The Chaser Report - Predicting How Elon Musk Will Die

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Dom presents new details from a deep dive into the Titan OceanGate submersible that show it was even more ridiculous than we ever knew. Meanwhile Charles has a prediction on the manner of Elon Musk's death. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, a couple of stories to catch up on today. I have an update about one of your favourite tragedies of the past year or so, the Titan submersible. Oh, right, that one. Wyatt has done, dare I say, a deep dive into what went wrong.

And you remember how they seem like they were a little bit inept and hopeless when the whole thing massively imploded in quite tragic circumstances? Yes. Yeah, they were far more incompetent than anyone even realized. Wow, okay. And so are we banking on the idea that tragedy plus time equals comedy? Actually, we didn't care about it at the time, did we? No, you went tragedy plus, I think I've got an angle on this equals podcast episode.

No, but I mean, this is one of those things where, I mean, you kind of have to laugh at the absurdity of this man's Docton Rush. This is what it's all about. In some ways, it started out funny and it's now become tragic. It's actually comedy plus time equals tragedy. Or it's submarine plus Stockton Rush means inevitable disaster. That's actually what it is. And I mean, when you see this stuff, you just think if only they'd known the people who went down on the submersible.

Then again, they willingly went into a carbon fiber submarine piloted by a PlayStation joystick. So, yeah. All right, we'll find out how this all breaks down in a moment. So Charles, this is an amazing bit of reporting Because a lot of us wanted to know what went wrong With the whole Titan submersible disaster Where people went into the Ocean Gate, the Titan submersible And it imploded on the way to the Titanic in essence

And they paid 250 grand ahead to die Yes, and I'm interested in a couple of things about this Which is, okay, so it's about a year later, right? Yeah, Mark Harris in Wired has done a very extensive investigation and they've got lots of leaked documents from the former company. Oh, did the Titan leak, did they? It did. It absolutely leaked, yeah.

It leaked in a really very sudden way. No, no, but my question is, like, how much more information is there to know, given the fact that it's presumably at the bottom of the ocean, you can't possibly... Oh, being tiny pieces, I would think. Yeah, you can't really know much more than it imploded. I mean, all these points are going to essentially establish Charles. Right. Is that, you know how, and you were very fast off the mark with this,

as you've praised yourself for many times in hindsight. Yes, yes. You went back and looked at the sort of science, this person, I thought, wow, this thing is absolutely insane. There never should have been allowed to, you know, exist. And perhaps there should have been licensing. Yeah, that, but far much worse. Oh, okay, great, okay.

Let me take you inside a building, the Ocean Sciences building at the University of Washington in Seattle back in July 2016. Yep. They have an extraordinary facility there for simulating the pressure of the ocean. And on this day, July 7th, 2016, red lights began flashing at the entrances to this building, the Ocean Sciences building. And everyone cleared out.

The red lights went off, they cleared out because they are about to do something very, very dangerous, which is testing the first version of the Titan submersible, which is called Cyclops 2. I don't know why it was number 2, but anyway, an early version. by simulating intense pressure. And it's so dangerous to do that that they needed to evacuate the building just for safety reasons.

I really don't understand. They've got a tank. In this tank, they were testing, I probably should have started with this, in this tank they were going to test the prototype of what became the Titan, right? But why is it dangerous for other people in the building? Like, surely the only thing that can happen is it just implodes.

Like it just go, all the water you've put under a massive amounts of pressure explodes. Oh, explodes. Let me just briefly summarize what Wide wrote.

Only a handful of people remained inside preparing to unleash one of the most destructive forces in the natural world. Wow. The crushing weight

of two and a half miles of ocean water. Wow. So they lowered the Cyclops 2 into the testing tank. It was a smaller version of this carbon fiber thing, the amazing carbon fiber hull

that was the big Stockton Rush breakthrough. They dropped it in and they were testing it out, right? To get to the the depth of the Titanic, you've got to withstand 6,500 PSI. Yep.

Which is just very, it's a massive, that's a massive amount of pressure per square inch. To put it into context, I pump my bike tyres to 65 PSI. There's 100th of the pressure. Yeah, there's 100 times the pressure of my bike tire, which are really quite, you know, blown up quite a lot.

Yeah, yeah. You're very strong, of course, so yeah. So the pressure gauge went up 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 73 minutes into the test, they hit that mark, the 6,500 PSI that they needed for the bottom of the ocean where the Titanic is. There was a sudden roar, I'm quoting here, and the tank shuddered violently. Oh, the entire building rocked. Oh, my God. And it says here, the Ocean Gate employee emailed about this and wrote, it scared the shit out of everyone.

The model had imploded, Charles, in the tank. What? Yes. So it imploded, it imploded, it imploded in the test. Yes. This is before the went out, you know. And this is considerably less pressure than they designed it for. I think they meant it to go even deeper than the Titanic.

