The only positive thing about the OceanGate disaster is that the clown who essentially guaranteed that it would happen died in the implosion. It was about as inevitable a disaster as can be.
At every step of the way, Stockton Rush seemed to revel in defying common sense. the laws of physics, and good engineering practices. He hired people who, whether from inexperience or lack of training, didn't know what they were doing. He used materials that were not suited for the purpose, because he thought that defying the rules was a good thing. Which may be, to some extent, but when dealing with hostile environments, safety rules are often written with blood. Rules come about because people have gotten themselved killed, or killed other people, from doing stupid shit.
There seems to have been far less oversight of the construction of OceanGate's submersible than there is of some guy building a GT400 in his garage.
Here's one that can be learned: When you want to take a ride on something, and the operator tells you that you're going to be given the title of "mission specialist," think really, really hard about finding something else to do for funzies.
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Because hand waves. Because stuff is easy (that elite intelleckshul stuff is just to keep real people from showing they can do it too). Because you saw it in a video game. Because the Real People of the GOP like MTG, Hawley, DeS&#thead and the like have proved everything is performative. Because Trump has showed us that screaming, saying trash and hate, posing and waving your hands (and Sharpie) makes you presidentshul.
Me, I'm installing a screen door on my deep-sea submersible; it'll keep the flies out.
Hubris versus Physics? Physics wins by a mile.
w3ski
w3ski, my default sig covers another inevitability.
“We are living through a revolt against the future. The future will prevail.”
— Anand Giridharadas
As much as the "disrupt the paradigm" tech bros hate to hear it, the experts are almost always right. Or as I was once quoted as having said "Things that work usually do, things that don't work almost never do."
-Doug in Sugar Pine
I feel sorry for the kid. Who knows?
Natural laws have no pity
Elon Musk blew up his launch pad and no one died.
Calculating risk requires a knowledge of probability.
Probability is unintuitive to homo sapiens.
Applied probability https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0dwntct/can-you-learn-to-predict-the-future-
I build small boats, sailboats, canoes, rowboats, as a hobby. I use composites in their construction. I thought they must be doing something special I don't know about due to the limitations of the materials. Turns out they didn't. Those issues aren't that big a problem on a row boat -but on a pressure hull -sheesh. That's just nuts.
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