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Comment by kingTug | Hacker News Reader

> Lochridge discovered the viewing window on front of sub "was only built to a certified pressure of 1,300 meters, although OceanGate intended to take passengers...to...4,000 meters...OceanGate refused to pay...to build a viewport that would meet the required depth of 4,000 meters."

Previously unseen levels of "I told you man, I warned you" here.

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Thing is... The CEO is aboard the missing submersible. That same CEO who presumably wouldn't pay for a proper window...

This wasn't only a case of a CEO putting other lives at risk for profits... This was a case of a CEO putting his own life on the line for profits he will likely never see...

CEOs sniff their own abysmally stupid farts all the time. When trying to sell something, the first person you have to trick is yourself, but that does NOT indemnify them for harming others. Getting people killed because you are too stupid to understand basic risk concepts shouldn't be acceptable.

Power should come with responsibility and accountability ESPECIALLY if you are not responsible or accountable.

It seems like the CEO here did pay the ultimate price of responsibility and accountability.

There's gotta be a middle ground between doing whatever with no repercussions and literally dying by your own stupidity.

"When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

"Please don't fulminate."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Is CEO a protected class now?

I'm not saying you owe CEOs better, but that you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

> This was a case of a CEO putting his own life on the line for profits he will likely never see...

At least he put his money where his mouth was. Or rather didn’t put his money, but you know what I mean.

You mean: He put his ass where his mouth was...?

He put his ass where his money wasn't.

I mean, at those pressures, yeah.

He still killed other people, and fired the only guy who got it right, denying him revenue and pension and health insurance.

I didn’t mean to say he’s a good guy, just that it’s one step up from others who make others take the risks at no cost to themselves. You know, face I win tails you lose kind of thing. But yeah, still reckless and irresponsible.

Revenues are modest in the submarine sinking business

I suppose that to be a CEO in that kind of business you have to have a faulty understanding of risk.

I may be wrong here, but I think there is a regulation that prevents the owner of an airline from piloting the planes of their own airline. It might create a conflict of interest between saving money and being cautious.

This is not only a theoretical risk. It happened. A Brazilian soccer team, Chapecoense, hired a private airliner to get them from Bolivia to Colombia. Due to some bad luck, airport closing hours and whatnot, the flight plan had to be changed and the plane was fueled below what the regulations required. They were getting close to the destination airport when they got a low fuel warning. More bad luck and in the airport of the destination the flight control asked their flight to wait while another plane had priority in landing.

There were alternatives to redirect the flight or request priority to land, which they only requested when it was too late and the plane crashed due to fuel exhaustion. 71 of 77 people in the plane died in the crash, including the pilot.

The pilot was also the co-owner of the airline, so there is room to speculate that he didn't want to promptly admit to be low on fuel and require priority to land, or divert to another airport when the low-fuel warning appeared, because he would have to admit that he fueled below what the regulations asked. He could face the consequences, like a fine or losing his license.

I might forgot or misunderstood something, but more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaMia_Flight_2933

The simple solution to this specific problem is to spot check planes when they land for how much fuel they have left.

Fine anyone who has nearly run out upon landing.

That is already done. Similarly, anyone who requests priority landing because of low fuel will be investigated as a matter of cause.

Well built or not (clearly not) you could not pay me enough to be bolted into a carbon cylinder going down 4000 meters.

Given the whistle blower this company has no hope of surviving any lawsuits, even if the victims (passengers) signed away their rights.

I don't know what a lawsuit would hope to gain - given that the CEO and the company's main asset are gone, I doubt there's much of a company left to sue.

The carbon fiber tube is also sealed from the outside by 10 inch long bolts. There is no way to open it from the inside (not that it really matters at 13,000 ft deep), just to add to the terror.

Yeah, I'm happy to enjoy the views of Titanic wreckage from 4k video footage taken by robot subs, while viewing it in my underwear in front of a 70" OLED tv. In a few years I will probably be able to don a VR headset and swim around the titanic in VR. I'm satisfied with that alternative.

If you look at the pictures linked in the arstechnica article, you can see they used screws in the _carbon_ _fiber_ _hull_ to fix a monitor and lights.

They are really up there with boeing to compete for a price in malicious stupidity.

I was wondering about that. What would be the proper way of doing it? Perhaps glue…but then you have the screws that hold on the titanium caps. Maybe carbon fiber in general wasn’t a good choice.

Edit: Actually I’m wrong. The hatch is bolted on to a titanium ring, which is glued to the carbon fiber body. So no hatch screws in the carbon fiber. [0]

[0]: https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac?t=245

Wouldn't they want everything on a inner sled, like a cool looking carbon rollcage, hanging from attachment points, perhaps on Titanium rings on end caps?

No, no, no. They can't have. Right?

1: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/FzEiw...

2: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/06/submarine-missing-nea...

I can't see any wires going to their camper world lamp on the ceiling, but I do see what looks like a reworked area in the hull from the back leading to it...

Obviously not the pressure hull, just sheeting. Probably got wiring, pluming, ventilation, insulation and expansion over probably insulation/expansion wiring and insulation and expansion joint under there before the real hull.

Found a photo looks like you can see the other side.

https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt949ea8e16e46...

And you can't really tell what fasteners are being used either. It could be screwed straight in the side like it's drywall, but it could be something slightly more reasonable.

It's not a contraption I would set foot in, but they reached the Titanic multiple times with it. That can not be done with screw your TV into the pressure hull level stupidity.

EDIT: And the pressure hull is 5 inches thick. That thing looks about a half inch.

It doesn't even look remotely comfortable for more than a few few minutes - they seem to be sitting crosslegged on a metal floor. Couldn't they spend a few dollars to put a padded seat cushion on the floor?

I'm usually the first to look at how to defend engineers' decisions when building something that failed... But it's very hard for me to imagine how this can be OK.

had they tested it at lower depths before?

It had made several dives to the Titanic in 2022

Not this model...

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