This was originally going to be part of an earlier Thursday Tweets, but that post was written and scheduled on Wednesday and the fate or the Titan was still in question, and I didn't want the it to go out on the same day that some bad news was breaking including some potential scenarios that were even worse than what appears to have happened.
It is important that we show an appropriate level of respect for what was the equivalent in terms of human life of a bad two-car crash, at the same time, it is also important to have some perspective. Even in terms of aquatic disasters, this one was dwarfed by recent events. Furthermore, it's bigger importance lies not in the tragedy itself but in the familiar story behind it.
I've got another post or two coming on this, but the tl;dr version is another comes-from-money Elon wannabe buys into the VC/Silicon Valley/radical libertarian tales of Randian supermen held back from greatness by timid, nanny-state regulators and envious, short-sighted regulators. As was spelled out by Ben Taub in his excellent New Yorker piece, the result was a craft with so many critical flaws that the question wasn't if it would catastrophically fail, but when.
First, though, a reminder that the fate of the Titan was far from the most horrifying thing that happened on the oceans that week.
The sheer number of people likely drowned in last week's Mediterranean shipwreck is hard to fathom. Our story on who they were and why they boarded the boat that day.
— Louisa Loveluck (@leloveluck) June 24, 2023
By the time they understood the danger, it was too late to turn around. https://t.co/S1NdLiLJDB
With that bit of context in mind, here was some of the real-time commentary on Twitter.
This is not good.https://t.co/sHWDhgWd2R
— Dave Jones (@eevblog) June 21, 2023
Move fast, break things, drown people.
— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) June 20, 2023
Warned of a potential "catastrophic" outcome by experts, Stockton Rush, the CEO of OceanGate, who is missing with the other occupants of his submersible, claimed that "industry regulation is stifling innovation."https://t.co/w2BYYYTbvi
Wow. OceanGate, the company that owns the missing submersible, fired an employee a few years ago after he filed safety complaints against them. The employee specifically said the sub was not capable of descending to such extreme depths before he was fired.https://t.co/c3s2H3eVEr
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 20, 2023
Somebody simply has to write the ultimate catch-all essay on disruptive, libertarian, private-sector-touting entrepreneurs simply begging and demanding for state intervention at the end of their journeys. (This is the Titan sub company's adviser.) pic.twitter.com/dsB9YLln8w
— Eve Fairbanks (@evefairbanks) June 21, 2023
What makes this argument quite unconvincing is that, from my understanding, there’s an establish technology framework that has given deep sea submersibles a remarkably strong safety record. They just didn’t use that approach. And it’s not … https://t.co/7rfJ9I3kHp
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) June 25, 2023
Someone who was invited on OceanGate’s Titan four years ago said he heard noises on the submersible and told the owner, Stockton Rush — who promptly did nothing, saying he was "tired of industry players who try to use a safety argument to stop innovation".https://t.co/am2cnrcPho
— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 25, 2023
You can listen to a survivor talk about dealing with this here https://t.co/BoQITFDzLK pic.twitter.com/TFfXUsQK4Z
— Hannah Davis (@hannahpearld) June 20, 2023
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