The paywall will keep it from the widespread ridicule it richly deserves, but the Detroit News has an unintentionally hilarious tribute to Stockton “Tock” Rush, written by one of the auto writers, a trust-fund mediocrity who was also a Princeton ‘84 classmate. “Excruciating” doesn’t really describe it.
“Like many pioneers, Tock came from a family of means. He was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune by virtue of his grandfather, director Ralph Davies. His namesakes — Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton — were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and their portraits hang in the foyer of his Seattle home.”
“The vessel would make some 50 deep Atlantic simulation dives before completing its first Titanic trip in 2021. Shortly thereafter, the OceanGate team towed the Titan to a hangar in Oakland County Airport before a small audience of thrill seekers to sell the experience. The team included Tock’s wife (and Talbot’s college roommate), Wendy, a mission specialist whose great-grandparents had, coincidentally, perished aboard the Titanic.”
Yeager flow the X-1--a highly engineered rocket-plane that had been subjected to extensive wind-tunnel testing. Yeager himself was a highly experienced combat and test pilot. The entire endeavor was given intense support and scrutiny every step of the way. Titan? Not so much.
Well, yeah, but... but... there's Sir Edmund Hillary too, who can forget how he heroically died on Everest after saying, "I don't need no stinkin' oxygen!"
No, no – you're missing the central issue: controversy, scandal and downright kerfuffle inevitably follows when you name your enterprise OceanGate. I mean, he saved everyone the trouble of actually coining it!
I can already see the REAL OceanGate starting to form, the Navy picked up the sounds of the implosion on Sunday, how come they didn't tell us sooner, huh? I expect it will be just one of the many, many counts listed when the House finally gets around to impeaching Biden.
And no matter how inventive the billionaires get in killing themselves ("Explosions are for losers, the REAL cool people die by IMplosion!") we can always find a way that it's all the goddamn government's fault.
Seriously though. You could cut the irony with a knife. Five bazillionaires are dead now because they didn't care about safety protocols when they went to the bottom of the fucking ocean to gawk at the watery grave of more than a thousand poor schlubs who died 111 years ago because the shipping line they were in the purported care of didn't care about safety protocols. The only one I feel bad for is the 19 year old. I did stupid things when I was 19 too, but none of them fucking killed me.
Yea I feel particularly bad for the kid, who had probably put his faith in his dad’s assurances of safety. But, man, for a bunch of “successful” guys how was this shit not sounding the air horn and flashing the red lights when they looked into the safety of the sub? Did the sub owner just straight up lie about its capabilities?
It had been down to those depths a couple of times, so that shows it's safe, right? Except the experts explain that carbon fiber is a TERRIBLE material to make a deep submersible from, because each time it's stressed, it accumulates tiny cracks, which can, under repeated submersion and stressing, lead to water infiltration and death. So you get maybe 2-3 dives out of the thing before it implodes? Congratulations to the designers for creating the world's first single-use submarine.
Yeah, I read that the kid was scared, but didn't want to disappoint his dad on Father's Day weekend. Damn. I think I'm not gonna read any more of the details.
I have gone to some lengths to avoid reading directly about this fiasco, and I still know far more than I want to. Hubris and arrogance are a deadly combo, no matter who's driving and what they steer with.
Back when I was a sprout, like maybe 1977 or so, I got it in my head to design a rocket to take me to space. (The TV show "Salvage 1" was partly at fault.) So I got ahold of an actual rocketry book from back when amateur rocketeers built their own, and set to calculating. Of course, it went nowhere. I was just a broke kid with no resources.
Now I understand rocketry and rocket engineering much better (thank you, Orbiter, Simple Rockets 2, and Kerbal Space Program) and realize it never would've worked and probably would have killed me. I had some real Dunning-Kruger "unacknowledged genius Libertarian" shit going on back in the day. But what if I had had money to waste on it? How far would I have gotten before the disaster? How many other people would I have killed because "I know what I'm doing"?
Salvage 1! As a kid, it seemed so great! I also remember either That's Incredible or Real People featured one guy who was building a rocket in his backyard, like a big rocket, I think big enough the government was mad, and him showing the camera how it would steer, I think? But he was frustrated because he needed some part that the govt wouldn't let anyone sell him? This is a memory from one viewing in ~1977 so who knows. But I remember thinking it was going to be so fun to be an adult and have a hobby.
