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Comment by vsareto | Hacker News Reader

Real-world training for the newbies, exercise for the journeymen, and teaching moments for the experts. That alone is worth my tax dollars for keeping a robust search and rescue force.

At least some of the CEO's estate should go to paying for it, but pay out to victims' families first.

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> Real-world training for the newbies, exercise for the journeymen, and teaching moments for the experts. That alone is worth my tax dollars for keeping a robust search and rescue force.

This. When the shit hits the fan, and lives could be at stake, the participants in responsive operations seem to focus more intently, and the lessons learned seem to get imprinted more firmly, than when it's a drill.

(There was a reason that when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the emergency radio transmission that went out was, "Air raid Pearl Harbor X This is no drill." [0])

I suspect the psychology might be related somehow to Samuel Johnson's dictum that "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/12/0...

Yes I get the training aspect. My point was around charging them for this. There are other such rescue missions where our brave men and women risk their lives because of reckless behavior of some. We should at least have such reckless actors take a bigger burden where possible.

It's my understanding that in rescue missions where the targets don't pay with their lives, they end up paying monetarily afterwards.

Depends a great deal on who is doing the rescuing and whether the people rescued are considered negligent. Iceland's SAR team, for example, has gone back and forth on whether to charge people because when people believe they'll have to pay, they're less likely to call for help until the situation has gotten way worse and way more dangerous for the team.

The same would happen for the fire department. Can you imagine if an investigation blamed you for a house fire, then the fire department charged you for services? Many fewer people would call the fire department, and many more would die in house fires. People seem pretty casual here about wagging the finger. Just wait until they make an accidentally poor decision and need to be rescued.

In general, certainly at smaller scale (e.g. hikers who get lost/injured in winter), they're not charged in many places unless there was clear negligence. Which is mostly how you want it to be. You don't really want people to avoid search and rescue and just hope things work out because they're afraid of a big bill.

Besides any sort of altruism, there's also fame-seeking or marketing to consider; pulling off a high-profile rescue puts you and your company's name in the news, and makes people think of you as a business that can solve other difficult problems.

Agreed. Hopefully, this will result in a requirement for "black boxes" or "flight recorders" for this type of recreational/tourist endeavour going forward. They aren't going to prevent the accident that just occurred, but they provide valuable data to prevent future accidents.

Agree with the sentiment, but 3+ of the victims had far more net worth than the CEO

The 5th passenger from the French, maybe not

Exactly. Same reason that, even setting aside basic humanitarian ethics, it made sense for fire departments from all over America to send their crews to help out after 9/11 even though the victims didn't fund them; the experience is well worth the expense.

Which of the victims asked those planes to be sent their way?

I'm not sure what you're trying to say.

You're comparing a terrorist attack (9/11) to reckless malfeasance (this sub). The more apt comparison would be of 9/11 to the Andriana disaster. It's a bit ridiculous to champion the humanitarian benefits of sending a throng of people to look for a handful of people in a very unusual situation while ignoring the larger humanitarian disaster that is far more likely to happen again (ergo far more important to practice for).

And, yes, it's a zero sum game. People looking for the five rich guys are people that cannot look for the hundreds of children trapped on a sinking ship.

At this point, we don't know that there was reckless malfeasance at play. However, there is plenty of circumstantial data to indicate that may have been the case. There was certainly an explicit and willful disregard for expert advice or battle-tested opinions. However, we don't have enough information yet (and may never get it) to conclude that was the cause of the accident.

It could be that someone/something damaged the hull (oceans and boats are notoriously hostile environments) and that created a weak spot that failed under pressure, or that some other mechanical failure occurred. However, those are both every bit as speculative as what I'm cautioning against. They are provided for illustration, only.

Could be? The whistleblower found visual defects in the carbon fiber before they even started using the sub. That's why they fired him. They eventually found more damage and repaired the hull in 2020/21.

You're assuming these searchers would actually be able to get to the sinking ship with children in time. The Mediterranean Sea (near Greece specifically) is quite far from the Titanic site. Exactly how fast do you think ships can travel?

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