bragging about how they designed a sub.
These brave and strong kids should all be stripped of their university of phoenix sub designer degrees.  Go back to microwaving avocado pastries at starbucks.

Quoted:


Uh, you're overthinking it here. This doesn't warrant an essay on Risk Theory.  The Titan wasn't a matter of arbitrarily minimizing risk; it was a case of wanton recklessness.  Like I said, like running the Indy 500 without a roll bar.  Or with tires rated at 80 mph max.  Or trying to walk across Death Valley in July with half a pint of water.  Or going swimming in a river packed with crocodiles.  Just plain stupid, had nothing to do with some elegant notion of risk.

Quoted:


You make it sound like they dropped them down in a 1000 gallon propane tank. Millionaires die on Everest every year but people keep going back. In a death zone area, if the slightest thing goes wrong your fucked, it's as simple as that. The people on that sub new the risk and still went. My attitude is Zero fucks given.

Quoted:



They had an ethical responsibility to speak up if they knew, or even thought, anything was unsafe but they likely didn't have the experience to recognize just how close to "unsafe" this thing was. It's also really easy for young engineers to worry about going against their bosses' orders (that doesn't justify not speaking up though).

Quoted:


Designing a car is very different because there are countless international, national, state, and local laws governing their design and production using the force of law to require compliance.  No such thing for subs - there are just things that the existing operators agree are good practices.  

Nobody signed a waiver when they bought a ford pinto that said "the gas tank might explode and kill you" so lawyers were able to successfully argue that a reasonable layperson could not possibly know that risk and that ford did know of the risk and failed to act on it.
Additionally, Ford has stock holders that they are legally required to act in the best interest of.  

Quoted:
They chose carbon fiber as a marketing gimmick.  Light weight is it's main useful property and benefit vs more traditional materials.

Quoted:


Yeah unfortunately daddy and son are dead. So I wonder what the last words daddy said to the son.

Quoted:

I've hired and trained a lot of young engineers over the years and even the best of them would have fucked up badly without some guidance. And when it comes to composite structures that is usually years of guidance by many experienced engineers. This seems lost on most though, especially management.

Quoted:
I'm not an expert, but my impression is that waivers like that generally do not hold up in court when negligence can be demonstrated on the part of the company - and that definitely seems to be the case here.


Sure, the waiver says that the craft is experimental and has not been tested or approved by any regulatory agency.

But does it also say that safety engineers who pointed out flaws in the craft were fired, and their concerns ignored?  Does it say that the window has not even been rated for half the depth they were taking it to?  Does it say that lots of industry experts warned the company that they were unsafe and were going to kill people?

Also, when the CEO is on record as saying that going down in his vehicle is as "safe as crossing the street" when trying to convince people to pay him big bucks to ride in his death-trap, that is very much at odds with the language in the waiver.

Quoted:

So the number of man hours spent determines if something is reasonable?  If that was true then you could just hire 50 minimum wage workers to surf the internet and expend 100k man hours in a year to make your product safe.



One man's corner cutting is another man's improvement in process efficiency.  CEO was an experienced engineer, the "SME" he fired was not an engineer.  Who determines what an SME is?  



If two experts disagree who decides which one is right?  Lawyers?  Politicians?  A third engineer?  I contend that the free market does.  
So if I have an employee who refuses to come to work because driving is too risky I'm not allowed to fire him because he pointed out a risk?  
Who "rates" parts for a use and why should the "rater" have the ultimate say in how their product is used after they sell it?  



Minimizing risk is why the US government can't put humans into space right now without the help of an African immigrant or Russia.
Risk aversion is also why we can't replace the a10 or oh58 or complete any number of other projects that have been done in the past.  


Here's a recent article on NASA's risk aversion.  NASA is a joke in terms of human space flight specifically because of their risk aversion.  About a week before he died Gus Grissom said "If we die, we want people to accept it. We're in a risky business, and we hope that if anything happens to us it will not delay the program. The conquest of space is worth the risk of life."  Some other famous guy said that without risk there can be no reward.  

This has come up in GD in the past about various catastrophes and it's always the same result.  The fact is that risk is necessary and, at least in America, you are generally free to take whatever risks you want.  Most people draw the line at what their uneducated "gut feeling" of risk tells them is risky.  My mom always rolled car windows down when going over a bridge and my grandma always told me to be careful with knives.....