I think that article was about Robert (?) Truax, who was building his own manned rocket BUT he used to build rockets for the military, so he knew what he was doing. (Maybe the Navy? The Truax family has a dynasty in rocketry, from what I remember.)
On a similar tack, I knew there would be blowback the second I heard the Stockton Rush quote about "50 year old white guys." As in not wanting jowly ex-navy types in the promo photos. He wanted the publicity shots to resemble marketing aimed at young folks. Hip, good looking specimens we'd all like to see in our imaginary circle of friends.
There is an awful lot to unpack in all of this. A good start is a YouTube channel called Sub Brief. It's hosted by, wait for it, a jowly ex-navy type. But he's genuinely sympathetic to some of Rush's ideas about attracting the youth to new adventures. Then he does a concise job of explaining what a criminal clusterfuck the entire business model was.
(Bear in mind it's a YouTube channel. If Bruce Springsteen shows up on YouTube and says, "Hi, I'm Bruce Springsteen!", you'll want to look for verification.)
The primary reason Rush didn't want to hire those older White engineers was because those guys 1.) cost a lot more, 2.) would have demanded more structural analysis of the entire vehicle, and 3.) would have been the ones saying "nope, not gonna work" to the concept of a cheap ultra-deep submersible.
So, hire the 30-year-olds who have no background or experience with these things. They work cheap, they have that "can-do" attitude that tends to ignore or minimize risks, and they're willing to follow charismatic morons right over the fucking cliff.
"I was in a structural engineering program at Stannford, but that harshed my surfin' buzz. I might have something to offer Oceangate, but you should know in advance, I need to be flexible in how I allot my time."
I seem to remember a story from about 15 years ago of Springsteen stumbling on a couple getting married in some local park. He then "crashed" their reception by jamming with the band they'd hired.
The pertinent point for me is: "CRENSHAW: Bolt, the idea of limited government is not to privatize the risks — it’s to privatize the gains. That’s just economics 101."
The podcast Well There's Your Problem did an episode on The Hyperloop, and they do a wonderful job of covering how it went from autonomous robot pods to a one-lane each way tunnel for Teslas.
I would just like to state for the record that I fully support any and all efforts to shoot billionaires into the sun. In fact I would consider it a better use of my tax dollars than almost anything else and would urge Congress to fund such efforts as soon as possible.
I'm also open to the idea of billionaire cage matches, as Zuckerberg and Musk are now proposing to do, as long as it's understood that we're fighting to the death. Really, it's a win for us no matter how it turns out.
I was thinking I really couldn't wait until this tragic misadventure blew over then I realized that there will inevitably be a movie or probably an 8 part Netflix series
and it's going to take years, if not decades for it to recede in the collective rear view mirror.
Greg Peters and James Franco have a lunch date already-
"In 2019, OceanGate said it was concerned the certification process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said."
A sensible precaution to have multiple citizenships in your back pocket (you never know when you might need to be smuggled out of Japan in an audio-equipment box on a private jet to Lebanon) but hardly necessary in this case. Rich White People in Trouble brings ALL the world's navies to the yard.
I assumed they were all already dead when the "news" first broke. The subsequent "reportage" kept (and will keep) all other thoughts (and prayers) off the table except for PrideFest here in SF.
Just so you're up to date on your conspiracy theories, the latest one is that the US Navy recorded sound of the implosion when it happened, but then kept it all secret so they could break the news the same day as Hunter's plea deal. Man, for a doddering, senile old fool, that Joe Biden sure is sharp.
And you'll note that both Shuttle losses trace right back to hubris at NASA - "oh, the O rings will hold up even though they were frozen" in the one case, "a little tile damage, nothing to worry about" in the other.
I actually heard his testimony live over the radio. We used o-rings for very minor mechanical connections on small components for bicycles and I knew just enough to be floored by the idea that was what effectively held the Spaaaace Thiiiiingie! together.
"I think it was General MacArthur who said: 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said, smiling. The CEO acknowledged that he'd "broken some rules" with the Titan's manufacturing but was confident that his design was sound. "I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fiber and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."
From what I've read, the main reason he used carbon fiber was to save *money* on costlier but proven materials for submersibles. Just a thought, but two and a half miles of water above you is roughly the equivalent of one and a quarter miles of concrete. I'm not made of the same stuff as ol' Stockton, but, innovation aside, I don't think I'd appreciate that my only protection from that much weight was cheaper.
