“Rush, who saw himself as an innovator like “Steve Jobs or Elon Musk,” the complaint says, once told Pogue, “At some point, safety just is pure waste.” Rush thought he had found a lighter way to build subs.”
This really summarizes the mindset of most second+ generation rich people. Because this guy lived with a lot of inherited money and power all his life, he assumed that everything that comes out of his brain must be the ultimate truth. So much so that without even a single reservation he happily took his son with him to that journey knowing full well that the submarine was probably violating several critical safety requirements that he deemed unnecessary. We are basically being ruled by such people folks.
I’ve worked with plenty poor people who thought the exact same thing.
The only difference is that he actually had the resources to realize his stupid ideas
you should really consider frequency among non billionaires and among second+ generation billionaires. not that I have data on it but I really do think growing up in such an environment does inflate your sense of self idea worth and therefore such a person is more likely to act in this way (but not claiming at all that they are the only ones)
This controller kept me in rocket league gold for months. I put it on eBay and some shmuck said they need it in a submarine but are on a budget so max can do is three fiddy. I just wanted to get rid of the thing
At this point filing a multi-million dollar lawsuit against OceanGate will be like trying to extract blood from a stone.
What tangible assets do OceanGate really have left to pay Nargeolet’s estate? Their CEO (the maverick aerospace engineer who thought he was ‘revolutionizing’ the submarine industry by cutting corners) is dead, their only active submersible imploded, their reputation has been tainted by the fact that they’ve been selling billionaires what is effectively a carbon fiber coffin waiting to implode, and any angel investors have probably pulled out harder than a porn star on the verge of climax.
Even then, they may not even have a case. IANAL but in an age where every single tech and gaming company has been pushing through class action waivers and forced arbitration clauses in their Terms of Service, I get the feeling that any attempts at suing OceanGate will be thrown out of court by the waivers each passenger had to sign.
There is a sense of irony in people celebrating this disaster on social media because it means “five less billionaires in the world.” No, this is potentially a massive L for us commoners, because it shows just how much corporate greed can destroy lives. If the rich can be screwed this badly by an unregulated corporation, imagine what corporate giants can do to people who can’t afford lawyers.
I think Logitech should take responsibility and give them a $30 voucher
“best we can offer is a replacement. but you will need to return the original”
Maybe a $10 Uber Eats gift card?
I own 3 of those. They are not for PS or XBox but for mostly for PC gaming. They are not Bluetooth, they come with their dedicated USB nano receiver. I don’t even trust them to win a championship in “F1 race stars”, the arcade F1 game. The wireless is not reliable enough. They eat AA batteries like candy.
Absolutely agreed and I’ve had to replace the shoulder bumpers on mine twice now. ALSO the trigger traverse is RIDICULOUSLY LONG! Like I can fire an actual semi pistol faster and those have a five lb draw.
But man do they feel nice in the hand. No controller since the ps2 has felt like this to me.
Since the story came out people fixated on “lol he used a shitty gaming controller” but really that is one of the least sketchy design choices in the entire rig. Why reinvent the wheel and make a custom set of controls that are realistically another huge expense and potential failure point, when off the shelf solutions exist for that component?
The corners that were cut are the ones involving the viewport/nose adhesion to the ships frame, and the structural integrity of the carbon fiber hull itself. They had test data suggesting it was a bad idea to engage in repeated dives with their design, and an even worse idea to operate at the depths they chose. They decided to ignore that.
That doesn’t explain why they used the wireless version of that Logitech instead of wired to control the thing they were literally inside.
To be fair, they’re under water and sharks have been known to chew through electrical cables
I suspect the wired cabling would be to control components inside the sub, not outside. And I say that only because it’s unlikely that wireless signals would penetrate the sub walls.
Yes but with this sub the water was on the inside too
From what I can tell the lawsuit (which is against Ocean Gate, not Logitech) is really just calling out the controller as another example of willfully negligent behaviour.
You’re certainly correct that the actual cause of the failure was the carbon fibre hull. Just a terrible idea on so many levels. Carbon fibre, by its nature, is good under tension, not compression. It was never going to function well as a pressure vessel underwater.
There were a litany of terrible decisions made by Ocean Gate, such as not tethering the sub, because it was cheaper to launch it from a towed raft, but none of those bad decisions ultimately mattered once that pressure vessel failed. Those people were dead so fast that, to quote Scott Manley, “You go from being biology to being physics.”
