One point, I’ve seen Stockton Rush referred to as a billionaire in numerous places online, which does not appear to be the case. Estimates are that he was worth in the $20-25 million range. I think this can partially explain a lot of the bizarre decisions he made in the past 6 or 7 years. The guy was probably in debt up to his eyeballs. Based on the stories of him desperately trying to keep people from cancelling their trips by personally flying to them and offering discounts, I would speculate that he might have been worried that his company might go belly up if he didn’t get paying passengers on his death trap immediately.
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All my Lionel Hutz friends have often mentioned that waivers that everyone has you fill out and sign are not actually legally enforceable.
I am not an overly litigious person. If I'm going to take a (hopefully informed) dumbass risk, I'll sign the waiver and be on my way.
Like when they get you to sign waivers to go play Paintball.
"This is going to hurt."
- "Really? No way!"
You know that going in and you accept it. If I get hurt (which I have...oh have I) you take your lumps because it was your dumbass call.
But going to the bottom of the ocean in some asshat's home-made backyard Jalopy of a submarine...Come on!
Thats like going on a rollercoaster in rural New Jersey...you have to understand that today might be the day the thing finally goes off the rails. Do you want to risk that? You shouldnt.
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Now...I'm no Lawyer or nuthin' but I dont think you can waive 'Risk of Death' and then get into a rickety death trap using a waiver form.
Like...did Lionel Hutz draft that Waiver?
According to the journalist in the CNN video on the last page, while Rush was forthcoming about the extreme danger, he also misrepresented it by giving his customers the impression that it was just the nature of the industry and normalized the risk. He didn't tell them that the risk using his experimental contraption was higher than the risk of using other submersibles.
There was one pervious potential customer that backed out due to safety concerns who was in the middle of suing him for a refund when this happened. That person apparently dropped the lawsuit after Rush died to spare the family additional pain. Apparently there were already trips booked and paid for next summer. Something tells me they won't be getting a refund though.
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All my Lionel Hutz friends have often mentioned that waivers that everyone has you fill out and sign are not actually legally enforceable.
As with everything legal, "that depends."
I read a bunch about ski area waiver enforceability last year and was surprised by the extent to which they had been found enforceable. In Canada, no less.
According to the journalist in the CNN video on the last page, while Rush was forthcoming about the extreme danger, he also misrepresented it by giving his customers the impression that it was just the nature of the industry and normalized the risk. He didn't tell them that the risk using his experimental contraption was higher than the risk of using other submersibles.
There was one pervious potential customer that backed out due to safety concerns who was in the middle of suing him for a refund when this happened. That person apparently dropped the lawsuit after Rush died to spare the family additional pain. Apparently there were already trips booked and paid for next summer. Something tells me they won't be getting a refund though.
I...yeah. I agree. Fortunately though, if you can afford to drop a quarter mill on a boat ride I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they can afford to suck it up.
Call that a fully paid-up lesson from 'The School of Hard Knocks.'
They may have to wait a year to buy the newest Ferrari.
__________________ The Beatings Shall Continue Until Morale Improves!
This Post Has Been Distilled for the Eradication of Seemingly Incurable Sadness.
The World Ends when you're dead. Until then, you've got more punishment in store. - Flames Fans
If you thought this season would have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention.
I read a bunch about ski area waiver enforceability last year and was surprised by the extent to which they had been found enforceable. In Canada, no less.
Waivers seem reasonably effective at preventing frivolous claims based on inherent/unmitigatable risks. You ski into a tree? yo fault. You ski into a padded lift tower? yo fault. You ski into the only lift tower at the entire resort that didn't have padding for some reason? maybe some room for debate (though there would be better examples of negligence)
Yeah I'm not buying it. Nothing was reported when the sub first went missing, the loss of communications was brushed off as something that "sometimes happened" on these dives and not super out of the ordinary. If OceanGate really had this crucial information and kept it from the search & rescue crews while they were out on their wild goose chase... yikes
This guy also points out that the depths the sub is reporting don't line up with the expected depth at that time. Neither the sub nor the surface vessel seem concerned that they're sinking faster than they are supposed to. This sub made 13 successful dives before this one, and so I imagine this would be seen as an unusual dive speed. You would think that some corrective action or an abort would be attempted, even before the RTM system started alarming, but maybe I'm giving the crew a bit too much credit here.