Reminds me of what John Glenn quipped about the early Mercury spaceflights: “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder.”
When I think of all the lesser-known people who could have been saved for far less than we just spent attempting to save fools from their folly, I have to question our commitment to the idea everybody matters, particularly among those with the resources to help if they chose.
Instead they chose a watery death. Yay freedom. I do feel bad for the kid, who I read was dragged into this unwillingly by Dad. That's appalling - your dad is supposed to look out for you, not help you find trouble.
I was looking at headlines on MSN last night as I do occasionally, and saw something about "it's okay to grieve". Yeah, no thanks. I realize I'm being a cold heartless bastard, but from the moment I saw Robert Evans' post on Twitter with the video of the PlayStation controller I knew it wasn't going to end well. I don't care much for the ultra-wealthy at the moment as it is, and if they insist on rolling the dice, fuck 'em if it's a 01.
And fuck you, Dan Crenshaw, and your "failure of leadership" bullshit. Conservatives love to whine about their tax dollars going to things they don't like; well, *I* don't want my tax dollars wasted on fools pursuing their folly. Let Melon Husk or Branson or one of the other ultra rich CEOs you guys used to worship like gods (until you realized bullshit populism was a better grift) pony up the spondulix to rescue them.
I remember how on the puppet show THUNDERBIRDS, the whole International Rescue program was run by some rich asshole and his sons. At least insanely wealthy marionettes had a sense of responsibility towards the unlucky.
EXCUSE ME, but Jeff Tracy might be rich but he ain't no asshole. He's using his wealth to benefit people, as opposed to our real-life douchebags. He'd spend $44 billion on a new rescue method instead of being god-emperor of Twitter or the 2065 equivalent.
(Yes, I'm a Thunderbirds defender, been one since forever)
Ex-Astronaut Jeff Tracy and his sons were the very definition of altruism. In fact, their insistence on using their proprietary wealth and technology, not for self-aggrandizing moon shots but purely to protect the public was so insane even back then that in the early episodes the people behind International Rescue were anonymous. Which was prescient, because nowadays MAGAts would be setting fire to Thunderbird 2's hangar to stop godless socialism.
The paywall will keep it from the widespread ridicule it richly deserves, but the Detroit News has an unintentionally hilarious tribute to Stockton “Tock” Rush, written by one of the auto writers, a trust-fund mediocrity who was also a Princeton ‘84 classmate. “Excruciating” doesn’t really describe it.
“From test pilot Chuck Yeager to Mount Everest explorer Sir Edmund Hillary, risk-takers are a special breed. OceanGate CEO Tock was one of them.”
“Like many pioneers, Tock came from a family of means. He was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune by virtue of his grandfather, director Ralph Davies. His namesakes — Benjamin Rush and Richard Stockton — were signers of the Declaration of Independence, and their portraits hang in the foyer of his Seattle home.”
“The vessel would make some 50 deep Atlantic simulation dives before completing its first Titanic trip in 2021. Shortly thereafter, the OceanGate team towed the Titan to a hangar in Oakland County Airport before a small audience of thrill seekers to sell the experience. The team included Tock’s wife (and Talbot’s college roommate), Wendy, a mission specialist whose great-grandparents had, coincidentally, perished aboard the Titanic.”
"coincidentally" LOL
AI will never write anything so glorious, this is gem after gem!
Stop yer killing me
ACK
Yeager flow the X-1--a highly engineered rocket-plane that had been subjected to extensive wind-tunnel testing. Yeager himself was a highly experienced combat and test pilot. The entire endeavor was given intense support and scrutiny every step of the way. Titan? Not so much.
Well, yeah, but... but... there's Sir Edmund Hillary too, who can forget how he heroically died on Everest after saying, "I don't need no stinkin' oxygen!"
That was Dudley Wolfe on K2
"Who do you think you are, Reinhold Messner?"
I lean toward Royal Robbins if forced...
And all those deletions? I blame the nut on the end of the wrench.
Ow! I sprained my eye muscles, they rolled so hard!
Tock never shoulda left the dock.
No, no – you're missing the central issue: controversy, scandal and downright kerfuffle inevitably follows when you name your enterprise OceanGate. I mean, he saved everyone the trouble of actually coining it!
