I take your point and I dont quible that in hindsight the mission was reckless. But just to bring some more information to the debate, OceanGate had previously taken the Titan to this depth to visit the Titanic. So, it was "proven". The german entrepreneur who is in this [1] article claims to have visited Titanic twice in the same sub.
[1] https://nypost.com/2023/06/21/former-titanic-sub-passenger-d...
This reminds me of an old joke about an optimist who falls from a 40 story building. As he passes the 30th story he thinks to himself, 'so far so good!'
(The submarine got weaker each time they used it.)
Otherwise, we are all in this boat.
This situation is an interesting statistical anomaly. Given that the Titan had a carbon fiber hull which was known to degrade more and more after each dive, the probability of failure increases after each successful dive. So you might think your chances of success are better the more times it came back safe, but the chances are actually worse.
If we criminalize puns, only criminals will make puns!
Vote No on Pun control.
For argument's sake, let's say it would follow the bathtub curve. You could summarize all the warnings they were given as basically saying that the wear out curve crosses the other two curves all the way on the left. You could also say that they took the bathtub curve for granted, not realizing that it's the result of deliberate work. So again, still no bathtub curve, no matter which way you look at it.
[1] https://abc7chicago.com/missing-titanic-sub-oceangate-lawsui...
I would say certainly the second trip was safer than the first, as the first trip ruled out lots of non carbon fibre related failures (e.g. the porthole)
The average HN knowledge of engineering.
“Scalability turned out to be harder than we thought!”
Or it was statistical reversion to the mean.
One less than the number that it did.
Surely there was a large amount of tail risk.
With this sub the number of safe operation cycles wasn't even part of the design considerations.