Canada Missed Chances To Inspect OceanGate's Titan Before Fatal Implosion (wired.com) 57
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: A report from Canada's Transportation Safety Board has highlighted regulatory failures that allowed OceanGate's unregistered, unflagged, and uncertified Titan submersible to operate out St. John's, Newfoundland, for years before it imploded on a tourist trip to the wreck of the Titanic in 2023. "When it came to the Titan, critical information existed across multiple federal government organizations, but no one was responsible for connecting the dots," says TBS chair Yoan Marier in a statement. "Without a complete picture of the operation, the Titan continued to operate in Canada without regulatory oversight." [...] As OceanGate continued to operate from St. John's in 2021 and 2022, the Titan made successful dives to the Titanic and several sites within Canadian waters. The company eventually interacted with a total of 10 Canadian federal agencies, including Parks Canada, the Department of National Defense, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. But the company's operations were never directly reported to the team responsible for marine safety. "In terms of the actual people that were responsible for marine oversight, their focus was on the Canadian support vessel," says TSB investigator Jason Melvin.
While TSB investigators did not have access to the wreckage of the Titan itself, which remains with the US Coast Guard, they did analyze portions of the carbon fiber left over from its manufacture. They calculated that a hull made to OceanGate's exact specifications might have been able to make hundreds of millions of dives to Titanic depths before failing. However, the composite samples as built had porosity and waviness between layers and were ground down in a way that might have introduced defects. When the TSB tested the compressive strength of the carbon fiber, it indicated the material could fail in as few as 30 deep dives. [...] The TSB is recommending increased oversight of the riskiest vessels and improvements in information sharing between departments, and is requiring that all human-occupied submersibles be subject to international construction and safety standards.
While TSB investigators did not have access to the wreckage of the Titan itself, which remains with the US Coast Guard, they did analyze portions of the carbon fiber left over from its manufacture. They calculated that a hull made to OceanGate's exact specifications might have been able to make hundreds of millions of dives to Titanic depths before failing. However, the composite samples as built had porosity and waviness between layers and were ground down in a way that might have introduced defects. When the TSB tested the compressive strength of the carbon fiber, it indicated the material could fail in as few as 30 deep dives. [...] The TSB is recommending increased oversight of the riskiest vessels and improvements in information sharing between departments, and is requiring that all human-occupied submersibles be subject to international construction and safety standards.
Government can do a lot but not everything (Score:5, Insightful)
Mostly I feel bad for that kid that didn't want to go on the ride but was cajoled into it anyway.
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From what I've read, it was the opposite. The mom was supposed to go, but the kid wanted to go (had even built a Lego model of the Titanic) so she gave up her seat. Bad info came from his aunt.
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Mostly I feel bad for that kid
He was 19. Don't infantilize adults.
Caveat emptor (Score:2)
Home made submarines are mostly unnecessarily complicated ways of drowning as should be scrutinized with a jaundiced eye.
Re: Caveat emptor (Score:5, Informative)
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Given how fast it happened they would have been simultaneously roasted and crushed.
Crush-roasted is exactly how I like my oligarchs.
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For accuracy's sake the people in Titan didn't drown. Given how fast it happened they would have been simultaneously roasted and crushed.
This isn’t specifically accurate. The intruding water proceeded at the speed of sound in the sea, far faster than the speed of sound in air (1500 m/s+). From the ideal gas law (which holds up until molecular bonds break or are made in this case and even then is mostly right if you add that back in) means half the volume is twice the absolute temperature meaning the air temperature would definitely reach insane values. However it’s even less time than the event which was, given about 1m from t
for $250K do better then an wireless Logitech cont (Score:2)
for $250K do better then an wireless Logitech controller
Re: Caveat emptor (Score:2)
I don't think it would matter (Score:5, Interesting)
At that point all you've got is maritime law which is pretty lax.
There are ways to stop this but it would require a lot more regulation and good luck getting that implemented with all the money and politics. It wouldn't just affect assholes like these it would impact every business on the planet. Now I would argue that's a good thing because we could certainly do with more regulation after 50 years of deregulation but again, money in politics.
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Now I would argue that's a good thing because we could certainly do with more regulation after 50 years of deregulation but again, money in politics.
Adding more regulations to attempt to catch submarine accidents like this, that virtually never happen, and may never happen again, is stupid and pointless.
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I disagree. It actually needs less regulation.
The siloing of knowledge and duties is why it was always somebody else's problem. So you simply take out all the regulations that obligate siloing and replace all of that kerfufle with a single rule: "If it's on your plate and nobody else has published that they've done the work so far, it's your responsibility, silos be damned, and failure leaves you liable".
That's it.
