News

But it's still as narcissisticly stupid as we already know it was.

This Wired article is an interesting read, well worth the time.

I wish we could see into the head of Stockton Rush a little bit more. The job of all entrepreneurs is to a large degree knowing who to listen to and who to ignore, as well as figuring out which rules you can break. Usually the lives of passengers and yourself is not on the line, though and that's why so many of the highly competent engineers left his team.

A lot of his decision making seemed money driven. He got quotations for testing services but declined because of the cost. Salvaging the old titanium rings from the old busted hull to use on the new hull was a risky choice but new ones were surely very expensive. Perhaps a much larger budget would have led to a more committed team of experts and the resources to test things to a higher degree of confidence.

As this article points out, OceanGate just never came up with a design that was good enough for the job at hand.

But what can you say. The ocean floor is littered with countless dreams.

Behind the Bastards did Stockton Rush

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-stockton-rush-inventor-of-118084105/

Even when OceanGate decided to change the domes in the final design from carbon fiber to titanium, Rush didn’t commission models to test the interactions between the new materials; one former employee who was familiar with Rush’s decision says the CEO balked at the high price tag.

Bro, wtf. Then they also reused the same o rings from the first hull and ripped it off and moved it to the new hull. I'm surprised they didn't die sooner. Thing was a death trap.

Virtually all marine vessels are certified by organizations such as the American Bureau of Shipping, DNV, or Lloyd’s Register, which ensure that they are built using approved materials and methods and carry appropriate safety gear. It has been widely reported that Rush was dismissive of such certification, but what has not been made public until now is that OceanGate pursued certification with DNV (then known as DNV GL) in 2017—until Rush saw the price. “[DNV] informed me that this was not an easy few thousand dollar project as [it] had presented, but would cost around $50,000,” he later wrote in an email to Rob McCallum, a deep-sea explorer who had also signed Kohnen’s letter.

Later in article:

Reality was more prosaic. Like most startups, OceanGate was in constant need of funds. Rush was trying to save money wherever he could. Interns, who made up around a third of the engineering team, were paid as little as $13 an hour. (When a manager pointed out in 2016 that Washington’s minimum wage was just $9.47 an hour, Rush responded, “I agree we are high. $10 seems fair.”) Rush also downgraded the sub’s titanium components from aerospace grade 5 quality to weaker and cheaper grade 3, says one former employee.

I knew they were being cavalier about safety, but didn't realize they were penny pinching to this degree.

I wished this happened to Bezos and Musk on their space penises. But I'll take these billionaires.

I got a good laugh out of it. wouldn't call it shock.

Did Stockton Rush at least get his Darwin Award? Or is that only for people who do not murder others?

I do like the idea of how the billionaires who died didn't understand that their own hatred of quality control standards applied to every other corporation including the ones they have to rely on for their safety.

I remember a lot of giggling, not as much shock.

Surprise surprise big tech company ceo turns out to be a self-entitled, I know it all, asshole. If only it always had negative outcomes on billionaires cause usually it is the exact opposite. Normally they float and common people drown.

These guys have lich levels of drive for success and living forever and yet can be so self absorbed in their clearly unjustified and uninformed ideas about very technical topics, that they can literally march themselves and their siblings to certain death. This just proves that they have the capacity to destroy the Earth in the most obvious way and yet not realize it. Like "I am sure a single nuke to China will be fine they have billions" level of stupidity I am talking about here.

My favorite part was the qualified engineer sending him the stress curve graph with the likely crush depth zone marked with literal skull and crossbones and he apparently just ignored it and chose to exceed those depths anyway.

In January 2018, Lochridge sent Rush a quality-control inspection report detailing 27 issues with the vehicle, from questionable O-ring seals on the domes and missing bolts to flammable materials and more concerns about its carbon-fiber hull. Rush fired him the next day. (Although Lochridge later made a whistleblower report to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration about Titan, Rush sued him for breach of contract. The settlement of that lawsuit resulted in Lochridge dropping his complaint, paying OceanGate nearly $10,000, and signing an NDA. Lochridge did not respond to WIRED.)

Ugh

The only shocking thing is that the rich idiot who said "fuck you" to all the safety standards actually suffered consequences.

I can't believe all the warning signs