The Oceangate Disaster

It probably would have been timelier to write about this during the hearings which I followed with great curiosity. It is a great thing about this country that we have open hearing following carefully designed and historic procedures to seek the truth. And we found out a great deal.

I have struggled with how to approach and think about this tragedy.

One of the first things I realized was that I had seen this kind of tragedy before. It was Lord Thomson and the airship R101. Lord Thomson didn’t know very much about airships and it showed. When the highly experimental airship had problems he ordered very much in a “damn the torpedoes” way that the trip to India should proceed. He and 47 others died. They made it to Northern France somewhat short of India.

The suicidal hubris was the same. There was the same disregard for unpleasant facts and a similar desire to get this project going.

(There is also a good Wikipedia article about inventers killed by their own inventions – a list to which Stockton Rush’s name is now added.)

Several things about the disaster are obvious.

OceanGate had a flawed business plan. They wanted companies and nations to buy and use their vessels to explore the undersea world at a time when Remote Ocean Vehicles (ROV’s) were taking off in terms of technology and usefulness. During the period of Oceangate’s existence, the number and profitability of the ROV’s soared. Faced with this kind of competition, there was little possibility of any government or business contracts. That left only tourism. (It is truly ironic that the wreckage was found by an ROV.)

Stockton Rush was in over his head. He was well qualified for virtually any aerospace endeavor. His achievements are noteworthy. But instead of his field of training he launched into the undersea world where he had neither training or experience.

Stockton Rush was a victim of hubris. He could not conceive that he might be mistaken. The record of this tragedy has a constant theme of him rejecting criticism and ignoring unwelcome advice or facts even from his friends.  People inside the company that dared voice criticism were fired, silenced and sued.

Let me add this story which I found significant. There was a question asking him about risk and he went into a discussion of how much he loved his family and would not risk any chance of not returning to them. Imagine me as head of the American space program, someone asks me if it is dangerous and I explain how much I love my cat! You asks for facts and you get a gaslighting diversion into a fantasy world where love of family somehow equates to safety. I’m sure if you go through the list of inventers killed by their own inventions that every single one of them loved their families probably their friends and pets as well – and yet they are still very much dead.

The submersible itself is less an engineering marvel and more the kind of garage construction one would expect from one of those golden age science fiction films where a scientist with a beautiful daughter builds a rocket to the moon. Mind you, it didn’t start out that way. Originally OceanGate followed the rules carefully and sough professional advice from NASA and a university – and actually fully considered and followed the advice. Their first subs were fully submitted for certification. It is only as the business model began to fail that shortcuts became a regular feature. Parts from previous submersibles were re-used. The carbon fiber hull was recommended by OceanGate’s former partners to be nine or ten inches thick. OceanGate decided to go with five.

And there were problems. If you watched any of the hearings at all, it became readily apparent that the assembly of this thing was beset by a horde of problems and unanswered questions. But the most basic and simple question was “Should carbon fiber be used in a submersible hull?” And the answer based on the evidence offered at the hearing was no.

This whole tragedy was just nonsense. Adventure capitalism run amok. Two hundred, fifty thousand dollars to go down and see the Titanic. Much like tourists climbing Everest and various billionaire loonies climbing into a spaceship and flying into space for a new and unique experience — this pathetic substitute for actual adventure is what we have today to keep our oligarchic rulers content.  

What started out as a scientific endeavor to build submersibles for industry and government use morphed over time into a kind of circus sideshow. Built in a cylindrical form against all intelligent advice to allow for passengers, the exploratory device became a sort of tourist bus to nowhere.

If Stockton Rush had a tiny bit of sense, he would have admitted his business model had been superseded in the greater part by ROV’s, sold his original subs and found a useful purpose in his life instead of charging the impossible windmill and dying just to prove he was right when he clearly wasn’t.