while i do have some empathy for them. if you were homeless theyd walk right over top of you on their way to spend $250,000 to view the titanic from a morons submarine and not even think about helping.
The best part is that it’s a coffin. Even if they get to the surface, they are still bolted in from the outside. Also it has no flares, no redundancies, no balloon that floats up, absolutely no backups in case anything goes wrong. No reasonable person would look at this and think: “Yep! Perfect excursion for my vacation!”
I can still barely believe it’s real. The Titanic is a living monument to the importance of safety regulations, slowly dissolving at the bottom of the ocean because its builders and operators were a little too presumtuous with their risk assessment. With that in mind, why wouldn’t you name your rickety deathtrap of a submarine “Titan” of all fucking things, plot a course to the wreckage, and proceed with a similarly cavalier attitude towards safety and a considerable lack of contingency planning? It’s like they wanted to see exactly how much temptation fate was capable of resisting.
Some jokes really write themselve
And they don’t even see the titanic with their eyes ! Its through a screen
They could have easily sent a robot down and watched from the support vessel and gotten a better experience with cameras and big 4k screens with no risk.
It’s literally the iron lung
Holy shit. That somehow makes it much worse
what, for real? I thought it had a porthole or something
No, the craziest part is how staunchly anti safety regulation the company’s founder was. Per NPR:
The Titan, the small submersible operated by a Washington state-based company called OceanGate, gives tours primarily in international waters, which means the experimental vessel avoided most U.S. safety rules.
In a 2019 interview with Smithsonian magazine, OceanGate founder and CEO Stockton Rush — currently missing aboard the Titan — complained about government rules.
“There hasn’t been an injury in the commercial sub industry in over 35 years. It’s obscenely safe, because they have all these regulations,” Rush told the magazine. “But it also hasn’t innovated or grown — because they have all these regulations.”
…and pay some hundert thousands dallons to get a traumatizing, claustrophobic experience
What do you call three billionaires trapped at the bottom of the ocean?
A good start.
(with apologies to lawyers, who were the OG subject of this joke)
Guys, I’m making a new submarine. Can you tell Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk I’d really like them on board? Anyone with a yacht is welcome.
Maybe it was intentional and Bezos is next
Your assuming Bezos isn’t behind it in the first place. Trying to kill of the competition.
We can only hope.
Real life iron lung
If anyone is interested in the specifics of why the titan expedition was a terrible idea, here is a video of a submarine pilot/expert explaining it in detail based off the information that is public.
TLDW: a lot
Disclaimer: I know nothing about submarines or anything of the sort. I make no claim regarding the legitimacy of this video.
I know tldr but what’s tldw
“Too Long Didn’t Watch” since I was linking a video
Their customers had infinite money to spend and they still didn’t build a top of the line submarine. Absolutely deserving of a Darwin Award.
I’m out of the loop on this. Was the sub actually controlled by a Logitech game controller?
Yes, and apparently things like that are standard.
IIRC the US military buys genuine Xbox controllers, but the only source I have for that is another Lemmy comment so take it with more salt than however much manages to seep into the submarine from the ocean water.
Yes, but it did also have hardwired emergency controls that they could use if the controller failed.
Compare that to Crew Dragon, which flies Astronauts to the ISS with a touchscreen (also with a backup)
Am I a bad person for laughing at this?
I have to admit that I’m more than a little tired of the entitlement of billionaires.
No, it is pretty funny
While I’m against capitalists as much as the next person here, wishing death on them is a bit harsh.
I think it’s OK to appreciate when the world gets a little better.
You people can be so callous sometimes, they’re still actual people. I know you people hate rich snobs not spending their money on things that actually matter, (cough cough not going to the fucking titanic for fun) but just because they’re some rich assholes you think they deserve to die.
It’s OK to acknowledge that some people actively make the world a worse place for many other people.
With the stroke of a pen any of these people could prevent tens of thousands of deaths from malaria or tuberculosis with zero change to their quality of life. That’s why their wealth is disgusting.
This week a ship with immigrants sank by the greek coast. Hundreds of people are missing and likely dead, no one send help. There are children starving in poverty around the clock while we technically do produce enough food in the world to end world hunger (most ends in the trash) the logistics are deemed too expensive. Of course we should recognize that the submarine passengers are people and the loss of life is always tragic but the millions of spend capital, resources and media attention saving specifically those 5 is a bitter reminder of the cruelty of our world. This is the internet, we are allowed a laugh, even if its dark sometimes.
Moreover, nobody gets that rich without screwing us, the workers. Why shouldn’t we rejoice when people who actively make our lives worse get their due?
Don’t worry they will be back. their brain was downloaded before they left, they are still working out the kinks of training an instantance of chatGPT on the brain data and getting it to run in a Boston dynamics atalis body.
as much as the next person
Clearly you are not.
If Elon Musk had a single hair on his balls, he’d get a submarine.
The 90s kid in me was like “Logitech, OK, solid choice”
Immediately shared this, great job OP
