CBS Sunday Morning
In a 2022 CBS Sunday Morning section, CEO Stockton Rush of deep-water submersible firm OceanGate gave journalist David Pogue a enjoyable reveal. “We run the entire thing with this recreation controller,” Rush mentioned, holding up a Logitech F710 controller with 3D-printed thumbstick extensions. The controller was wi-fi, and it was the first methodology for controlling the Titan submersible, which might quickly make a go to to the wreck of the Titanic. Pogue laughed. “Come on!” he mentioned, masking his eyes along with his hand.
Journalists liked the controller story, masking the cheap F710 and the ways in which online game controllers have change into frequent management options in numerous army and spaceflight purposes lately. In any case, in case your engineers and pilots grew up utilizing two-stick controllers to waste their pals in Halo multiplayer, why not use that in-built muscle reminiscence for different functions?
So the usage of a online game controller was not in itself a loopy choice. However after the Titan sub imploded on a June 2023 dive to the Titanic website, killing all 5 passengers together with Stockton Rush, the usage of a wi-fi $30 management interface started to look much less “cool!” and extra “is not that sort of dangerous?” The one query at that time was how lengthy it will take the Logitech F710 to indicate up in a lawsuit.
This week, we received our reply. Within the first Titan wrongful dying lawsuit, filed this week by the property of Paul-Henri Louis Emile Nargeolet, the Logitech controller is available in for some distinguished criticism.
“Hip, up to date, wi-fi”
Nargeolet “was identified worldwide as ‘Mr. Titanic,'” says the new lawsuit (PDF) towards OceanGate, Rush’s property, and numerous firms that helped construct the Titan. Nargeolet had been on 37 dives to the Titanic wreckage and, on his closing dive, was working with OceanGate as a Titan crewmember who would “information different crewmembers and help with navigation by the Titanic wreckage, which he knew so effectively.”
The lawsuit reiterates all the primary criticisms of the Titan.
First, the sub was not produced from titanium (as most submersibles are), which will get stronger beneath compression; it was made as a substitute from carbon fiber, which may crack beneath repeated compression. Rush, who noticed himself as an innovator like “Steve Jobs or Elon Musk,” the criticism says, as soon as instructed Pogue, “In some unspecified time in the future, security simply is pure waste.” Rush thought he had discovered a lighter approach to construct subs.
Second, the criticism singles out the Titan’s “hip, up to date, wi-fi electronics techniques.” (These adjectives are not compliments).
TITAN was piloted utilizing a mass-produced Logitech online game controller (usually used with a PlayStation or Xbox) reasonably than a controller custom-made for TITAN’s design and operation. Furthermore, the controller labored by way of Bluetooth, reasonably than being hardwired. TITAN additionally had solely “one button” (for energy) inside its fundamental chamber—the rest of its controls (for lights, ballast and so forth) and gauges (for depth, oxygen degree and so forth) have been touchscreen. RUSH said that TITAN was “to different submersibles what the iPhone was to the BlackBerry.” As with an iPhone, nevertheless, not one of the controller, controls or gauges would work with out a fixed supply of energy and a wi-fi sign.
OceanGate’s earlier submersible, the Cyclops I, had additionally used a online game controller (a Sony DualShock 3) and another wi-fi tech.
The criticism quotes an skilled saying that such techniques offered “a number of factors of failure” and that “‘each sub on this planet has hardwired controls for a purpose,’ particularly {that a} lack of sign wouldn’t imperil the vessel.” However such points have been “disregarded by OceanGate, as Titan employed practically an identical techniques to Cyclops I,” says the criticism.
The lawsuit additionally assaults the engineering group that designed and built-in all of the electronics techniques into Titan, saying that the group was made up largely of present or current Washington State College grads with “just about no real-world expertise and no prior publicity to the deep-sea diving business.”
The criticism doesn’t allege that the Logitech wi-fi controller, the carbon fiber building, Titan’s modern porthole, or the usage of disparate supplies with differing enlargement/compression coefficients—4 fundamental areas of criticism—have been individually liable for the sub’s implosion. But it surely does recommend that these techniques may have collectively contributed to a “daisy chain of failures of a number of improperly designed or constructed components or techniques.” The criticism says that Nargeolet’s property is entitled to a minimum of $50 million in damages.
Too good to be true
A closing investigatory report from numerous authorities companies has been in course of for over a yr and has not but been accomplished, nevertheless it appears possible that the Logitech controller—together with the 5 folks on the sub—is gone endlessly.
However the prospect of an affordable piece of plastic surviving the catastrophic implosion was simply too good for social media to disregard. Shortly after the Titan catastrophe, folks started “sharing a photograph that purports to indicate the controller resting on the underside of the ocean,” in line with a 2023 AP truth examine. “The picture reveals a sandy ocean backside with part of the photograph magnified to supposedly present an in depth up of the controller.”
“The most cost effective half survived,” one X (Twitter) person posted.
Alas, it didn’t; the photograph was a faux.