That's all we need. A removal of siloed thinking and a duty to complete all of the scheduled w
That's 12-year-old thinking (Score:3)
There's a guy on YouTube that does these hilarious videos about how formula 1 teams cheat. So the formula One governing body will come up with all sorts of rules and the racing teams will do increasingly crazy shit to cheat those rules and win, oftentimes they will violate the Spirit o
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The problem is that you can ALWAYS get around rules. It isn't possible to make perfect rules for anything above a minimal level of complexity - that's just a variant of the Turing-Church Halting Problem.
So you are forced to invert the dynamics. There's no real alternative. Instead of you creating a high level of complexity that the departments will work their arses off to avoid, you force the departments themselves to create the regimens that they're prepared to live with. But you have to do so cleverly. Th
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I don't care how much of an idiot you are, you're simply too stupid to respond to further. I don't want things to be as they were in my childhood. Back then, things were a mess. BECAUSE government tried either to micromanage everything or manage nothing at all. The idea of a third way, where governing is about just that, placing control mechanisms in place but not do the management, is obviously far beyond your pea-brain.
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Your solutions don't solve anything. e.g. "The department can't evade the bits they're actually able to do" means only that the argument will be over what they are able to do.
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That's the entire point. Trying to solve other people's problems NEVER WORKS. You CANNOT control others into responsible behaviour, but you CAN place them in a position where they will choose to be responsible of their own accord. It is the ONLY way that works. It is the only way that has ever worked. If you look at computer programming, you will see this repeated over and over - well-meaning "hard rules" are ignored, STANDARDS are kept.
You must give them parameters and force them to find their own solution
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You also have to give them achievable parameters. "You are always responsible" is not realistic. In some cases someone else is, in fact, responsible. And that's the rub of regulation, not that I think this means we shouldn't regulate, but it's going to always be true that doing it well takes effort. You can only ever reasonably expect that people are moving forwards (at best) and doing what is reasonably and humanly possible, and hopefully advancing the state of the art. Determining whether or not they are
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The siloing of knowledge and duties is why it was always somebody else's problem.
It was known what would happen if carbon fiber was used for the hull in a submsersible nearly a decade earlier: See the DeepFlight Challenger [wikipedia.org]: "Based on testing at high pressure, the DeepFlight Challenger was determined to be suitable only for a single dive, not the repeated uses that had been planned as part of Virgin Oceanic service. As such, in 2014, Virgin Oceanic scrapped plans for the five dives project using the DeepFlight Challenger, as originally conceived, putting plans on hold until more suitabl
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This is a case where regulation KILLED.
Basically this a was thing that was essentially marketed to wealthy tourists. It WAS done under a regulatory environment, and so those people had far more trust in it than they should have. I bet had they been forced to drag the thing out to international waters and do some sketchy bitcoin transaction to pay or whatever they would not have found takers!
Regulation of this kind of stuff simply does not work. What regulator has any experience inspecting a deep sea sub?
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On the one hand, yes, there's no good way to regulate technology which is only used in a very limited number of vehicles. It would have to be more like spaceflight where it's regulated based on what damage it could do to third parties and not the staff and crew.
On the other hand they could have just called up James Cameron and the submersible engineers he knows, asked them if it was safe and waited for the laughter to stop before refusing to let it operate from Canada.
It seems that everyone involved in oper
Reading is fundamental (Score:3)
The solution would be additional regulations that prevented them from taking
Re:I don't think it would matter (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest one:
https://www.dnv.com/services/m... [dnv.com]
Since you clearly don't know anything about how it works, I'm going to conclude that you know even less about whether it can work.
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Having seen about 3 documentaries about this incident, I have to agree. During all the interviews, the CEO was really intent to do what he was doing regardless of internal or external interference. Going so far as to let the carbon laminate hull sit outside during winter subject to the elements.
There were so many many points at which there was the opportunity to stop, pointing the finger at the Canadian regulatory bodies is a bit unfair.
The CEO would retitle positions and name people aboard as crewmembers t
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Re:I don't think it would matter (Score:5, Informative)
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Any intervention by regulatory agencies would have been depicted as an assault on free enterprise and "innovation".
The company owner actually presented himself as a daring risk-taker and rule-breaker, with the business press cheering him on. It's just sad that paying customers ended up losing their life because of an entrepreneur's hubris.
Yeah, you could blame regulatory (Score:4, Informative)
But Stockton Rush was hellbent on skirting rules and not listening to anyone on safety. He would have found a way to get that sub in the water.
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I only wish he could have found a way to get more of the Forbes list onboard. Aren't there a whole hundred of them? We're going to need a bigger carbon-fiber submarine for this job...
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Those on the Forbes list who were remotely interested in visiting the Titanic will have had people to assess the risk and they will have said "don't do it" (unless they stood to inherit).
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I'll admit, I'm not sure if the people on the sub were or weren't on the Forbes list. But I feel confident in saying they also "had people", and those people didn't prevent them from climbing into the vessel.
Blame Canada! (Score:1)
We can incorporate Captain Crunch into the famous song now.
