titanic gawker submersible still missing.

[Rev. Rye]

Communication with a deep sea submersible carrying 5 people who paid $250,000 each to gawk at the scene of the famous maritime disaster has been lost since sunday.    The submersible’s whereabout is unknown.

A rather impressive array of search and rescue assets, including naval anti submarine warfare assets, have been searching without results since.   It seems to me the array of assets involved is rather larger than one normally see searching for 5 lost mariners. 

Yeah, 5 privileged thrill-seeking men pay $250k to view a sunken boat; navy, air force, coast guard, state air guard rescue, front page news

While desperate migrants die on sea and no rescue, not much news cover.

Well, technically three privileged thrill-seeking men paying $250k. Two of the five were crew members. Also, given that two of the three were father and son, I suspect it might only be two wallets being opened.

Frankly, if there's anyone who really doesn't deserve sympathy, it's the people who made the damn sub. I can remember watching James Cameron's Titanic and the opening scenes were set on a somewhat similar submersible. I say somewhat similar because I remember them going out of their way to explain how high-tech everything was, and how everything was still in a precarious situation, since if any of the windows cracked, everyone involved was dead. And this wound up being the exact opposite of High-Tech.  

You know what they used for navigation? This.


It's a Bluetooth video game controller that costs $30 new on Amazon. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the sort of hardware that exists to help you play Ocarina of Time is not the same sort of hardware you should trust to keep you alive 12,000 feet below sea level.

There's more information on the Titan's previous voyage. At least it survived that time, but there were still a lot of red flags:




And because they operated in international waters, they apparently weren't even subject to any sort of safety regulations.