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Yeah I'm not buying it. Nothing was reported when the sub first went missing, the loss of communications was brushed off as something that "sometimes happened" on these dives and not super out of the ordinary. If OceanGate really had this crucial information and kept it from the search & rescue crews while they were out on their wild goose chase... yikes
This guy also points out that the depths the sub is reporting don't line up with the expected depth at that time. Neither the sub nor the surface vessel seem concerned that they're sinking faster than they are supposed to. This sub made 13 successful dives before this one, and so I imagine this would be seen as an unusual dive speed. You would think that some corrective action or an abort would be attempted, even before the RTM system started alarming, but maybe I'm giving the crew a bit too much credit here.
I'm kind of torn. In the alleged transcript, they reported power issues just before losing communication. It would make sense that searchers would hold out hope that maybe they were still alive for a few days until they had proof otherwise.
The transcript also seems to show that the crew knew that they were diving faster than normal. It is weird that they wouldn't abort the dive, but Rush has shown that he is reckless, so maybe not that weird.
It is kind of weird that James Cameron speculated that they were at about 3500 m down, dropped their ballasts, and were trying to ascend. Cameron would have known how deep they would be expected to be, so why did he say 3500 m when he was speculating? (I don't recall the interview with James Cameron, just going by what was said in the video). The implication being that people from the dive community were allowed to review the transcript while the search was going on, and that someone from that community leaked it.
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I'm kind of torn. In the alleged transcript, they reported power issues just before losing communication. It would make sense that searchers would hold out hope that maybe they were still alive for a few days until they had proof otherwise.
The transcript also seems to show that the crew knew that they were diving faster than normal. It is weird that they wouldn't abort the dive, but Rush has shown that he is reckless, so maybe not that weird.
It is kind of weird that James Cameron speculated that they were at about 3500 m down, dropped their ballasts, and were trying to ascend. Cameron would have known how deep they would be expected to be, so why did he say 3500 m when he was speculating? (I don't recall the interview with James Cameron, just going by what was said in the video). The implication being that people from the dive community were allowed to review the transcript while the search was going on, and that someone from that community leaked it.
I think Cameron was guessing their depth based on the time, as he knows how long it takes to get down. The bigger question is the sound which he and others in the aquatic research community apparently knew about basically right away. Not sure why that was kept under wraps.
I think Cameron was guessing their depth based on the time, as he knows how long it takes to get down. The bigger question is the sound which he and others in the aquatic research community apparently knew about basically right away. Not sure why that was kept under wraps.
But based on the time that it takes to get down there, they shouldn't have been at 3500 m. That depth put them way deeper than they should have been unless there was a problem.
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I’m going fake. It takes 2.5 hrs to descend. The first time they are at 45 min they are 1934 down. So at 18% of time they are 50% done. If feet they wouldn’t be considered to be defending too fast as they would be about 400ft behind schedule. No mention of being too fast at 45 min mark. Now if the dive started at 8:00 like it was supposed to then their depth would make sense but the US coast guard suggests they started late as does this transcript
This just added some words to the James Cameron explanation
Yeah I'm not buying it. Nothing was reported when the sub first went missing, the loss of communications was brushed off as something that "sometimes happened" on these dives and not super out of the ordinary. If OceanGate really had this crucial information and kept it from the search & rescue crews while they were out on their wild goose chase... yikes
This guy also points out that the depths the sub is reporting don't line up with the expected depth at that time. Neither the sub nor the surface vessel seem concerned that they're sinking faster than they are supposed to. This sub made 13 successful dives before this one, and so I imagine this would be seen as an unusual dive speed. You would think that some corrective action or an abort would be attempted, even before the RTM system started alarming, but maybe I'm giving the crew a bit too much credit here.
