the Logitech F710 is a solid controller to get if you’re on a tight budget, but perhaps not exactly the type of equipment you want to stake your life on. […] Reviewers on sites like Amazon frequently mention issues with the wireless device’s connection.
The reporter, who followed an expedition of the Titan from the launch ship, wrote that “it seems like this submersible has elements of MacGyver jerry-riggedness.”
Also of interest via this blog is this statement from OceanGate about why their subs aren’t classed.
innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.
Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.
If I wanted to can and sell hubris, I know where to source it from now.
“Move fast and break things” maybe doesn’t apply too well to submarine design.
That’s a hard agree. I work in a highly regulated industry and literally every new dude who joins the company says some version of “I don’t see why we can’t just…” and proceeds to describe some moderately to highly illegal shit. Every single one.
It’s wild. I think they honestly believe they’re the first person to think up these completely obvious and simple “solutions” to problems that require some degree of control and complexity.
If you can’t imagine why someone built the fence then leave it alone until you do.
At my old job the director of my department had a poster up that said “move fast and break things”, but he also demanded 99.9999% uptime.
I relate a bit too much to this… agile when convenient as well.
Especially when the previous smaller version of the same design, with the same materials, had problems with it coming apart a few years back.
innovation often falls outside of the existing industry paradigm.
Lol, the fuck is this even supposed to mean? Just say regulations. You know, honesty, with a touch of bullshit at the end.
Something like:
"Regulations are too difficult to deal with when you’ve got a substandard machine which wouldn’t pass any of the requisite safety tests.
If someone happens to die, we’ve determined this to be acceptable collateral.
This is also known as innovation."
The good news is, the hubris is already in a can. The bad news is, the can is several thousand feet under the North Atlantic.
Some journalists did a story on this thing a while ago and it got lost for about 5 hours. During this time one of the reporters asked if it had some kind of beacon or transponder to locate it in situations like this. Their reply was something along the lines of “oh yeah that’s probably a good idea.” They never added it.
The lack of an emergency transponder is their biggest problem, followed shortly after by the inability to exit without outside help (which is literally what killed the Apollo 1 crew over 50 years ago). Next up, as pointed out in another thread, is that the sub is made of extremely brittle materials because that makes it lighter. Honestly, using off the shelf components for the controls doesn’t worry me nearly as much as those other issues.
The more I hear about this the more I’m shocked that this death trap was allowed to operate at all! It seems on the level of that bear suit guy, super dyi energy but with no real use case.
You want to be more shocked? The pilot was the CEO. He was willing to risk everyone’s lives and his own on this folly.
There was a video from some reporters that were given a ride I saw someone linked earlier, which included them having to sign a waiver that among other things stated that one acknowledges that the sub is an experimental vessel not certified by any regulatory body. So from the sound of it, there is nobody to regulate these things that would tell them no. I suppose given how rare civilian submarines are, let alone ones that take passengers, there probably hasn’t been much need
There’s nothing wrong with using a games controller to steer the thing, I think the issue is more the lack of backup or failsafes.
Also, I’m very much a layperson in this field, but would it have not made sense to tether this thing to a ship on the surface? They could have kept in contact with the surface via the tether and had them reel the thing back in if there were problems with its propulsion or steering.
Also, there’s no way to open it from the inside, they’re bolted in.
So even if they surfaced, they’ll still run out of air if they’re not found soon.
I very much doubt that such a tether would be physically possible at the depths they were diving to.
I agree completely with the controller, it doesn’t really matter what is used to steer the ship, just that it has fail-safes.
I don’t think resurfacing is the most important part here. Bathyscaphes are normally designed to jettison iron or steel ballasts attached by electromagnet, which allows them to surface due to their natural buoyancy. It’s impossible to say for the Titan though, it was a specialty one-off design without much public detail about it’s design.
This is a really interesting video to get a take from an experienced submariner that I found really informative - https://youtu.be/4dka29FSZac
Thanks for sharing that video link. It was very insightful.
Can you imagine paying $250k to ride in this death trap?
They could afford to pay $250k for a vacation, and they voluntarily rode this deathtrap?!
Proof positive that being rich doesn’t make you smart.
Where they get to watch the Titanic oh a fricking TV! It could as well just have been a simulation with a small robot that actually goes and films the Titanic.
What weirded me out was it was being cast as a joint exploration effort when one of the members was charging the others. Would seem like a total grift, given the cost-cutting steps, if not for the owner/‘designer’ putting their own life on the line too.
Such deep sea submersibles are inherently a bit of an experimental industry, but even a cursory scan of opinions from others in that community seems to suggest it’s seen as extremely not-kosher to put others’ lives on the line with your experimental craft. Dude just seems to have been a bit nutty, and not altogether considerate enough of his own wellbeing or others’.
Especially when you have to sign a waiver that literally reads:
“This experimental vessel has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body, and could result in physical injury, emotional trauma, or death.” Source
fuckin yikes
I just hope this destroys the entire extreme vacationing fad… but it probably wont
It will just get more expensive.
I saw a video of this submersible. The view was through a TV. Imagine going to the bottom of the damned ocean to look at the Titanic on a TV.
Ah, look at the titanic while shitting in an outhouse sized tube with 4 other people… What an experience
I was about to defend this (the US military uses XBox controllers for subs & drones), but then I saw that it was off-brand. No excuse for that.
