The Lost Submersible As an Analogy
American Greatness,
by
David Breitenbeck
Original Article
Posted By: DVC,
6/24/2023 4:05:04 PM
When the Titanic sank, G.K. Chesterton wrote an essay called “The Great Shipwreck As An Analogy.” Now that this same ship has unexpectedly become the site of another tragedy over a century later, I take the liberty of doing likewise.
One must first, of course, say a prayer for the souls of our unfortunate fellow creatures inside the Titan and for their grieving loved ones. [snip]
It is one of the marks of modernity that, having overcome various natural discomforts and challenges through feats of engineering, we tend to fancy ourselves as having conquered nature entirely.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
swarfer 6/24/2023 4:33:39 PM (No. 1498814)
Breitenbeck throws out a great Chesterton quote, “man is not only governed by what he thinks but by what he chooses to think about.” If you don’t think about the reasonableness of what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it.
15 people like this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 6/24/2023 4:50:06 PM (No. 1498828)
We should certainly be aware of the dangers of today's world but we tend to forget. I can remember being stunned by the Challenger disaster and that it happened "in this day and time" as the author wrote. Those type of things seem worse somehow because, like sitting on top of a massive rocket, you have no control over your fate. Much like those aboard the Titan submersible. At least a racing driver has control of his vehicle with a steering wheel, brake and throttle.
9 people like this.
Control. Humans don’t really control anything. We do the best we can and place our selves in the grace of the lord. We lost a beloved family member last week to a tornado. A freaking tornado. That only happens to strangers five states away until it happens to you.
Sure puts you in your place.
19 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
Bur Oak 6/24/2023 5:26:04 PM (No. 1498845)
The analogy applies also to companies offering sightseeing trips into space.
8 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
DVC 6/24/2023 6:03:30 PM (No. 1498868)
Reply #4, I get your point and don't entirely disagree, but the space rides are a whole hell of a lot more properly engineered and tested many times than that sub was. I see the comparison, but think that the space rides are probably 100X safer....but certainly not "safe".
As #2 says.....in a racing car, you have a lot of control, as in an aerobatic aircraft, or mountain climbing.
I will take some risks, but prefer ones where my skills, training and choices of safety equipment increase my chances to something I can accept.
I've seen bungee jumping and zip lines.....not a chance I'd do that because I have NO idea what the quality of the materials, rigging, etc are in that situation. OOPS, sorry, won't matter at all.
4 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
JHHolliday 6/24/2023 6:58:08 PM (No. 1498895)
Apologies for the second post. I raced sports cars from Sebring to Daytona back in my invincible youth but I did know the risks. I also saw three drivers killed in what is and was an amateur sport (SCCA). Well, you buy you buy your ticket and accept the risk. It was worth the risk for me because I loved the sport. It's the same with any dangerous endeavor. You also weigh the pleasure versus the chance. We do the same going to the grocery store and assume some nutball is not going to blow past a red light and T-bone us. That said, this submersible seemed to be very poorly engineered and something of a death trap. Use your intelligence and avoid unnecessary risks..
7 people like this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
bad-hair 6/24/2023 7:27:11 PM (No. 1498911)
Nature ... OMG !! The waves were 6 feet high.
Nature / North Atlantic ... the waves were 60 (yes SIXTY) feet high. Been there repeatedly.
Go to sea PREPARED or stay on shore.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
DVC 6/25/2023 1:22:26 AM (No. 1499002)
Re #7, I am certain you are correct.
Two data points:
First, I was on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic in 1966 and we were "slapped" by a huge wave that blew in a 2 ft square window about 60 ft above the waterline and broke the legs of one passenger. This seemed like a big deal, but when we reached NY, the much larger ocean liner SS Michaelangelo, on our same track, one day ahead, had been hit by a huge rogue wave, caving in the front of the superstructure, and killing three people, injuring 50 people.
Second, a USN officer relative was on the bridge of an aircraft carrier in a North Atlantic storm, and reported seeing BLUE WATER out the bridge windows...not foam, not spray, not 'surf'....solid, blue water. Those windows are about 85 feet above the waterline, and about 500 feet aft of the bow. It is difficult to grasp what sort of a wave it took to do that.
1 person likes this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
DVC 6/25/2023 1:23:20 AM (No. 1499003)
RE #8, photos and details from 1966.
0 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
DVC 6/25/2023 1:23:41 AM (No. 1499004)
Sorry....the link
https://www.michelangelo-raffaello.com/en/michelangelo-12-april-1966/
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DrOstrow 6/25/2023 10:39:37 AM (No. 1499215)
Remember shortly after the Challenger disaster someone, referring to space travel, saying ( paraphrased ) -
"We had forgotten just how damn dangerous this is".
The same is true for many things in life today.
Commercial flight is very safe, statistically, but it is because of decades of redesign, testing, backups
to the backups, overbuilding, safety margins, redundancy, on and on. But the actual activity -
strapping yourself into a multi ton, pressurized aluminum tube and going up to to the air several miles (!)
to travel at several HUNDRED miles per hour, on the surface, sounds INSANE !!
1 person likes this.
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The author makes some great points. How many of us imagine that the Biblical 'four horsemen of the apocalypse' cannot happen now or here? How many imagine that pestilence, war, famine, and death no longer are major factors? How many believe that these are permanently pushed aside by tech?