Missing Titan submersible is operated by a cheap game controller

OmnipotentEntity@beehaw.org to World News@beehaw.org – 139 points –
videogames.si.com

the Logitech F710 is a solid controller to get if you’re on a tight budget, but perhaps not exactly the type of equipment you want to stake your life on. [...] Reviewers on sites like Amazon frequently mention issues with the wireless device's connection.

The reporter, who followed an expedition of the Titan from the launch ship, wrote that “it seems like this submersible has elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness.”

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Also of interest via this blog is this statement from OceanGate about why their subs aren't classed.

innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.

Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.

If I wanted to can and sell hubris, I know where to source it from now.

“Move fast and break things” maybe doesn’t apply too well to submarine design.

That's a hard agree. I work in a highly regulated industry and literally every new dude who joins the company says some version of "I don't see why we can't just..." and proceeds to describe some moderately to highly illegal shit. Every single one.

It's wild. I think they honestly believe they're the first person to think up these completely obvious and simple "solutions" to problems that require some degree of control and complexity.

If you can't imagine why someone built the fence then leave it alone until you do.

At my old job the director of my department had a poster up that said "move fast and break things", but he also demanded 99.9999% uptime.

I relate a bit too much to this... agile when convenient as well.

Especially when the previous smaller version of the same design, with the same materials, had problems with it coming apart a few years back.

innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.

Lol, the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Just say regulations. You know, honesty, with a touch of bullshit at the end.

Something like:

"Regulations are too difficult to deal with when you've got a substandard machine which wouldn't pass any of the requisite safety tests.

If someone happens to die, we've determined this to be acceptable collateral.

This is also known as innovation."

The good news is, the hubris is already in a can. The bad news is, the can is several thousand feet under the North Atlantic.

Some journalists did a story on this thing a while ago and it got lost for about 5 hours. During this time one of the reporters asked if it had some kind of beacon or transponder to locate it in situations like this. Their reply was something along the lines of “oh yeah that’s probably a good idea.” They never added it.

The lack of an emergency transponder is their biggest problem, followed shortly after by the inability to exit without outside help (which is literally what killed the Apollo 1 crew over 50 years ago). Next up, as pointed out in another thread, is that the sub is made of extremely brittle materials because that makes it lighter. Honestly, using off the shelf components for the controls doesn't worry me nearly as much as those other issues.

The more I hear about this the more I'm shocked that this death trap was allowed to operate at all! It seems on the level of that bear suit guy, super dyi energy but with no real use case.

You want to be more shocked? The pilot was the CEO. He was willing to risk everyone's lives and his own on this folly.

There was a video from some reporters that were given a ride I saw someone linked earlier, which included them having to sign a waiver that among other things stated that one acknowledges that the sub is an experimental vessel not certified by any regulatory body. So from the sound of it, there is nobody to regulate these things that would tell them no. I suppose given how rare civilian submarines are, let alone ones that take passengers, there probably hasn't been much need

Man. That’s the control you give to your little brother because you don’t want him to get the good control all sticky.

I was about to defend this (the US military uses XBox controllers for subs & drones), but then I saw that it was off-brand. No excuse for that.

Same, we use XBox controllers to operate remote cameras for pipeline inspections and they usually survive far longer than is reasonable considering some of the abuse we put them through. That being said, I have no idea about the quality of Logitech, but at the very least they should have had a backup controller available as it would have a small footprint and be a huge failsafe.

There's nothing wrong with using a game controller to steer the thing, I think the issue is more the lack of backup or failsafes.

Also, I'm very much a layperson in this field, but would it have not made sense to tether this thing to a ship on the surface? They could have kept in contact with the surface via the tether and had them reel the thing back in if there were problems with its propulsion or steering.

I saw the video of its interior. As someone who has claustrophobia, it's absolute nightmare fuel. It's a cylinder about 15 feet long and maybe 6 feet wide that you can't even stand up in. It's going to be very unpleasant for 5 people.

Also, there's no way to open it from the inside, they're bolted in.

So even if they surfaced, they'll still run out of air if they're not found soon.

I agree completely with the controller, it doesn't really matter what is used to steer the ship, just that it has fail-safes.

I don't think resurfacing is the most important part here. Bathyscaphes are normally designed to jettison iron or steel ballasts attached by electromagnet, which allows them to surface due to their natural buoyancy. It's impossible to say if that's how the Titan works though, there isn't a lot of detail available publicly about its design.

This is a really interesting video to get a take from an experienced submariner that I found really informative - https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac

Thanks for sharing that video link. It was very insightful.

It seems like a really bad idea to use a wireless controller instead of a wired one. But I guess it shouldn't matter as long as they have a backup wired controller in case the wireless one dies.