I can already see the REAL OceanGate starting to form, the Navy picked up the sounds of the implosion on Sunday, how come they didn't tell us sooner, huh? I expect it will be just one of the many, many counts listed when the House finally gets around to impeaching Biden.
And no matter how inventive the billionaires get in killing themselves ("Explosions are for losers, the REAL cool people die by IMplosion!") we can always find a way that it's all the goddamn government's fault.
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup!
Cover up that mess with 4000 meters of water, will ya?
Crush depth pressure: "Tick tock mother*****."
Stockton Rush ain't no Dixon Bainbridge, for sure.
Ah, the Detroit Noose. Good to see some things don't change.
Now I wanna know where Schlemiel is. 😀
Seriously though. You could cut the irony with a knife. Five bazillionaires are dead now because they didn't care about safety protocols when they went to the bottom of the fucking ocean to gawk at the watery grave of more than a thousand poor schlubs who died 111 years ago because the shipping line they were in the purported care of didn't care about safety protocols. The only one I feel bad for is the 19 year old. I did stupid things when I was 19 too, but none of them fucking killed me.
History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme.
Say what you will about history
Truth is, it's all just a mystery
Icarus events transpire
Passengers therein perspire
But "BOOYAH!" Keep on pumping the fistery
Would the passengers not expire in this case?
You could say that, yeah. Didn't rise to my cogency horizon 'cause it don't end with 'spire'.
Damn x's!
History never repeats
I tell myself before I go to sleep
Yea I feel particularly bad for the kid, who had probably put his faith in his dad’s assurances of safety. But, man, for a bunch of “successful” guys how was this shit not sounding the air horn and flashing the red lights when they looked into the safety of the sub? Did the sub owner just straight up lie about its capabilities?
It had been down to those depths a couple of times, so that shows it's safe, right? Except the experts explain that carbon fiber is a TERRIBLE material to make a deep submersible from, because each time it's stressed, it accumulates tiny cracks, which can, under repeated submersion and stressing, lead to water infiltration and death. So you get maybe 2-3 dives out of the thing before it implodes? Congratulations to the designers for creating the world's first single-use submarine.
Jeez, this is starting to read like a 'Steel is Real' rant against carbon fiber bicycles...
LUGGED steel frames, of course. Braze, don't weld!
Careful now...'cause unless you specify brass rod or silver you have not yet defined the depths of your passionate intensity.
Cold set or jigged?
Manganese moly or chrome moly?
Straight, single or double butted?
Horizontal or vertical slots?
73 or 73 1/2º?
British or Italian? (nobody does French anymore, tho some of us wax nostalgic* about Swiss)
*Nostalgia wax does the trick!
I like double-butted and I cannot lie
I am reminded of the CSS Hunley, which kept on killing its crew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Hunley_(submarine)
Yeah, I read that the kid was scared, but didn't want to disappoint his dad on Father's Day weekend. Damn. I think I'm not gonna read any more of the details.
I have gone to some lengths to avoid reading directly about this fiasco, and I still know far more than I want to. Hubris and arrogance are a deadly combo, no matter who's driving and what they steer with.
Whatever happened to rich dads buyin' their kid a hooker as a male bonding experience? These new-money arrivistes have no respect for the traditions.
I guess it's still funny if it's true.
Love the names ! There is something
Very Golden Age of British Satire about them.
You ever think about taking up pottery making? You could easily end up as The Twenty First Century's Josiah Wedgewood.
"Yet here I am wearing a light wool suit!" Chef's kiss.
Back when I was a sprout, like maybe 1977 or so, I got it in my head to design a rocket to take me to space. (The TV show "Salvage 1" was partly at fault.) So I got ahold of an actual rocketry book from back when amateur rocketeers built their own, and set to calculating. Of course, it went nowhere. I was just a broke kid with no resources.
Now I understand rocketry and rocket engineering much better (thank you, Orbiter, Simple Rockets 2, and Kerbal Space Program) and realize it never would've worked and probably would have killed me. I had some real Dunning-Kruger "unacknowledged genius Libertarian" shit going on back in the day. But what if I had had money to waste on it? How far would I have gotten before the disaster? How many other people would I have killed because "I know what I'm doing"?
