Tourist submarine taking people to the site of the Titanic wreck has gone missing

I think he's saying that even with such proximity if it does get disconnected there better be a very good protocol to reconnect. I'd be more concerned about the bluetooth adapter(s) connected to the sub failing.

It's a great technology for headphones but I wouldn't drive a car with a bluetooth steering wheel

The clock expired at 8:00 AM Eastern this morning.

They are dead.

The FAA regulations require that the design of the aircraft be such that the probability of a catastrophic failure is 10^-9. I.e. a design or manufacturing flaw should only create a crash with total loss of life once every billion flights. Although the actual number of catastrophic crashes are greater than that, the vast majority of aircraft crashes are due to human error (pilot or maintenance). The reason the Boeing 737MAX events got so much attention was because the flaw was in the design.

The fundamental difference between this event and the NASA events are the NASA events were not carrying fare paying passengers. Once OceanGate decided that the only qualification to be part of the crew was a large bank account then they are crossing the threshold from research venture to commercial venture.

While I understand your point about niche markets remember air travel, and even car travel, were niche markets just over 100 years ago. At what point does a niche market become mainstream. Ten operators competing with each other? One hundred trips per year?

Regarding Everest, the main risk is the elements, I am not aware of any deaths on Everest due to equipment failure. (Harlin's death on the Eiger could be described as equipment failure.) Furthermore, the equipment used to climb Everest is relatively low tech, most of it has no moving parts let alone microchips and circuitry. With OceanGate everything depends on the equipment working. Somebody signing up for Everest knows they are ultimately responsible for their safety. Signing up for OceanGate means you have assigned that responsibility over to the company and the design team of the vessel.

Airplane crashes in the US are exceedingly rare:

The United States' last fatal accident was in 2009, when Colgan Air flight 3407 crashed while flying from Newark to Buffalo, killing everyone onboard.

Why do you sigh? The chances of you being a billionaire is statistically zero. The chance of you or your family being negatively affected by the desires of billionaires to increase or preserve their wealth is huge. So what's in it for you to support this hierarchy?

Do you love Kings too?

Technically, Challenger did not fail, it was the SRB that failed.

The root cause of both of the disasters that you referenced has been traced back to organizational failures thought. Morton Thiokol executives and NASA pushed for a launch despite a clear objection from the engineers, in the case of Challenger. NASA's hubris and regression in "safety culture", callously ignoring the risks of re-entry to maintain the schedule for the ISS. In both cases, the astronauts knew "the risk" of death, but believed that NASA would have kept their best interests at the forefront of every decision. We as a nation didn't shrug our shoulders and say "Well, they knew the risks."

I think when the book is written on this submersible accident, much of the same will be said of OceanGate. Those who partook may have understood "the risk", but that doesn't mean that they didn't expect OceanGate to keep their safety as passengers as a priority. There are obvious organizational failures here, and all of those involved need to be held accountable.

There is a Canadian remotely operated vehicle that just got to ocean floor and is searching for the Titan. France is preparing to deploy is own vehicle soon. Shouldn't these have been deployed days ago?

I've always found this sort of stuff fascinating. I'm talking about space & ocean exploration and not people that are horrifically going to lose their lives. I have the personality of someone that would want to go on a mission like this but, of course, I would never have done it on the Titan with so many questions about its safety.

It still amazes me that the manned Trieste & Fendouzhe bathyscaphes went to the bottom of the Mariana Trench - a depth of 35,797 ft or about 6 3/4 miles. That dwarfs what the Titan has done and attempted to do on this trip. Those vessels, of course, had government funding and were more than likely much safer than the Titan.

The ocean is a very big place. It takes time to get those to where they need to be? "Days ago" was not possible.

Those vehicles likely did not have components purchased from Office Depot.

They should have flew them to the location and dropped them.

I believe they were deployed days ago - but have been in transit this whole time. It isn't easy to move these things quickly.

The remotely controlled vehicles have to be operated by a person. Would they also have flown that person to the location and dropped him or her into the ocean?

They tried that and it broke, so they had to gorilla glue it back and let it dry for a day.

Then they should have pulled their fingers out of their ass and dropped it lower from a helecoper.

Too late now anyway, they're dead.

They were fish food days ago.

There are reports now that debris has been found the search area

I'll bet, if it is ever found at all, we will learn that there was a complete failure of the ship on the way down and the occupants died instantly.

I'd bet the ocean's pressure crushed it.