In my mind there is only one key question about the CEO guy I would want investigated:
Did he accurately convey the risk that he placed on the sub to the paying passengers?  Risk has two components: severity and likelihood - he accurately conveyed the severity in writing with the "you might die" waiver.  But how accurately did he convey the likelihood of the "you might die" risks?  
The details of this will surely be litigated and I bet there will be laws or regulations made by the US government about activities such as this.  
The unfortunate outcome is that government regulation does not foster innovation or economy - it fosters bureaucracy, monopolies, and barriers to entry into the market.

Last note: 20/20 hindsight makes it easy to retroactively condemn the CEO guy.  Don't be a bitch, look at it objectively.  I contend that there is no wrong answer (to anything) if everybody involved has full awareness a decision making process.  Freedom is scary!

Quoted:


I suspect that's the actual reason they wanted young blood doing their work. The CEO's attitude strikes me as someone who didn't like to be told no.

Quoted:
I'm not an expert, but my impression is that waivers like that generally do not hold up in court when negligence can be demonstrated on the part of the company - and that definitely seems to be the case here.

Quoted:


NHTSA says 7,388 pedestrian deaths occurred in 2021.  
versus 5 mini sub deaths over multiple decades.  

Which one is safer?  Hint: it depends on your definition of safety.

Quoted:


I suspect that's the actual reason they wanted young blood doing their work. The CEO's attitude strikes me as someone who didn't like to be told no.

Quoted:
I'm not an expert, but my impression is that waivers like that generally do not hold up in court when negligence can be demonstrated on the part of the company - and that definitely seems to be the case here.


Sure, the waiver says that the craft is experimental and has not been tested or approved by any regulatory agency.

But does it also say that safety engineers who pointed out flaws in the craft were fired, and their concerns ignored?  Does it say that the window has not even been rated for half the depth they were taking it to?  Does it say that lots of industry experts warned the company that they were unsafe and were going to kill people?

Also, when the CEO is on record as saying that going down in his vehicle is as "safe as crossing the street" when trying to convince people to pay him big bucks to ride in his death-trap, that is very much at odds with the language in the waiver.

Quoted:


I totally agree.  It doesn't matter at all.  Families of the dead people will likely not be able to recover anything in a lawsuit.

I was just making a general observation about how waivers don't really protect companies that engage in risky behavior as much as people might believe.  My wife and I have been scuba diving for almost 25 years, and the waivers that dive boats make you sign are almost completely worthless, but they still make everyone sign them.  

Quoted:

Bingo!  He hired true believers and yes men.  That is what he really meant when he stated he didn't use 50 year old white guys with sub experience.

Quoted:
Given that the R&D is already "done" and the molds are cast, it's probably cheaper to just rebuild the hull and test it under controlled conditions cycling it through the depths.  I think that will yield the answer and at lower cost than going through the whole bit of searching, piecing together the pieces, sending recovery ships all over the place etc.

I imagine someone will likely do just that and we'll get our answer as to how it failed.

Quoted:
As a young and naturally inexperienced engineer it takes enormous bravery to tell the boss "no".  

Quoted:


And that's only after they recognize there is an issue. Some of these engineers may not have even recognized there were corners being cut.

Quoted:
Barack Obama questions why Titan submarine tragedy that killed five got MORE coverage than boat with 700 migrants sinking off the coast of Greece

Video


https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/06/23/17/72138943-12227609-The_crowded_boat_is_pictured_before_it_capsized_off_Greece_s_sou-a-15_1687538685459.jpg

The overcrowded boat with hundreds of Pakistani, Syrian, Egyptian and Palestinian refugees went down on June 14 - two days before the $250,000-a-head OceanGate tour to the Titanic wreckage went missing. It is pictured before capsizing  


More

Quoted:
As a young and naturally inexperienced engineer it takes enormous bravery to tell the boss "no".   I suspect you are both correct, and that shows not only arrogance and stupidity but a malice of forethought.  

Every safety person eventually determines that people suck.  We are the biggest root cause of almost every accident.  I'm jaded for sure, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.  

Quoted:


And that's only after they recognize there is an issue. Some of these engineers may not have even recognized there were corners being cut.