So, yes, it completely imploded. So was Stockton Rush just suicidal? Like, why did he then proceed to go, okay, well, it failed in the test, but I'm sure in real life it won't fail? That's exactly what he thought. He thought that it was just, you know, regulation slowed down. It was sort of a Trumpian attitude to science, wasn't it? It was like, you can't trust this science thing.

So it imploded. Most engineering teams would have gone back to the drawing board, it says here. Yeah, exactly. Stockton Rush didn't do that. What he did within a few months was building a full-size cyclops too, based on the exact same submersible model that imploded. So he went, okay, that's all right. Let's just build a big one that takes people.

This journalist, Mark Harris, had gone down in another Ocean Gate Protector. not with a carbon fiber hull with a steel hull. It was rated for up to 500 metres. And this is what they had bought to try and develop the steering system, the navigation system for the sub. And so this guy went into, I think, set the Seattle's Elliott Bay. And they'd added the LEDs to the outside

and the PlayStation controller. And there was a large acrylic viewport. So they went into this thing. And 90 minutes into the dive, like the test dive that this journalist was on, 130 metres below the surface of Seattle's Elliott Bay, they were completely lost. They had absolutely no idea where they were going.

They were trying to find a rail ferry, the wreck of a rail ferry that once carried Teddy Roosevelt. And so Stockton Rush's idea, it was starting to get very cold. There was no insulation and the water was starting to, the frigid water was starting to kind of chill the sub through the stain and the steel, as you would imagine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so Stockton Rush says to the journal,

can you take out your phone and use the compass app? can work out where we're going. They were complete, yeah, so what an amazing idiot. He then rebooted the thruster system and set off in what they, he thought was the right direction. Then a voice came from the support ship on the surface, which was kind of tracking them, saying, you're heading in exactly the one direction. So eventually they found it.

Eventually they went and found this wreck, and it was quite interesting. And so then back when they got out, Stockton Rush basically just said, oh, it doesn't matter. This is why we did the Cyclops I could have built a huge version, but I've got to sort out things like the magnetic compass first. He said, this sort of stupid stuff we've just got to work through. And then the Cyclops, too, will have none of these bugs. And that's true. It had completely different bugs, the carbon fiber hull.

So, look, it's a long and fascinating article. But in essence, there's just more and more examples of experts who knew things about things like carbon fiber saying, this isn't a good idea. You've got to test it. Yes. And Stockton Rush going, ah, regulation, stifling innovation. News you can't trust. I kind of feel like there's some lesson to be learned from this.

I'm just reading. They tested further prototypes and they failed again. The carbon fibre ones, they all failed. It was the fourth test. The fourth test went to 4,500 metres and then imploded. Look at this picture of the imploded model. Oh my God. Yeah.

So it fully implodes. Just about every single one. So they didn't implode on the computer models, Charles. But they did whenever they did any real world submersible. Do you think maybe this could be a good way to sort of cull the Earth's population. Now, I'm not a, I'm not into mass murder, right? Sure. Just as a preface my thoughts.

But, you know, I feel like Stockton Rush has the same vibe, the same energy as Elon Musk. Oh, he viewed himself as the Oceanic Elon Musk. Yes. That was his role model. And why can't we get, like, Elon Musk to get interested in deep sea diving? You see what I'm saying? Do you remember his little submarine he was going to use for the cave rescue? I mean, he was almost there, wasn't he?

Yes. But, Charles, you don't need to get him interested in that. Like, surely if we just quead him a message going, but you can't do a good submersible, he'll suddenly set up a whole company. Charles, you're forgetting something. And that's a very good idea. And you should tell him that there's some, you know, a soccer team trapped in a cave, so he goes and rescues them.

Yep. And then he'll call you a pito. Yeah. You're forgetting the much larger version of this that Elon Musk is already. be deep on board with. Oh, yeah. Which is Space X. Ah, yeah.

But isn't Space X actually quite good? Like, hasn't it sort of worked? Oh, depends what you mean by worked. Have they come up with some amazing innovations and are they one of the leading companies at the commercialisation of space? Yes. Absolutely, they are. But along the way, have a lot of their rockets exploded?

Yes. Yes. They damn well have. I've got a friend who is literally a rocket scientist. Yeah. And he says that actually the reason why Space X is so much. better than all the other space companies and actually arguably sort of faster than NASA to be able to develop these things.

