The Questionable Engineering of Oceangate

Man, you can feel the anger Real Engineering has against ocean gate incompetence, considering his thesis was on Composite materials

it blows my mind that this is still considered an accident. this was entirely foreseen, predicted, and warned of. at best, it's negligence. at worst, it's murder.

Ocean gate reminds me of a lesson from my business ethics class where my teacher showed us seemingly ridiculous OSHA regulations. We all thought why would there be rules on things like waste storage and my teacher then showed us the real life cases that made those rules a thing

The most important words that anyone can say who is involved in designing something are "I can't do that, it isn't safe". When I'm working on servers that handle the payment transactions of hundreds of thousands of people, and I get told to cut a corner, those are the words I use. Because I can't. It'll hurt too many people if I screw up and people's credit card details get leaked. When my friends who develop software for medical equipment are told to rush something or bodge it, it's the words they use. It's the words my friends, mechanical engineers, use when they're asked to cut corners or rush something without sufficient testing or review.

To those complaining about the "lateness" of this video: this is what happens when you take the time to do things right. You may not get to be the first. You may not get all the hype clicks. But you do get to be the best. This is without question the best analysis of this accident on YouTube.

The fact that hearing cracking noises on several of the descents, which was reported by many different passengers, was just completely disregarded by Rush or regarded as "normal" is absolutely mind blowing. Or the fact that they would lose contact with the mother vessel regularly and this was also regarded as normal and "not a big deal" is insane. Rushs arrogance had reached delusion and the negligence was to the umpth degree.

To paraphrase the spanish youtuber "Tri line" who briefly spoke about the incident "There's the reason nobody felt bad about the incident, the CEO was a millionare who called himself an innovator after making things cheaper, sacrificing safety in the process, in that case, go ahead, you can also jump off a plane using a blanket as a parachute and call yourself an innovator, nobody will feel anything"

A similar story can be found in the documents of the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster. Management rationalized the use of sealant beyond its tested usable temperature, and it leaked, killing seven crew.

My carbon fiber bicycle frame went through more testing than this freaking submarine. This thing is such an insane story the more we learn about.

“This is not innovation; it’s profiteering,” is so succinct, such an apt way to describe the whole thing. Well said.

As someone who has never had a day of engineering education, I surprised myself by actually understanding this video. All the credit goes to how skilled you are at explaining these high-level concepts in an understandable way. Thank you! :)

Stockton Rush spent more effort in avoiding regulations than he did making sure his craft was safe. He will be remembered all right, the topic in many engineering safety courses for years to come!

“The vast majority of marine accidents are a result of operator error, not mechanical failure.” Yes, because the regulators catch the mechanical failures

"Questionable engineering" should be a new series in this channel! I would devour every part of it!

Got to “love” the Cave Johnson-esque approach to safety Stockton Rush had. Went about the same for Cave too.

4:32 I've recently learned about Survivorship bias which is a logical error of focusing on successes but not failures. They think most errors are operational completely overlooking that mechanical errors weren't even being given the chance to happen since they were already filtered out because of existing certification standards.

I am an engineer (retired now) and still remember what one of university lecturers said - when cooks make a mistake people get stomach ache. When engineers do, people die. Lesson I have remembered all my working life.

Oceangate’s brochure answering the question “why wasn’t it classed?” has completely backwards logic. It said that certifications were bad because they don’t protect against operator error and most marine accidents are due to that operator error. No…. the reason most accidents are due to operator error is that certification weeds out all of the terrible designs! If it weren’t for that process we’d probably have way more Oceangate type accidents.

Even worse than the engineering was the hubris of Oceangate. They just tuned out everyone that said “that’s probably a bad idea.” Things rarely go right when people refuse to listen to others.

The fact that so many warnings were ignored is truly shocking, as an engineer in training I’m disgusted to hear that an employee who raised concerns was fired considering the fact that during my time in this industry I have been taught to speak up if I think something is wrong even if it isn’t, this project that ocean gate undertook was nothing short of greed and stupidity and as the video perfectly put it “This is not innovation; it’s profiteering” a truly sad situation that could have easily been avoided but has now persisted past the end point into something that unfortunately cannot be undone.