I think there's more to it than that.

When working at industrial factories if I catch a glimpse of something run off a cheap consumer alternative to the standard industry equipment I immediately question everything. If they're willing to skimp on that item, where else have they skimped?

Check out this video where the owner shows off the sub.

He bought parts from Camper World!

You take that back! Camper World is a hallmark of quality, I bought all my kidney extraction equipment from there!

They navigated by getting text messages from the ship...

That's fucking insane when you're going miles under the sea

Submarines have got to be insanely expensive right? It seems kinda silly to even cheap out on components like this, when their cost of probably going to be a tiny fraction of the cost of the vehicle anyway.

I take it you haven't heard about what happened to this sub.

Laugh now but when it comes out that the Logitech controller was the only thing to survive the implosion, you'll look pretty foolish.

Hopefully they at least have some spare AA batteries to swap in when it dies in the middle of a match.

I saw a video of this submersible. The view was through a TV. Imagine going to the bottom of the damned ocean to look at the Titanic on a TV.

UK billionaire Hamish Harding, who holds three Guinness World Records and was both in space and in the lowest depth of the Mariana Trench, is one of the people currently on board the Titan.

Yikes, that’ll be some big trouble for them

Lets hope the company stays afloat after this one. Hopefully they can get more billionaires to sign on

And yet, probably second to the billionaire CEO also being in it.

I've used the F710 so that our family can couch co-op in the living room. For a Logitech controller it's pretty solidly built and is of the era where Logitech peripherals were of good quality (unlike now, rip new G503s). I noticed that the wireless range kinda sucked if it didn't have direct LOS to the receiver, but it has good rumble feedback and I like the smooth matte black underside material (feels good to the touch).

Bu would you stake your life, and the lives of others, on it performing well thousands of meters below the ocean?

I used, and loved, a cheap little Logitech keyboard for years before it died on me. Wouldn't Jerry-rig it into my car and use it as my steering apparatus though.

I wouldn't even stake my Elden Ring playthrough to a cheap third party controller. I've been playing consoles since the early 1990s and there has never been a time where 3rd party performs better than 1st party.

Holy shit. BBC has a short video that shows the interior of the sub and how it's controlled. It's a featureless tube with one button and the wireless controller. I wasn't expecting the submersible from Life Aquatic, but I wasn't expecting anything like what's shown in the video.

I think this is how you make a link? Like in wiki markup

here's plain text if that link doesn't work.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-65953941

Water and an X-Box controller. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, if there’s water inside the sub you probably have more serious problems to deal with.

To be fair at that depth if there's water inside the sub you have 0 problems to deal with because you are dead

What an absolute shit way to die: freeze to death from hypothermia due to the electric heaters running out of battery, crushed to death by water pressure compressing you inside a compartment, or drown to death in a dark unforgiving cold that strips you completely from all hope as it slowly rises and takes your precious air.

It’s barely a consolation but I read that during the Thresher submarine disaster the men would have been killed in 1/20th of a second, too fast for their nervous systems to process the implosion.

The sub has seven different ways to re-surface and went silent during the descent phase, so there’s only really one likely option — crushed in an instant. It could get stuck at depth if it got tangled but that seems unlikely during the descent.~___~

Long ago, I was a midshipman on a submarine. The crew LOVED to watch submarine disaster films - with water spraying in all frothy and fire-hosey. But the reality would be a flooding time measured in fractions of a second, in most cases - people are not used to dealing with pressures in the tons per square inch except at the nozzle of pressure washers where the flow is tiny. So, on the bright side, most submarine failure deaths are quick ones.

I keep seeing this headline and it's a bit misleading to imply that its not a functional way to control that type of vehicle, even the American military has been known to use them.

The purpose for the control method was to have something to have a go when it was safe, they had several on hand in the off chance something happened to it.

These controllers are a product of decades of functional advancements, them being intuitive to use doesn't mean that they are not efficient and functional.

So is everyone else thinking they accidentally fucking plowed into the Titanic because a controller input got stuck?

Pretty unlikely. It's easy to dunk on them for the controller, but they apparently carried backups, and it's nowhere near the most concerning thing about their operations. It's much more likely that their extremely brittle carbon-fiber hull fatigued (again), their homegrown acoustic fatigue detection system didn't detect it (or it did and they ignored it), and the ship was crushed in a fraction of a second.

That or lost connection/battery.

The only wireless controller I ever owned would continue any repeating input active when connection dropped, if batteries or wifi died; they could just be cruising at max speed off in whatever direction they were facing, until the motor batteries run dry.

You'd like to think they'd carry backup interface, or even just use a wired controller, but this whole op sounds pretty McGuyver top to bottom.

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