Same, we use XBox controllers to operate remote cameras for pipeline inspections and they usually survive far longer than is reasonable considering some of the abuse we put them through. That being said, I have no idea about the quality of Logitech, but at the very least they should have had a backup controller available as it would have a small footprint and be a huge failsafe.
2 AA batteries required. (included)
They forgot to change the batteries before sending the sub out 💀
Can’t rely on the batteries they include, they’re usually cheap with maybe 40% charge.
Or they accidently packed AAA instead.
For me the worst part is that there is a father and son aboard. And the son is only 19 years old. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to know that my own son is going to die because of my idea to go on such a risky expedition (even if it was the kid’s idea the father should’ve nixed it).
https://au.lifestyle.yahoo.com/london-tycoon-shahzada-dawood-son-104752797.html
It seems like a really bad idea to use a wireless controller instead of a wired one. But I guess it shouldn’t matter as long as they have a backup wired controller in case the wireless one dies.
I think there’s more to it than that.
When working at industrial factories if I catch a glimpse of something run off a cheap consumer alternative to the standard industry equipment I immediately question everything. If they’re willing to skimp on that item, where else have they skimped?
Check out this video where the owner shows off the sub.
He bought parts from Camper World!
They navigated by getting text messages from the ship…
That’s fucking insane when you’re going miles under the sea
You take that back! Camper World is a hallmark of quality, I bought all my kidney extraction equipment from there!
Username checks out and concerns me.
Submarines have got to be insanely expensive right? It seems kinda silly to even cheap out on components like this, when their cost of probably going to be a tiny fraction of the cost of the vehicle anyway.
I take it you haven’t heard about what happened to this sub.
Laugh now but when it comes out that the Logitech controller was the only thing to survive the implosion, you’ll look pretty foolish.
The new nokia
Hopefully they at least have some spare AA batteries to swap in when it dies in the middle of a match.
Will the resulting scandal be known as OceanGategate?
Nah, titan-ic
Man. That’s the control you give to your little brother because you don’t want him to get the good control all sticky.
https://www.engadget.com/2017-09-19-us-navy-high-tech-submarine-xbox-controller.html
Granted the evaluated this for periscope controls not steering but still. The leap isn’t huge and if you got some backup options that’s probably a pretty sensible path to take.
I’ve used the F710 so that our family can couch co-op in the living room. For a Logitech controller it’s pretty solidly built and is of the era where Logitech peripherals were of good quality (unlike now, rip new G503s). I noticed that the wireless range kinda sucked if it didn’t have direct LOS to the receiver, but it has good rumble feedback and I like the smooth matte black underside material (feels good to the touch).
Bu would you stake your life, and the lives of others, on it performing well thousands of meters below the ocean?
I used, and loved, a cheap little Logitech keyboard for years before it died on me. Wouldn’t Jerry-rig it into my car and use it as my steering apparatus though.
I wouldn’t even stake my Elden Ring playthrough to a cheap third party controller. I’ve been playing consoles since the early 1990s and there has never been a time where 3rd party performs better than 1st party.
I watched the video in the article. I don’t think I’d be comfortable submerging at all in that thing, let alone all the way down to the Titanic. I hope they’ve had technical issues, blown the ballast and is floating around somewhere waiting to be spotted.
Personally I think the best case scenario is for it to have imploded and they all died instantly. Any other option seems like torture to me.
Surely the best case scenario is that they’re floating around on the surface somewhere. Unless you expect that means an inevitable slow death from thirst and hunger…
Edit: Thank you to the people that noted that they would be shut in from the outside. In that case I’d argue it’s better to float around on the surface and then suddenly die if not rescued before the air runs out. If that’s not an option, I don’t know.
Floating on the surface is only barely better than stranded deep underwater, there’s no hatch for them to open so they’ll still be limited by oxygen and there’s no locator beacon that might help rescuers find them.
No locator beacon?? Like… why the hell not??? Was this whole thing an exercise in seeing how stupid they could be?
Well the sub can’t be opened from the inside, so if they’re floating on the surface they’ll still run out of air if not found. And people really underestimate how hard it is to find small craft in the ocean. You’re looking for a needle in a haystack, with the added twist that the ocean currents move stuff around so the search area grows
Yeah I think they mentioned it was the area the size of Connecticut…
That’s my fear in this case, and it can be occurring at the surface or down below - not sure which is worse.
I hope the best for them as well, but even if they make it to the surface, they can still suffocate because they’re bolted in from the outside.
Holy shit. BBC has a short video that shows the interior of the sub and how it’s controlled. It’s a featureless tube with one button and the wireless controller. I wasn’t expecting the submersible from Life Aquatic, but I wasn’t expecting anything like what’s shown in the video.
I think this is how you make a link? Like in wiki markup
here’s plain text if that link doesn’t work.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-us-canada-65953941I keep seeing this headline and it’s a bit misleading to imply that its not a functional way to control that type of vehicle, even the American military has been known to use them.
The purpose for the control method was to have something to have a go when it was safe, they had several on hand in the off chance something happened to it.
These controllers are a product of decades of functional advancements, them being intuitive to use doesn’t mean that they are not efficient and functional.
