Reporting seems to conclude this sub and crew is lost to rescue, with the news of the debris field. I have some past experience doing ocean research on during my time at Georgia Tech ('07-'12), and another colleague and friend, Dr. Jordon Beckler, from that time experienced diving to 2500 meters in Alvin along East Pacific Rise.
Jordon shared some thoughts about his experiences which I thought might be interest to anyone following the news on this, just based on the unique experience, and the tragedy does bring into question whether robotics should take over all future exploration missions.
Anyways thought it was interesting. He had a lengthy IG live and also another here from FAU Harbor Branch where he is a professor.
This wasn’t an exploration mission though, it was tourism (basically comparing a future NASA human Moon/Mars mission to a New Shepard suborbital flight.
I dunno, I’m obviously a huge fan of using drones for exploration but also wouldn’t want to see one tourism mishap halt all true human exploration of the deep sea. There’s a lot to be learned when developing human survival technology in harsh environments, and if we are going to learn to adapt to changing climates or alternate environments, research in this area is important.
There isn’t maybe a space parallel just in terms of the level of catastrophe, maybe because the level of sophistication needed for space flight compared superficially to submersibles. Both do have other factors other than mission risk driving more robotic missions, mainly cost (that factors in safety) and also just good enough systems that can achieve the objectives remotely. For subs, the value of being able to put a ROV on site for days instead of hours, and the reduced ship costs, increase how much scientific data collection can be done. There is value in human exploration, and I think given some knowledge what happened and recognizing differences in the level of testing and safety (and budget) between scientific vessels does play a part in still being viewed relevant to future explorations. But the trend towards ROVs hopefully won’t cut off submersible exploration, though the use cases may narrow especially with more autonomous ROVs.
The engineering techniques to keep the vehicles safe (in space, on land, and under the sea… anywhere) are all fundamentally the same:
probabilistic evaluations of failure
methods of estimating failure rate of complex systems
design techniques to minimize the probability of failure to an acceptable level
documentation techniques to prove you actually did what you thought you did.
The difference is in how expensive it is to get to an acceptable risk level.
In any domain, when comparing ROV’s vs Human-carrying vehicles, the ROV’s will always win out cost per unit capability. The threshold for “worst case failure” is lower, so you don’t have to design as robustly.
But people are fickle. There’s intrinsic value in the exploratory nature of physically, personally, going somewhere new. This will always be the deciding factor: is someone willing to pay the extra cost to go there themselves, over just letting a machine tell them about it?
While the balance will shift over time, I always expect someone will be willing to pay for exploring.
I am generally a pretty empathetic person, but this is precisely why I am feeling very little empathy over this event. The whole thing, at least from my perspective as an interested observer, reeks of an exploration for sale cash grab, which ultimately resulted in some lives lost, huge mobilization of resources and the environmental cost that probably isn’t too great. All just for a company to profit off of a graveyard. Doesn’t seem right to me.
But I suppose one could make similar arguments about war, or how poverty and suffering play out on a global scale… Allocation of resources is a weird thing when intertwined with a desire for “experiences”.
I’m not liking what I’m reading about the design and testing done as well as the CEO’s attitude towards safety. Someone should be going to jail for this.
I feel terrible of the families of the people involved. They’re the ones who are going to suffer the most from this, by far.
I grieve the loss of human life. People die every day, but it’s a somber reminder when it happens due to engineering failure.
I’m angered at OceanGate, the company. By all available information, the combination of management and engineering culture there led them to defer good engineering safety process and analysis to the lawyers.
I’m angered the risks do not appear to have been fully calculated or documented. And yet multiple people chose to continue to run tours.
I’m frustrated with the lack of clarity in reporting I saw in some news outlets, conflating bravery and recklessness.
I am sobered by the fact we have witnessed the next chapter in engineering ethics textbooks.
But I’ll remain alert. This is all so recent. Perhaps there is more to this story that will change my opinion.
Today’s episode of New York Times’ The Daily was about the sub and its history. The episode was released very early this morning before we got today’s updates.
It does an excellent job telling some of the history of the sub and how we got here. There are some parallels to aerospace and some interesting tidbits about regulation (or lack thereof) and the company that I haven’t seen covered a whole lot yet.
Any loss of life is tragic, no matter what circumstances led up to it. All we can do as society from here is continue to learn.
From what I’ve read/seen/heard, there’s a loott of room for improvement… just to get to minimum standards.
The next time something like this happens, it shouldn’t be able to reach this stage. Ideally, the government introduces regulations, as a result of this tragedy.
We’re pretty laissez-faire, but companies that literally put lives in danger should be regulated to prevent tragedies like this from happening.
When I saw the Logitech controller in the video I went… did someone really use the FTC KOP to build their deep sea submarine…. This is why we can’t have water games.
International waters make this tricky…they can clamp down in some ways on domestic activities, but ultimately nothing can stop the libertarian mindset to commit murder-suicide by cutting corners.
James Cameron’s comments are well worth a watch. Taking paying passengers on a deep dive with a truly experimental unproven pressure vessel design with insufficient testing (no certification) is criminally irresponsible.
It’s one thing to do things differently when you’re SpaceX launching unmanned things. As odd as it may sound, the sea is a much less forgiving environment than space, or even rocketry. This is not an area to be experimental with lives at stake.