I’ve got two F710s and they’re reliable enough. I wouldn’t trust them in pro gaming though.
If I got in the sub and saw one of these used to steer it, I’d be very concerned. I know they’re not really blaming Logitech; just taking one of these out of the plastic packaging and saying ‘OK, now we’ve got steering and propulsion!’ is not really a safety culture to get behind.
Everyone’s joking here but I’ve owned and used an F710 since 2009 and they are ABSOLUTE CRAP.
I’m not even joking but their range is like 3 feet in the BEST conditions and their USB controller is proprietary and doesn’t even work with OTHER F710s.
Anyone who’s used one for more than a few hours knows this.
Why do I still use mine? Well the hand feel is amazing and the weight is perfect, but everything else is terrible and shouldn’t even be used for gaming.
Just get the F310, like me, and you can enjoy that three foot range without batteries.
Also, WHY DID THE SUB USE THE WIRELESS VERSION WHEN THE WIRED IS CHEAPER AND WIRED?
I think mainly the wireless choice was for aesthetics, they were building experiences for billionaires and those assholes put way to much score in appearance.
To be fair it wasn’t used for gaming lol
Oh yeah, the controller is clearly the one a fault here…
I mean, they clearly made this for an submersible, one made of carbon fibre specifically.
Just taking a guess here but the controller was probably brought up as evidence for how much they were cutting corners and disregarding safety and good sense, not as the cause of the failure
Behind the Bastards did a pretty great two-parter on Stockton Rush, and how a) he completely shit the bed while ignoring all the super-deep-exploration experts, and b) how nature was totally telegraphing to Rush and OceanGate that this submersible is totally not doing it and will end in a spectacular tragedy, only no one else will be down there to watch but the fishes.
The controller wasn’t a particularly weak link, though for safety’s sake I’d want there to be a redundant spare, and it set up for plug and play. But higher on my priority list would be things like integrity monitors and an emergency way to open the sub from the inside (the hatch was bolted from the outside, and there were no emergency exit measures.
Anyone who uses the F710 more than an hour will have it randomly disconnect like twice. No idea who okayed that part but it wasn’t even the affordable option at the time as it was ALREADY years out of production when they built the sub.
To be fair, they all exited the vehicle pretty quickly at the time without it needing to be unbolted from the outside. Experts… pfft.
Such bad taste, sir. Have a reluctant upvote for that absolutely crushing wit.
Are you hoping to get upvotes for “crushing”?
How dare you. I would never go so low
Fr srious tho, it is really tragic. The young man especially; he was completely innocent and deserved better
Pretty sure the fly by wire system isn’t why the beer can imploded.
The vast majority of the cause of the 3 mile island nuclear meltdown was a moisture soaked compressor pump completely unrelated to any of the safety or emergency systems. With complicated failures, the actual fault is not always easy to detect.
It’s reasonable to think that the controller might have contributed to unexpected descent past safety levels, or prevented them from recovering when warnings appeared.
Three mile island did not have a meltdown, ffs. Not even close.
Three mile island did not have a meltdown, ffs. Not even close.
“The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
You are technically correct, and that is the best kind of correct. I spoke from frustration, having grown up there. What i should have said was that there was no danger to the public, it was fully contained behind multiple redundant safety containments. Its frustrating because i feel like that incident stalled nuclear energy in this country since then.
I wouldn’t say no danger, but the danger was averted. It did even release radioactive material, but not enough to be dangerous.
It could have gone much worse, but it didn’t.
They couldn’t have splurged for an Xbox controller at least?
Could be worse. Could have used a left Joy-con.
Srsly, it’s clear these guys didnt play video games with controllers growing up. Could you imagine getting left drift down there!?
They should have had an entirely redundant system on there; the controller being the first item on the list and from there to the motors.
You joke, but watch this:
https://archive.org/details/take-me-to-titanic
from 29 minutes in. A last-minute adjustment before launch plugged in a thruster backwards; no protocol to check the behaviour prelaunch. They doscovered it when they got to the bottom.
Jebus, I cant believe the engineers would allow them to be plugged wrong. It’s so easy to design that mistake away
Question. Who are they actually suing? Didn’t the bozo die along with everyone else? So who would hold responsibility?
It appears they are suing OceanGate, the company that made the submarine. The use of cheap, consumer grade hardware for critical functions (literally controlling the sub) is one of their criticisms.