Salvage 1! As a kid, it seemed so great! I also remember either That's Incredible or Real People featured one guy who was building a rocket in his backyard, like a big rocket, I think big enough the government was mad, and him showing the camera how it would steer, I think? But he was frustrated because he needed some part that the govt wouldn't let anyone sell him? This is a memory from one viewing in ~1977 so who knows. But I remember thinking it was going to be so fun to be an adult and have a hobby.
I think that article was about Robert (?) Truax, who was building his own manned rocket BUT he used to build rockets for the military, so he knew what he was doing. (Maybe the Navy? The Truax family has a dynasty in rocketry, from what I remember.)
The airport in Madison is named Truax field, wonder if there's a connection? How many Truaxes could there be?
There are quite a few Truaces out there, so maybe?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truax_(surname)
Hot damn, that's it! Searching the name, I found the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcivyj3CwVI
(Also apparently there's a Real People youtube channel now?)
Article more informative than the Skip Stephenson investigation: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-12-08-vw-14582-story.html
Thanks, Pere Ubu.
Oh yeah, Bob Truax. Forgot about him. Got infamous from Knievel, got a rocket in his yard a couple miles from where we lived.
'Wedgwood became what he wished to be: "Vase Maker General to the Universe".'
Aim Higher!
Inkwell Maker to the stars?
China maker to China?
Coals to Newcastle? Tinkers to Evers to Chance?
Ashes to Ashes?
Station to Station?
On a similar tack, I knew there would be blowback the second I heard the Stockton Rush quote about "50 year old white guys." As in not wanting jowly ex-navy types in the promo photos. He wanted the publicity shots to resemble marketing aimed at young folks. Hip, good looking specimens we'd all like to see in our imaginary circle of friends.
There is an awful lot to unpack in all of this. A good start is a YouTube channel called Sub Brief. It's hosted by, wait for it, a jowly ex-navy type. But he's genuinely sympathetic to some of Rush's ideas about attracting the youth to new adventures. Then he does a concise job of explaining what a criminal clusterfuck the entire business model was.
(Bear in mind it's a YouTube channel. If Bruce Springsteen shows up on YouTube and says, "Hi, I'm Bruce Springsteen!", you'll want to look for verification.)
The primary reason Rush didn't want to hire those older White engineers was because those guys 1.) cost a lot more, 2.) would have demanded more structural analysis of the entire vehicle, and 3.) would have been the ones saying "nope, not gonna work" to the concept of a cheap ultra-deep submersible.
So, hire the 30-year-olds who have no background or experience with these things. They work cheap, they have that "can-do" attitude that tends to ignore or minimize risks, and they're willing to follow charismatic morons right over the fucking cliff.
"I was in a structural engineering program at Stannford, but that harshed my surfin' buzz. I might have something to offer Oceangate, but you should know in advance, I need to be flexible in how I allot my time."
Reportedly, Rush also fired the one who said the vessel was unsafe & could never be made safe...
Very Jurassic Park vibes to all this. Except it turns out that Rush spared every expense he possibly could -- except the ticket price.
"willing to follow charismatic morons right over the fucking cliff."
Ah, but notice none of those work-for-cheap 30-year-olds were actually IN the sub.
In retrospect, perhaps joyriding in a Playskool Submarine or Baby’s First Deep-Sea Submersible wasn’t a great idea.
He wanted the people who *applauded* when L. Ron Musth's rocket exploded on 4/20.
I seem to remember a story from about 15 years ago of Springsteen stumbling on a couple getting married in some local park. He then "crashed" their reception by jamming with the band they'd hired.
"Jeez, Bruce, how come you gotta make everything about YOU?"
Good video, thanks.
The pertinent point for me is: "CRENSHAW: Bolt, the idea of limited government is not to privatize the risks — it’s to privatize the gains. That’s just economics 101."
But nooo, I heard the fact he wouldn't hire 50 year old white guys was because of diversity, therefore WOKENESS killed them!
Woke no mo'
Anyone who has lived to age 50 is obviously too cautious to work for OceanGate.
I was hoping there was an otherwise unoccupied seat on that billionaires’ sun flight for a certain Supreme Court Justice.
Nooo don't say that you'll make Winsome Davey French mad https://twitter.com/davidafrench/status/1671657738617618432?s=46&t=LFoKWR1z2BVEIQEHJhZfpA
Elie Mystal's the best.
