On the Titan’s second deep test dive in April 2019—an attempt to reach 4,000 meters in the Bahamas—the sub protested with such bloodcurdling cracking and gunshot noises that its descent was halted at 3,760 meters. Rush was the pilot, and he had taken three passengers on this highly risky plunge. One of them was Karl Stanley, a seasoned submersible pilot who would later describe the noises as “the hull yelling at you.” Stanley was no stranger to risk: He’d built his own experimental unclassed sub and operated it in Honduras. But even he was so rattled by the dive that he wrote several emails to Rush urging him to postpone the Titan’s commercial debut, less than two months away.
The carbon fiber was breaking down, Stanley believed: “I think that hull has a defect near that flange that will only get worse. The only question in my mind is will it fail catastrophically or not.” He advised Rush to step back and conduct 50 unmanned test dives before any other humans got into the sub. True to form, Rush dismissed the advice—“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”—telling Stanley to “keep your opinions to yourself.”
he did one test to determine if the hull could withstand the pressure, it failed, and then he says one data point inst enough to determine the integrity of the hull of of one failed data point.
“One experiential data point is not sufficient to determine the integrity of the hull”
Yeah man. That’s what the other 50 tests would be for.
Some people genuinely think the world runs on who-says. He’s a real smart guy - he asserts this is fine - therefore it must be. Anyone who disagrees is challenging him, and saying he’s not smart, and that can’t possibly be true because look how much money he has. This is the raw chest-beating tribal mindset that I think defines conservatism, as an innate human ideology. I understand why people in that loyalist mode are unconvinced by reasoned argument. I have no idea why allegedly rational outsiders in the critical mode keep trying anyway. The search for ‘what loyalists really believe’ is a category error.
They don’t believe things - they believe people.
Back when this incident first happened, there was a few articles posted that day, and someone posted a reply on one of the threads, but I’m too lazy to find it now.
Basically they said they worked at a university research lab where Rush was conducing pressurized testing on the capsule (seals and such). They’d conduct half a dozen tests in one day, have one “success” and Rush’s team would call it a “success” and move on to the next test.
i remember seeing something to that effect as well. move fast and break things isnt a bad way to do things, til you put the lives of others on the line. making many iterative designs and testing them mightve proven him right long term, highly unlikely but whatever. instead he went with the first that would never have been safe.
Here’s the same link with 75 pounds of tracking bullshit removed.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/08/titan-submersible-implosion-warningsAnd here’s the archive link:
https://archive.ph/mt8ujThat was an excellent article. It was pretty infuriating to read about the sheer cavalier arrogance of the guy that got everyone killed.
He thought he knew better than everyone else – than the establishment – scientists and engineers with decades of experience in building and operating submersibles safely at extreme depths.
It’s like this asshole did things “differently” (read: wrong) – by making the worst, most idiotic possible design decisions – purely out of spite and hubris. And ignorance I guess.
That would be bad enough. But then ignoring every warning from experts … and ignoring his own test failures… Fucking hell. If he got himself killed, alone, I wouldn’t bat an eyelash but it sickens me that others paid with their life for his unabashed negligence.
I’ve known people like that, but fortunately they don’t try to put people in harms way for a buck.
Too bad his only other passengers weren’t that lawyer and head engineer.
Tbh that safety guy that got fired and sued pisses me off, too. His legal fees were being covered but he still settled out of court and allowed the problem to disappear for them.
Though the real villain is the legal system that allows a lawsuit about a safety director disagreeing that something was safe to proceed or one involving the wife who wasn’t otherwise involved. Which is also why I wish the lawyer, that said “ok” when the piece of shit asked him to file that lawsuit, was on the sub when it imploded.