Giving this outfit any credit is giving them too much credit.
I say its fake based on the below video. The transcript talks about dropping the landing frame as dropping the ballast didn't provide enough buoyancy to rise fast enough.
Throughout this video where Rush explains all the ballast and ascending mechanisms (including a compressed air buoyancy bag) they never say anything about being able to eject the landing frame and the transcript doesn't talk about any of those features that Rush is keen on explaining. If power fails to drop the lead pipes stored for ballast and fails to inflate the buoyancy bag, Rush explains there's a handpump that can force the ballast system to fall off but this is clearly a different piece of furniture than the entire landing frame.
Those are red flags to me and I'm guessing whoever faked this transcript included the landing frame because it was found clean and intact without any obvious signs of damage so ejecting it would line up with them finding it cleanly.
Navigate to around the 20 min mark for Rush's explanation of the ballast and buoyancy systems.
To me the only thing that explains the little we know is that the hull failed first, the poor schmoes probably had a few seconds to minutes notice as it would likely make some noise as it started to fail but it wouldn't bugger up the radio earlier, the catastrophic failure is the thing that does that, my guess is it collapsed in a few seconds and the stuff hanging off the outside just fell off more or less complete as a result rather than was jettisoned on purpose
I say its fake based on the below video. The transcript talks about dropping the landing frame as dropping the ballast didn't provide enough buoyancy to rise fast enough.
Throughout this video where Rush explains all the ballast and ascending mechanisms (including a compressed air buoyancy bag) they never say anything about being able to eject the landing frame and the transcript doesn't talk about any of those features that Rush is keen on explaining. If power fails to drop the lead pipes stored for ballast and fails to inflate the buoyancy bag, Rush explains there's a handpump that can force the ballast system to fall off but this is clearly a different piece of furniture than the entire landing frame.
Those are red flags to me and I'm guessing whoever faked this transcript included the landing frame because it was found clean and intact without any obvious signs of damage so ejecting it would line up with them finding it cleanly.
Navigate to around the 20 min mark for Rush's explanation of the ballast and buoyancy systems.
This was brought up on another discussion forum and it was pointed out that in the patent, the landing frame was designed to be releasable if it needed to be. I am not an expert on reading technical patent stuff, but it is apparently described on pages 15 and 16.
This was posted right after the wreckage was recovered and before the alleged transcript was leaked. It was suggested that Rush considered the landing frame as ballast.
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Last edited by FlamesAddiction; 07-06-2023 at 03:27 PM.
I say its fake based on the below video. The transcript talks about dropping the landing frame as dropping the ballast didn't provide enough buoyancy to rise fast enough.
No, it was pretty widely reported when it was still missing that jettisoning the sub's legs was one of the 7 ways to return to the surface in the event of an issue:
Quote:
What you can do is rise to the surface. And there are seven different ways to return to the surface. Just redundancy after redundancy. They can drop sandbags, they can drop lead pipes, they can inflate a balloon, they can use the thrusters. They can even jettison the legs of the sub to lose weight. And some of these, by the way, work even if the power is out and even if everyone on board is passed out. So there's sort of a dead man's switch such that the hooks holding on to sandbags dissolve after a certain number of hours in the water, release the sandbags and bring you to the surface, even if you're unconscious.
Navigate to around the 20 min mark for Rush's explanation of the ballast and buoyancy systems.
Reviewing this video again, and I don't see a mechanism to eject the landing platform legs. It looks to be securely bolted to the same frame extending to the back clamshell that holds all of the equipment/power? It certainly wouldn't be the first time Rush lied about the sub.
Also, man.... I can't believe a single o-ring on the end of the titanium caps is what they wanted to hold back that much pressure. That's nuts to me. I designed equipment for 5000 psi that looks to have thicker o-rings with backing to prevent extrusion.
