That has to be terrifying... Submersible lost contact about 32 hours ago and has about 92 hours of oxygen... Even if it's floating on the surface they are still bolted inside... 

Amazed this can still happen and amazed a billionaire doesn't just want to own a yacht and Fer hookers.

5 minutes ago, DaEagles4Life said:

Amazed this can still happen and amazed a billionaire doesn't just want to own a yacht and Fer hookers.

Yeah it's crazy... Pretty much sounds like if they're not floating on the ocean surface they're as good as gone... Not looking good for them right now 

I watched a documentary where a group of people set out on a 3 hour tour in the Pacific and went missing for years, but it turned out that they wound up living a quite comfortable life on a deserted tropical island until they were found, so I'm still holding out hope.

2 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

I watched a documentary where a group of people set out on a 3 hour tour in the Pacific and went missing for years, but it turned out that they wound up living a quite comfortable life on a deserted tropical island until they were found, so I'm still holding out hope.

Mary Ann was hotter than Ginger 

1 hour ago, Aspiritfall said:

 

That has to be terrifying... Submersible lost contact about 32 hours ago and has about 92 hours of oxygen... Even if it's floating on the surface they are still bolted inside... 

It if is floating and they don't have an emergency EPIRB then we are entering Darwin Award territory

56 minutes ago, The_Omega said:

I watched a documentary where a group of people set out on a 3 hour tour in the Pacific and went missing for years, but it turned out that they wound up living a quite comfortable life on a deserted tropical island until they were found, so I'm still holding out hope.

I got to see that island where the intro for the show was filmed while in the Bahamas 2 weeks ago. You can see it when heading from Nassau Paradise Island on the way to Blue Lagoon Island. 

According to what I just heard, they do have several ways to communicate when on the surface. They also have a ton of way to surface in an emergency. These things are supposedly plagued with issues. Random dudes build them and they are jury rigged AF. The one lost is actually controlled with an old gaming controller.  The reporter doing the report was on the one of their five day trips, he stayed on the surface ship. He said the thing was supposed to dive five days in a row but they only made one because of malfunctions. They got lost on the one dive they did make and never found the titanic. 

Hopefully they'll be found alive, but my first thoughts about the situation were that there was an implosion and the sub is likely the size of a crushed beer can. Hopefully I'm wrong on that, but that's what I'm thinking has happened. 

96 hours of air they had will run out soon.

Yeah, I’m not getting in that rickety thing. 

And they have to pay $200,000 to experience that horror trap? No thanks. People have way too much money to spend.

Did they order the submersible on wish.com?

1 hour ago, we_gotta_believe said:

Did they order the submersible on wish.com?

I love seeing the memes of idiots who ordered crap off that site  

Using a modified PS3 controller is beyond weird

If the tech and engineering behind it is ok, I don't necessarily see a major problem with using a game controller as a primary input. The issue I'd see at the outset is that it suggests (based on the general amateurish approach that looks like was taken here) that no mechanical backup of any sort was available. I don't want to claim to be an expert here, but if there was only one way to control the ship - regardless of whether that was via some game controller or not - that was by nature entirely electronic, you've got a helluva single point of failure there.

I would expect some kind of "oh crap" option is available so that if control is lost some sort of mechanical ballast could raise the ship in a pinch. so even if the power goes out, the emergency lever gets the ship to the surface (barring something really dumb like grounding the ship or getting it stuck on something. there's no engineering around utter stupidity at that depth.)

2 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

If the tech and engineering behind it is ok, I don't necessarily see a major problem with using a game controller as a primary input. The issue I'd see at the outset is that it suggests (based on the general amateurish approach that looks like was taken here) that no mechanical backup of any sort was available. I don't want to claim to be an expert here, but if there was only one way to control the ship - regardless of whether that was via some game controller or not - that was by nature entirely electronic, you've got a helluva single point of failure there.

I would expect some kind of "oh crap" option is available so that if control is lost some sort of mechanical ballast could raise the ship in a pinch. so even if the power goes out, the emergency lever gets the ship to the surface (barring something really dumb like grounding the ship or getting it stuck on something. there's no engineering around utter stupidity at that depth.)

Those were notorious for sticking. The buttons and the analogue sticks

1 minute ago, Mike030270 said:

Those were notorious for sticking. The buttons and the analogue sticks

I'm sure they had one of these bad boys as a backup for player 2

The Titanic still adding to its body count over 100 years later is pretty impressive.

11 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

If the tech and engineering behind it is ok, I don't necessarily see a major problem with using a game controller as a primary input. The issue I'd see at the outset is that it suggests (based on the general amateurish approach that looks like was taken here) that no mechanical backup of any sort was available. I don't want to claim to be an expert here, but if there was only one way to control the ship - regardless of whether that was via some game controller or not - that was by nature entirely electronic, you've got a helluva single point of failure there.

I would expect some kind of "oh crap" option is available so that if control is lost some sort of mechanical ballast could raise the ship in a pinch. so even if the power goes out, the emergency lever gets the ship to the surface (barring something really dumb like grounding the ship or getting it stuck on something. there's no engineering around utter stupidity at that depth.)

The range of motion for the gamepad sticks could also be a concern. Not sure what kind of fine controls are needed for a submersible like this, but I'd assume dual full-sized joysticks would allow for more granular input, but based how limited cabin space was inside that thing, I supposed everything had to be as compact as possible.

13 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

If the tech and engineering behind it is ok, I don't necessarily see a major problem with using a game controller as a primary input. The issue I'd see at the outset is that it suggests (based on the general amateurish approach that looks like was taken here) that no mechanical backup of any sort was available.

I'm sure they have a second controller brand new in box to plug in.

Apparently, the controls are limited to up and down, which seems insane to me. Make a submersible that can't move laterally.

8 minutes ago, Toastrel said:

Apparently, the controls are limited to up and down, which seems insane to me. Make a submersible that can't move laterally.

There's gotta be some sort of rudder for yaw also, right? ...right? 

There's a tendency when these things go wrong to suggest that it was a half assed company taking risks (like that tweet saying "these are deeply unserious people"), to be clear these guys built a vehicle that can reach 4000 metres depth, there are only a handful of such vehicles in the world, and I mean that literally there are about 5, so if they are snagged down there, they likely need a miracle.

You can't make something that works at that kind of depth without having deep engineering knowledge. People point at the controller, but Reaper drones use basically a very sophisticated flight sim rig for controls, those people aren't stuck down there because they're using a Logitech PC pad.

6 minutes ago, we_gotta_believe said:

There's gotta be some sort of rudder for yaw also, right? ...right? 

There is, it can manoeuver in 4 directions.

Quote

The Coast Guard said there was one pilot and four "mission specialists” aboard. "Mission specialists” are people who pay to come along on OceanGate’s expeditions. They take turns operating sonar equipment and performing other tasks in the five-person submersible.