Well, NASA's outsourced it. Is because the data that you get from a failed launch is in some ways even more useful than the data you get from a successful launch. And this is true of the Titan submersible too. I mean, they absolutely proved that carbon fiber submersibles are a terrible idea. That is data that we wouldn't have had had they succeeded. Very useful data. So all we need, Charles,

we don't need to convince Elon Musk to build a submersible. We just need to dare him to go aboard one of the rockets. Yes. Because the last one that he launched a couple of weeks ago, $140 million rocket. And afterwards, he said, yeah, we knew it was going to explode. But, I mean, it's a pretty good firework display, isn't it? Well, and I think it was done within 24 hours of Boeing launching their one.

So I think it was just... Well, Boeing had one. that actually made it up to the International Space Station, I think. Yes, but I'm not sure it was able to dock with the Space Station. You don't need to do that. It was having trouble docking with it. Is that because the windows came out midway? Well, I think that, yeah, I think that's right.

Well, they didn't realize that the International Space Station actually puts bolts in their windows. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, this is the headline from The Economist. Fourth time, lucky, Elon Musk's starship makes a test flight without exploding. And it was news, oh, my gosh, one didn't explode. And this is the one that he wants to go to Mars, right? This is his long-term thing.

He wants us to be a multi-planet's species. And he's, we've just got to get him to go up and say, Elon, this is the one. Yeah. You can be the first man on Mars. Yes. Off you go. That is, but like I know that we're sort of joking somewhat. But that is going to be the end of Elon Musk, isn't it?

He is definitely going to end. In an attempt to be the first man on Mars. In an attempt to go to Mars. That is, I think, I'm willing to call it. You think that's the inevitable end for Elon? Yeah. Because he's basically broke. He's completely insolvent.

Is he? Yes. Oh, yes. Does that mean I shouldn't order a Tesla? You should definitely not order a Tesla, but there's mainly because it's engineered by Elon Musk. Yeah, that's right. But no, well, no, but you've seen that you can now see, there's so many unsold Teslers in America, you can now see them from space.

Really? Yeah, there's 50,000 unsold model wise. So up on his SpaceX. Yeah, he can. Looked down and at all the unsold tests. No, no, it's a complete disaster. Because all the stuff that it's, it's a good reminder of how reality actually happens in slow motion. So he took over Twitter a couple of years ago now.

And it literally took about two years for everyone to go, oh, this guy's a Nazi, right? And another. Yeah. Yeah. And he destroyed his own brand. And so he's destroyed Twitter. He's destroyed Tesla because no one wants to be associated with. test it, but that takes a couple of years to sort of filter through at a brand level.

And SpaceX, the interesting thing about SpaceX is it's actually, it doesn't have a business model. The only business it really does of any great worth is Starling, which he also owns, which also loses money. So everything he does loses huge amounts of money. And the whole reason why the whole thing hasn't collapsed is because everyone would have to take a write down if it is collapsed. There's so much capital backing this one guy that it's in everyone's interest to sort of keep him going.

The emperor has no clothes. It's not a point you can make. So that they can just... The world economy will exit slowly while selling their shares to suckers. So as I sometimes do, just for you, dear listener, I've fact-checked Charles. And absolutely true. There's a seven news report of thousands of electric cars sitting idle inside Tesla's graveyard, apparently. They're having to put them in.

malls in Texas because they can't... Well, how's the mall? Part of the problem is they get dusty outside. If they store them outside, they get very dusty. And then if anyone asks them about it, you know how they have no PR anymore? Apparently, if you ask them on social media about the giant pile of unsold Teslers,

they just reply with a piece of poo emoji. That's what they do. It's not selling any more cars, though, is it? The other amazing news to happen in the last 24 hours is that Apple has been blocked on Twitter. Really? Oh, he's very angry that they're. they're putting AI into the iPhone.

That's a subject from the time. So, in short, I think you're onto something. I think you should definitely dare Elon to. But on the, not just Elon, like all billionaires. We sort of make it the trendy thing for billionaires to do. Well, it's surprising that Bezos was also survived, the Blue Horizon and Richard Branson survived. Like, they all wanted to go up. But that's all space. No, no, we've got to, because space is easy compared to oceans.

Oh, you need some implosion. Yeah, because in space, you're dealing with pressure. Pressures of one, like one atmosphere is the amount of pressure that you have to deal with because it's actually, there's no pressure outside and one pressure inside. Whereas deep under the ocean, you're talking about hundreds of atmospheres worth of pressure. So clearly what needs to happen here is that we need to dare him, and you should do this on Twitter right now, dare him to build a submersible out of unsold Tesla model Y's. There's a lot of boot space.

I just cobble them together. arguably a better material to make them out of than carbon fibre. Yeah, and indeed the controller steering will be better than a logitect gaming controller. All right, so you heard it here first. Elon Musk. What did they hear first?

What, five to ten years? Oh, yeah, he's going to die. Our gear is from road. We're part of the iconoclass network. Are you sure I can't buy a Tesla? They're cheaper than they've ever been. BID are cheaper. I know.