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It’s not uncommon, the US navy does the same thing in their subs.
Good point. I think they may have been commenting on the amount of improvised equipment.
During the CBS clip, Rush gives Pogue a tour of the sub, noting the presence of “only one button” in the entire vessel and saying that a sub “should be like an elevator.” Pogue also mentions how many pieces of the sub seem improvised, including off-the-shelf computer displays, a lighted overhead grab bar “from Camper World,” and using construction pipes as ballast. During that segment, Rush holds up a Logitech F710 Wireless controller that appears to have 3D-printed thumb-stick extensions and says, “We run the whole thing with this game controller.”
The article mentions some good arguments in favor of using off the shelf parts (both cheaper and more familiar to the end user). Part of me feels like this should be embraced more widely, as many industries feel bloated and unnecessarily expensive to get into.
And then we see people take some used pipes and make them to be safety critical parts of a deep sea submarine. I’m all for simplifying and reducing cost when it’s not necessary, but this seems a bit cheap.
Apparently the deep sea challenger had a releasable ballast weight that was designed to be automatically detached via corrosion in case of the release system failing. That is something that feels like both an intuitive and inexpensive system design.
Every time I try learning more about OceanGate, I remember that they call their clients “titaniacs” and simply cannot continue.