Blame Canada!
Blame Canada (Score:5, Funny)
Or blame society?
Or should we blame the images on TV?
No, blame Canada, blame Canada
With all their beady little eyes
And flappin heads so full of lies
Blame Canada, blame Canada
We need to form a full assault
It's Canada's fault
So? (Score:2)
There are a lot of situations where large portions of the publ
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Self-loathing Canucks (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no one nor organization to blame other than the CEO that launched that stupid sub. They fucked around and paid the ultimate price. no one else ot blame and no one else responsible for any of it.
You canucks need to avoid self-loathing and turning your nation into a nanny state of bureaucratic nonsense.
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Re:Self-loathing Canucks (Score:4, Insightful)
A submarine imploding generally doesn't impact bystanders. A plane falling out of the sky very much can.
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Doesn't impact bystanders, except for the families and loved ones of the people on board the wreck.
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If they loved him so much, they could have convinced him not to board the vessel. Oh, he boarded it anyway? Well, your loved one is a dumbass. Incorporating those into your circle leads to emotional distress.
Or, maybe the family convinced him to board the vessel, as was the case with at least 1 OceanGate passenger. No bystanders in that family.
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About "paying customers" - It is interesting to contemplate how the GP's viewpoint is basically anti-oligarchical. He's OK with the disaster because of who was on the sub. If it had been normal people on that submarine, if the tickets were $80 and his mother was thinking of taking the plunge, he would take a much different stance.
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"Paying customers" is a pretty common differentiator. If you're in the land of the free it's pretty easy to get a pilot's license. It's quite a bit harder to get one that allows you to take paying customers... even if the paying customer is your buddy chipping in for gas. There are similarly different rules for the aircraft itself. Many motor vehicles too.
The GGPs view doesn't really have anything to do with that. They're probably okay with it because the people on the sub had more money than they do. Excep
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We canucks have this idea that irresponsible CEOs shouldn't be allowed to go around killing people. When part of the system fails we investigate, make recommendations, and try to fix it. That's not "self-loathing."
You know, if I could make a recommendation, you guys might want to consider trying it.
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We canucks have this idea that irresponsible CEOs shouldn't be allowed to go around killing people.
That's not a thing that happened. What happened there is that six people decided to die in a can together. Anyone who knew anything about this project knew it was shit. Tons of us Slashdotters, who had no skin in the game whatsoever as we were neither investors nor even potential passengers knew enough about it to know that it was a folly. We knew this solely from freely publicly available information. Everyone who got on that sub either chose to risk their lives on what was obviously a shit idea, or chose
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OceanGate was offering a commercial service. Pretty much all commercial services are regulated for good reasons. Operating an uncertified submersible as a passenger service is no different than operating a cab that hasn't seen a mechanic in a decade, or an passenger air service on a homebuilt plane.
The difference is that you don't like the people who died.
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The difference is that it's not mass transit. It arguably should have been regulated more though, because and only because it cost The People money to chase after the dead.
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"OceanGate was offering a commercial service."
Well, there's your first hurdle. According to OceanGate, they were *not* offering a commercial service. That's why the two passengers were listed as "mission specialists." So the first step would be proving that they were in the face of OceanGate's counterarguments. I would agree, that, yes, OceanGate was offering a commercial service, but legally proving that fact in face of OceanGate's resistance would not have been trivial.
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Yes, OceanGate tried to wiggle out of safety regulations at every opportunity. Transportation regulators are very familiar with maneuvers like that. OceanGate accepted money for services. In fact, the whole company was set up to do just that. You can call your customers blueberry pancakes if you want, but it doesn't matter.
That's why you can't, for example, take your buddies flying with your private pilots license and let them pay for gas, or make a profit from taking your friends out on your boat.
Defending idiots from themselves isn't the .govs (Score:2)
Slashdot doesn't need this clickbait.
A stupid rich vain asshole killed people so intensely silly they cared about Titanic, whose sole claim to fame IS fame. The world is slightly wiser in consequence.
Think about it. There is no reason a functioning adult should be morbidly fascinated by a mere shipwreck but people crave to masturbate to drama, and romantic death appeals to the bitch-made (a perfect hood term for a much wider degeneracy) mind.
The other casualties were so cravenly silly they utterly failed to
Really? (Score:2)
Really, we're still talking about that nonsense? Someone got killed in a boat accident. Put it to sleep already.
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"This was no boating accident."
Headline should read... (Score:2)
... "Canada declined to interfere with Darwisnism", with the story going on to lament the fact that unfortunately by the time of Stocton's fatal stupidity he'd already passed on his genes.
To call it a "missed opportunity" is a little extreme.
Call me a troll, but both his daredevil idiocy and the fact that other people were stupid enough to get on were and are self solving problems. Both solved by the predictable outcome. An outcome that, I'll add, wasn't merely predictable in hindsight. One hopes that pe