Not on my watch!
People can be so absurd. Some of them think just saying loudly that you won’t let anything go wrong=nothing will go wrong.
A transcript from a key meeting at the firm behind the ill-fated Titan submersible has revealed the CEO said in 2018: “No-one is dying under my watch – period.”
Like that. He couldn’t know that. Bravado isn’t magic. The fact that it was his watch was not a magic safety guarantee. Saying “period” was not a magic safety guarantee.
It captures a heated exchange between OceanGate chief Stockton Rush and his former director of marine operations, David Lochridge, plus three other staff.
The log shows Mr Lochridge raised safety concerns, to which Rush responded: “I have no desire to die… I think this is one of the safest things I will ever do.”
But people who knew anything about it knew it was one of the least safe things he could do. The dangers were well known and very real.
People can and do convince themselves of anything. Men can be women and a submersible won’t implode under pressure of 375–400 atmospheres.
The safest way to view the bottom of the ocean is through a remote submersible/TV combination; not all that much different from looking through a porthole of that damned sub. But once the first leak began, at least it would have been all over very rapidly for the poor buggers on board.
It was over instantaneously.
It is possible to build a submersible that won’t collapse. One of my sisters has survived a couple of trips to the bottom of the Pacific in Alvin. I have a styrofoam cup that she attached to the outside as proof—it’s the size of a very small thimble.
Point being, it’s possible, but it’s crushing if you don’t do it right.
Another quote from the same meeting:
I guess he showed them.
I knew someone who held multiple world records in multiple fields of adventure, mostly different types of sailing and aviation. At the time he died (while out having a fun day) he was working on two projects – a land speed record and a dive to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. For the dive he was contemplating using a carbon fibre diving sphere, inherently much stronger than Titan. His major concern was the safety of CF under pressure. He was using careful engineers, researchers, test labs, and I understand there was some level of US navy involvement or advice. His team were actively researching ways of assessing cycle life of carbon fibre structure in real time and also by post dive analysis of the sound of micro compression noise recorded in the structure. So, very sadly for all concerned, Rush was completely full of shit and appears to have convinced himself that he was the Great Man, as so many rich and powerful do. There was no way he had any reason to be as certain as he apparently was.
Gene Kranz, as portrayed in Apollo 13, delivers the line We’ve never lost an American in space, we’re sure as hell not gonna lose one on my watch! Failure is not an option. The back story for that line substantiates the point. It was backformed from Jerry Bostick’s sober reminiscence in an interview with the screenwriters in which he actually said No [we – the flight control team collectively – did not panic]; we laid out the options and failure was not one of them. Even though Kranz embraced the line after the film’s release, I think the lesson is that far fewer people are Gene Kranz than would like to think they are.
There seems to be an obvious Jimmy Carr joke in this… Not in good taste, but Carr isn’t as a rule.