This comment section is crazy. I understand that they were most likely rich assholes and as time has told, most rich people haven’t contributed too much to the world except class separation and hoarding comfort to the loss of common people.
But people died because one asshole decided this was a good idea, lives were literally lost and everyone here is mentioning how fun that is and how great it is that human beings have died in a horrific way. Imagine the anxiety and hopelessness they’ve must’ve felt during their last moments and people seem to cherish that fact more than anything else.
It’s disturbing to see people talk about deaths this way, no matter who that death concerns.
Eeeh, gonna have to disagree with you there, buddy.
It didn’t implode completely without warning while they were just cruising.
They knew they were in trouble for about a minute according to reports. I’d say being in any sort of trouble in a sub like that would make me anxious.
That being said I don’t think people are really celebrating people having died (despite them having been rich assholes), but because this is a very clear and very felt example of how thing like these should be done by and for humanity as a whole instead of some uppity rich ppl who think they’re above everyone else. Same thing with space exploration. Private enterprises won’t really cut it. They can emulate things achieved by nations, but they can’t pioneer shit, really.
That’s a good point, I forget that they had some issues about a minute before the implosion. Still, I’d take that death over a whole pile of other options.
The only person I legitimately felt bad for was the teenager. Like, I’m mortified he went on there at the behest of his parents. It was a sad event all around, but I was still overjoyed it was a rich asshole killing other rich assholes.
Seeing Stockton Rush’s name next to Thomas Midgley Jr, though, does make me smile.
I feel for him, and for his mother who gave up her seat so he could go. Fuck the billionaires but he was 19 - I can’t feel any humour about his death, or for what this must’ve done to his mother.
I’m sure the others had family members too who have gone through hell while the world laughed.
We can have compassion for those people while still shrugging at the stupidity of the willing dead.
The real problem was just the person making it being too cheap/lazy to do any sort of safety certification on the submarine (and also picking the cooler sounding material over the one best suited to build a submarine). Don’t blame it on logitech.
The internet was so ruthless almost immediately on this one. I feel like every newsworthy event has detractors and defenders but this submarine business had literally everyone shitting on them the second the news broke. In a sick sort of internet way it was practically wholesome.
There were some bootlickers asking for decency but nah. This was basically billionaires paying an obscene amount of money for the most spectacular group suicide of the last 10 years and decency was already off the table after the word “billionaire”
When the news broke, we were talking about it at work (trust me, I’m an engineer) and looking at the design scratching our heads.
Then someone says “that main body is made of carbon fiber!” All of us started laughing in hysterics, then someone goes “yummy yummy crab food!” and it just got worse.
It was hilarious watching interviews with the owner, who had zero formal engineering training, talk about how he was a rule breaker and maverick, and how rules were just holding back his amazing design. Dive a little deeper (har har), and every actual trained engineer he hired was almost immediately fired for calling out the poor design and material.
He settled on an 18 and 19 year old kid (not the one that got squished) as his engineers. I can’t even comprehend how this was even allowed to happen, but appreciate the memes.
It was allowed to happen because there are no regulations covering these submarines, especially in international waters. Safety is generally opt-in because the people who commission them intend to use them, so of course they’ll listen to engineers and do it right.
Of course sometimes you’ll get someone so far up their own ass that they can’t hear anything except their own farts.
You can also see the move-fast-and-break-things bullshit in what he said. That mentality sort of works for software development but silicon valley is exporting it into realms where breaking things means killing people.
Even the choice of colour was an interesting one. “Should we make our submersible brightly coloured like every other submersible in the world? In case we are stuck floating barely above the surface of the ocean, literally bolted shut inside this tube?” “Nah, let’s do white and grey, looks more modern.”
As Behind the Bastards elaborated Stockton Rush got a bit mad scientist about it and ignored all the deep-sea experts that were telling him the carbon fiber shell was deteriorating even from the test dives.
It didn’t have standard safey mechanisms. For example, the door could be opened from the outside only. There was no emergency escape (say, in the event of an emergency surface situation.)
Rush laughed at safety, but then he went down in it, so full mad science cred.
The billionaires could afford to hire a team to do due diligence to make sure they would safely come back, and lawyers to tell them to do due diligence. But the kid and the family didn’t. Superrich families often are super-dysfunctional.
So now, to get Stockton Rushed is to be sold a ride or experience for a conspicuously high price. And that kills you, like eating at the Hawthorn.
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