If I can make French or someone like him mad, my day is complete. (Not that any of them care what I think.)
ALL Supreme Court justices are certain. You'll have to be more specific.
And speaking of “government can’t do shit,” I-95 is already reopening thanks to federal and state efforts - no tech Bros involved.
Hyperloop, bitches!
Tunnelz!!! UNDERGROUND!!!!!!!
The podcast Well There's Your Problem did an episode on The Hyperloop, and they do a wonderful job of covering how it went from autonomous robot pods to a one-lane each way tunnel for Teslas.
The evolution of the HyperLoop:
It's like those pneumatic message tubes and it will deliver people at near-supersonic speeds!
Okay, so that would be fatal to the occupants. Instead, it will be these high-speed pods that . . .
Okay, so the engineering of the pods is expensive. It's Teslas in tunnels!
Okay, so the Teslas can't go full speed without getting kitty-cornered. 15 mph, tops.
Okay, so moving 4 people at a time at low speed is ridiculous. We'll couple two Teslas!
Okay, so the speed problem is because the Teslas bounce off the walls. We'll run on rails!
Okay, so we're still no moving lots of people. We'll make the Teslas like busses!
Okay, so we'll couple the busses together and make them run on rails. and NO, this is nothing at all like a subway, and don't you even THINK that!
The fact that they would have had the Teslas running in grooves in a one lane tunnel is a great idea given their tendency to catch on fire.
Hot!
I would just like to state for the record that I fully support any and all efforts to shoot billionaires into the sun. In fact I would consider it a better use of my tax dollars than almost anything else and would urge Congress to fund such efforts as soon as possible.
It’s even a better economic stimulant than Keynes’s “pay people to dig holes and fill them back up if necessary.” This produces a tangible good!
I'm also open to the idea of billionaire cage matches, as Zuckerberg and Musk are now proposing to do, as long as it's understood that we're fighting to the death. Really, it's a win for us no matter how it turns out.
Two men enter, no one leaves.
Yes, a 100% improvement on my idea.
I misread that as "Kanye's" and thought I had missed a whole new spate of his insanity
I gotta ask: What you got against the sun?
Just wait til they disrupt it with all their synergies!
I was thinking I really couldn't wait until this tragic misadventure blew over then I realized that there will inevitably be a movie or probably an 8 part Netflix series
and it's going to take years, if not decades for it to recede in the collective rear view mirror.
Greg Peters and James Franco have a lunch date already-
Succession meets Implosion
Sedition meets Immersion
Full fathom five
Thy father lies.
Those are shells
That were his eyes.
Il-fate! It was foreboded!
The goddamn thing imploded!
alright, alright
2 marks!
Thank you, fan!
Move fast and break things
"In 2019, OceanGate said it was concerned the certification process could slow down development and act as a drag on innovation. “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation,” it said."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/23/titanic-sub-us-navy-james-cameron-detected-likely-implosion-titan-submersible
The water pressure at 4000-meter depth is a real drag, yeah...
"CRENSHAW: Bolt, we ALL know that most of the criminal activity in the United States is traceable to the Biden Crime Family"
Minor but crucial edit.
Carry on.
Sly but perceptive - "these brave private individuals, all of them with at least dual citizenship including the United States."
A sensible precaution to have multiple citizenships in your back pocket (you never know when you might need to be smuggled out of Japan in an audio-equipment box on a private jet to Lebanon) but hardly necessary in this case. Rich White People in Trouble brings ALL the world's navies to the yard.
But the US doesn't really do dual citizenship. They would consider the private individuals as US citizens only at least for the good stuff.
I assumed they were all already dead when the "news" first broke. The subsequent "reportage" kept (and will keep) all other thoughts (and prayers) off the table except for PrideFest here in SF.
Make America Gay Again!
Just so you're up to date on your conspiracy theories, the latest one is that the US Navy recorded sound of the implosion when it happened, but then kept it all secret so they could break the news the same day as Hunter's plea deal. Man, for a doddering, senile old fool, that Joe Biden sure is sharp.
I guess they were supposed to say, "Eh, we heard it go squish on Sunday, no need to go looking for survivors."
Remember when Feynman stated "2% chance of failure" about the space shuttle?
The gummint ain't got nuthin on Spaceman Smup.
135 shuttle launches total and two of them blowed up, so seems about right. That Feynman was one smart fella.
