Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show

jay91@lemmy.mlbanned from sitebanned from site to World News@lemmy.ml – 323 points –
Titan sub CEO dismissed safety warnings as 'baseless cries', emails show
bbc.com
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I mean, by all means you have the right to take yourself out however you want, but to take others with you is what they call "a dick move".

I mean, I hate speaking ill of the dead, but fuck this guy.

If you’re going to speak ill of any of them, it should probably be the guy who was responsible for the deaths of the other four; when somebody murders his family and then himself, we don’t generally treat that person as a victim.

Going to the bottom of the atlantic in a pringles can is a pretty baller way to do it to yourself too.

Charging a quarter mil to do it to others is decidedly not baller 😞

To be fair, this is the first time he died in the sub...

Yeah, I don't know what all these people are complaining about. You can easily live the rest of your entire life in an imploding sub.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

- Terry Pratchett

Rules are written in blood.

Apparently the Titanic caused all the maritime laws to be rewritten for vessels. It’s very ironic that 100 years later we’re likely going to have something similar for submersibles caused by an accident at the same location with a similar name.

maybe, but because it happened in international waters maybe not. if it was in US coastal waters the Coast Guard would have had to approve the vessel. at best it will lead to registering the company in a country that doesn't care about maritime safety or laws, similar to having your head corporate office located at a post office box in ireland to avoid local corporate taxes.

You could absolutely write a law that prohibits operating, advertising, selling, or having their point of embarkation inside country X for diving tours on non-certified vessels. Or something along these lines. I'm sure a lawyer could come up with something better.

Making the commercial part illigal in many countries wil make it definitely more clear that you put your own life at risk. If people with that knowledge still want to (likely )kill themselves that's not a problem. The budget for rescue missions wil also be more reasonable for in most countries explicitly unsafe subs.

The exchange is worth repeating more fully. Excerpts:

Rob McCallum: “You are wanting to use a prototype un-classed technology in a very hostile place. As much as I appreciate entrepreneurship and innovation, you are potentially putting an entire industry at risk.”

Stockton Rush: “I know that our engineering focused, innovative approach flies in the face of the submersible orthodoxy, but that is the nature of innovation.”

Stockton Rush: “I have grown tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation and new entrants from entering their small existing market. Since Guillermo and I started OceanGate we have heard the baseless cries of ‘you are going to kill someone’ way too often. I take this as a serious personal insult.”

Rob McCallum: “I think you are potentially placing yourself and your clients in a dangerous dynamic. Ironically, in your race to Titanic you are mirroring that famous catch cry 'she is unsinkable.' Having dived the Titanic, and having stood in a Coroners Court as a technical expert, it would be remiss of me not to bring this to your attention.”

(Emphasis mine)

tl;dr:

Warnings over the safety of OceanGate's Titan submersible were repeatedly dismissed by the CEO of the company, email exchanges with a leading deep sea exploration specialist show. In messages seen by the BBC, Rob McCallum told OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush that he was potentially putting his clients at risk and urged him to stop using the sub until it had been classified by an independent body. Mr McCallum told the BBC that he repeatedly urged the company to seek certification for the Titan before using it for commercial tours. Mr Rush founded OceanGate in 2009 and the company offered customers a chance to experience deep sea travel, including to the wreck of the Titanic, on board Titan for a price of $250,000. Experts have questioned the safety of Titan and how private sector deep-sea expeditions are regulated.


I am a bot in training. Suggestions?

Every transport industry is heavily regulated with regards to safety for a reason. If you start a commercial enterprise on an untested vehicle you’re asking for trouble.

What could go wrong 13000 feet under the ocean?

13,000 feet into the ocean. Being under the ocean requires some digging, I think.

But under the sea does not require digging.

Co-signed by Jules Verne and some little mermaid.

I have no issues with an untested tin can as a traveling device through a high pressure environment. However, I am personally going to pass if the opportunity arises for me to try this out.

At least he went down with the ship sub.

Does the strikethrough not appear to anyone else? To me it shows the ~s.

*On Jerboa for Lemmy.

Jerboa too, and it is not rendering the strike through.

I just got an update for Jerboa, and it's rendering the strikethrough for me

I installed newest update and can see the strikethough

I'm also on jerboa and don't see the strikethrough

Working fine here (kbin web interface). Possibly a limitation of whatever app you're using? I would expect it to work fine via web, though.

I installed the PWA because of the issues with Jerboa. Looking forward to Jerboa being a better experience eventually, though.

I played with both and prefer jerboa by a lot There's one bug where to respond to your inbox you have to long press next to the name to bring up options.

I hate to say I'm glad he was the pilot, but I kinda am. If he was around right now he would be insufferable. Most likely going on a damage control tour talking about how it was a freak accident, it's not his companies fault and how they can't wait to resume tours.

Safety schmafety, what could possibly go wrong?

Quick, I need to know this. Was he correct?

We are still waiting for his comment on the subject to surface.

I have a sinking feeling he might have made a mistake.

This is a pretty low joke, why don't you show some respect here?

I am sure he was under a lot of pressure to run a successful business. Traveling down to the bottom of the ocean is a titanic undertaking. If people started to complain about safety regulations, then that was just the tip of the iceberg and who knows what other obstacles could have cropped up along the way to sink his ship.

Edit: 2 people can't read

I was in the Marines and you couldn’t pay me to sink to the bottom of the ocean in a metal tube bolted in with 4 other idiots. They all signed a waiver stating the vehicle wasn’t properly tested.

There is no respect to be given here. All of them were advised of the risks and they accepted them. We are free to make fun of them for their decision since they literally signed a waiver for their lives.

Safety regulations save lives. If my crew wasn’t properly anchored to something I’d lambast them for improper safety. I’ve also terminated crews for not following safety protocols. There was nothing safe about what these idiots did and they got exactly what was coming to them.

@finthechat @jay91 @VanillaGorilla @NumbersCanBeFun @Sordid guarantee this guy had it made and is a rich idiot

Still, this was a deep situation. It's unfathomable to think that anyone could feel nothing about this.

You don't have to feel crushed by the news, but at least show some respect. If I had $250,000 for every rude comment I've read about OceanGate in the last few days...

May they rest in PSI.

Come on, stop with the jokes about billionaires, they are still good people (deep down)

Societal etiquette has really imploded in the last few years. Every time I look at social media, it's like I am seeing new depths of bad behavior. I hope someday we can all gain some perspective and stop taking on water so we can right this sinking ship.

Just goes to show everyone that wealth =/= intelligence and while I feel sorry for the rest of the people and their families in there - I do think that if anyone should have died in that mess it was the CEO himself & certainly not some random tourist that he couldn't have cared less about besides their money and those tourist dollars.

At this point everyone knows this man was incompetent in every aspect. Do we really need to read about it once again? People died, that's sad but they were fully aware of the risks. Let's move on.

I think I can get behind a few more days of this if it sears into any other rich, incompetent asshole’s brain out there a fear that their legacy will be as a laughingstock, not a genius engineering disruptor, if they ignore safety regulations.

I doubt other rich read such things anyway. They already heard it, probably giggled that he really was that stupid and moved on.

"It would never happen to me. I'm one of the smart ones." Said everyone that would eventually have it happen to them. God damn people that dont wear their seatbelts.

Were they fully aware, though? Sure the ceo was, but if I buy a trip on an airplane I assume the proper maintenance has been carried out. I know it’s not exactly the same, but there’s no way everyone on that sub had the knowledge or expertise to fully know just how not safe the experience really was.