And you'll note that both Shuttle losses trace right back to hubris at NASA - "oh, the O rings will hold up even though they were frozen" in the one case, "a little tile damage, nothing to worry about" in the other.
"We'll continue to monitor the problem."
"I put a piece of this stuff you made your submarine out of in this glass of ice water..."
I actually heard his testimony live over the radio. We used o-rings for very minor mechanical connections on small components for bicycles and I knew just enough to be floored by the idea that was what effectively held the Spaaaace Thiiiiingie! together.
From an interview with Stockton Rush himself:
"I think it was General MacArthur who said: 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said, smiling. The CEO acknowledged that he'd "broken some rules" with the Titan's manufacturing but was confident that his design was sound. "I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fiber and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that. Well, I did."
From what I've read, the main reason he used carbon fiber was to save *money* on costlier but proven materials for submersibles. Just a thought, but two and a half miles of water above you is roughly the equivalent of one and a quarter miles of concrete. I'm not made of the same stuff as ol' Stockton, but, innovation aside, I don't think I'd appreciate that my only protection from that much weight was cheaper.
"Go Down Smiling!" said Rush.
(flashback to yesterday's REBID)
Oof. Unintended, but I'll take it.
Gives new meaning to Go Down Moses
or goose down...
hoedown...
showdown...
blowdown...
Gonna quit right there 'cause I'm unhappy with where my mind is headed...
Reminds me of what John Glenn quipped about the early Mercury spaceflights: “My life depended on 150,000 pieces of equipment – each bought from the lowest bidder.”
Meanwhile...
Joe had a big meal with the Injun
And he had all his minions a'cringin'
Drinkin' wine spo-dee-o-dee
With Prime Minister Modi
While the fate of the world is unhingin'
When I think of all the lesser-known people who could have been saved for far less than we just spent attempting to save fools from their folly, I have to question our commitment to the idea everybody matters, particularly among those with the resources to help if they chose.
Instead they chose a watery death. Yay freedom. I do feel bad for the kid, who I read was dragged into this unwillingly by Dad. That's appalling - your dad is supposed to look out for you, not help you find trouble.
I was looking at headlines on MSN last night as I do occasionally, and saw something about "it's okay to grieve". Yeah, no thanks. I realize I'm being a cold heartless bastard, but from the moment I saw Robert Evans' post on Twitter with the video of the PlayStation controller I knew it wasn't going to end well. I don't care much for the ultra-wealthy at the moment as it is, and if they insist on rolling the dice, fuck 'em if it's a 01.
And fuck you, Dan Crenshaw, and your "failure of leadership" bullshit. Conservatives love to whine about their tax dollars going to things they don't like; well, *I* don't want my tax dollars wasted on fools pursuing their folly. Let Melon Husk or Branson or one of the other ultra rich CEOs you guys used to worship like gods (until you realized bullshit populism was a better grift) pony up the spondulix to rescue them.
(The kid is different. I feel bad for him.)
I remember how on the puppet show THUNDERBIRDS, the whole International Rescue program was run by some rich asshole and his sons. At least insanely wealthy marionettes had a sense of responsibility towards the unlucky.
EXCUSE ME, but Jeff Tracy might be rich but he ain't no asshole. He's using his wealth to benefit people, as opposed to our real-life douchebags. He'd spend $44 billion on a new rescue method instead of being god-emperor of Twitter or the 2065 equivalent.
(Yes, I'm a Thunderbirds defender, been one since forever)
At least Insanely Wealthy Marionettes holds up as a promising band name...
Ex-Astronaut Jeff Tracy and his sons were the very definition of altruism. In fact, their insistence on using their proprietary wealth and technology, not for self-aggrandizing moon shots but purely to protect the public was so insane even back then that in the early episodes the people behind International Rescue were anonymous. Which was prescient, because nowadays MAGAts would be setting fire to Thunderbird 2's hangar to stop godless socialism.
In America, insanely rich puppet pulls YOUR strings! (I swear, that joke never gets old - for me, at least)
Actual events of the last 36 hours or so suggest it ain't all that different in Ruskie-land...
Crenshaw would rather "the government" spend its time shooting at people trying to cross the Rio Grande (QED: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rep-dan-crenshaw-view-undocumented-immigrants-taking-advantage/story?id=62853013)