The Chaser Report - Titanic Submarine Investigation: The Elon Musk of The Seas

Episode Date: June 21, 2023

The world watches from the edge of their seats as the hunt for the Titanic tourism submarine continues, so Charles takes a deep dive (no pun intended) into why a bunch of billionaires got into the vessel in the first place. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal 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. This is Dom at home and Charles, you're in some sort of highfalutin lounge there, your high flyer. Oh yeah, I'm in the Virgin Lounge because I'm just a turin, I'm just a troubadour, basically. The Trubidor. Yeah, yeah. Just touring the country. your extremely unsubtle brand of satire on more suckers.

Although, can I boast? Always. Hobart tonight, which is a couple of days ago when you'll hear this, sold out. Wollongong sold out. Newcastle are a bunch of fuckwits who haven't sold out yet. I love you. You're sort of just mopping up the last few little bits of gravy on this gravy trade of yours. Good stuff.

Well, if you're going out to see Charles, look, if you listen to the podcast, you know what to expect, buyer beware. Now, Charles, you've got some news for us. What's happening? Well, okay, so there's the horrible, tragic, but very gruesomely fascinating story of the submarine that is stuck somewhere. Oh, you're not going to do the, it's in the balance. We're not doing jokes about dead people. Let's point out that as we record this, it's in the balance. We don't know whether it's going to be found.

There's apparently still air. I think it's going to remain in the balance for a few weeks, Don. By the time you hear this, it might be resolved one way or the other. But how are we to know? How are we to know? But look, I don't want to focus too much on gleefully talking about, you know, people being brought down by their own hubris. But I do want to say, I think that this story is just, almost the example of the perfect modern metaphor. You know how the Titanic was a metaphor for 1912, you know?

So you had thousands of people boarding this boat and all the poor people then drowned. Like, you know, because it was this sort of gilder. the age and that's what you did to poor people. This submarine, the details of this submarine is fascinating, right? Let's get onto that right after this. Okay. And see if Charles can bring it back. So there's five people on board this submarine, which I think it's very much like nowadays,

like we've got this billionaire class who get to do things that nobody else does. Like, whereas in 1912, at least the poor people got to get on the disaster. Yes, now it's time around. It's silly mini vehicles like Jeff Bezos's Blue Horizon, Branson's Virgin Galactic, which has already been cancelled, by the way. And then this mini-sub going down to look at the Titanic. Didn't James Cameron already establish the, blow all the trays of obscenly rich people going down to gawk at a graveyard?

But this is to commoditise it and make it into a sort of tourism for billionaires, basically. And there weren't, it wasn't just, it was widely reported that there was one billionaire on it wasn't there were two billionaires on board and arguably three right which is so there was that British billionaire that everyone knows about the second billionaire was a Pakistani oil magnate right who last year they cleared 46 billion dollars or something through their company so you know not doing too badly he brought his son along who arguably is also a billionaire or at least a billionaire air right and then the other two people on board were the experts I mean one was the same CEO of the ocean liner, and then the other one was a scientist explorer guy, right?

So it's essentially, instead of just having a sort of thing that everyone gets to thing, it was very much, I think it's very metaphorical, that it's just literally billionaires and experts were the only people who were even allowed to board this floating metaphor. It's actually sinking metaphor. It's quite extraordinary, isn't it, to think, I hadn't quite viewed it in these terms until now, Charles, that you've got people going and gawking on a watery matter. grave and thereby potentially consigning themselves to an elite grave. It's a not a mass grave, but a tiny little billionaires and experts only grave, potentially.

It is Titanic 2, and what the great thing is, is James Cameron gets to make a sequel. I mean, it's just, it writes itself. And also, can you imagine, like, there will now be tourists wanting to go and view Titanic 2? Both grave sites? Yes, exactly. Oh, man. So it's just going to keep going. Like, I think this has got another 100 years to play out on this story.

I want to talk about the CEO of this whole Ocean Gate Enterprise. Right. So is this the CEO of the business to try and get more people to go on mini-subtours of Titanic? Yeah, yeah. His name's Stockton Rush, right? Great name. Great name. Except maybe if you're wanting to sort of be an attention to detail person and not Rush.

I imagine, like, a fast-talking Josh Brolin will play him in the adaptation. Oh, no, he is the Elon Musk of the sea, this guy. Oh, wow. Give Elon five years, and Elon Musk will be the Elon Musk of the sea. But anyway, he gave this wonderful report interview on CBS last year, where he was just laughing at how unsafe the whole thing was. One detail that's come out just in the last 24 hours or so is that the safety concerns, you know, there were details, things like, so the window, there's one window.

in this little submersible vessel, right, right, right? So you have to, if you go on it, you pay $250,000 US to go on this submersible, and then you've got to take turns in looking out onto the Titanic or wherever you are. Really? So you pay a quarter of a million dollars for a tiny porthole that you've got to share. Yes, and then there's cameras on the outside. So most of the time you just spend looking at the screen. Oh, well, I mean, every modern experience has to involve.

screen time, doesn't it? It's more real than seeing it with your own eyes. Exactly. But the window that Stockton Rush put in, the manufacturer of this window refused to safety rate it beyond depths of 1,300 metres. And this submersible has to go down 4,000 meters. So it's like three times as deep as what it was safely able to do. Is it's one detail. Am I right? I I'm thinking that underwater pressure escalates in a non-linear fashion. So the deeper you go, it's not as though it's three times more pressure. It's dramatically more pressure than that. I read this fascinating thread written by engineers about the engineering sort of like the catastrophe.

Hubris, you mentioned before. Well, that underwater represents, right, which is. So they're asking this astrophysicist engineer, like who does space. things, what the pressures were. And he said, oh, it's nothing like, like space is so much easier than the sea, because with air pressure and the pressure on a vessel, you're dealing in space with pressures between one atmosphere, which is what humans can survive in, and zero atmospheres. So you've actually only got a little bit of pressure to worry about, and actually all the pressure is coming from the inside, which is really easy to manage. With undersea vessels,

When you get to those depths, you're under, it's something like 700,000 tons of pressure or something per square inch, some ridiculous amount of pressure. But the whole thing is that if the structure starts to collapse or starts to sort of not be able to support that pressure, it becomes extremely complicated to model because it gets crushed, right? And that's a sort of, it's a chaotic thing to happen. Like it collapses in on itself. And so it's sort of almost impossible to model what will happen at these sorts of pressures. So, Charles, I'm just reading about this at the NAA website, the US kind of atmospheric body.

They say that for every 10 metres you descend, there's an extra atmosphere's worth of pressure. So 4,000 metres. You're getting 4,000 times. And apparently whales can do it because their lungs collapse. But humans, not so much. So the windows were added to 1,300. Now, I'd just like to pick up the metaphor idea here now, which is, okay, so thousands of people were allowed to board the original Titanic.

Yes. And the poor people just didn't get a window, whereas this time around there is only one window. Not even the rich people get a window. It was such a shitty little experience. Anyway, and then the other great detail that this Stockton Rush guy said in the CBS interview last year was how he was. boasting about how the whole vessel only has one button. Wow.

And they use a PlayStation controller. It's literally a Logitech PlayStation controller to steer the thing and stuff like that. Like it's literally an off-the-shelf thing that you can buy to a computer store, which was actually built in, somebody tracked down the exact model, built in 2005 and was actually originally developed for Windows Me. Do you remember, you remember, your faded Windows Me? I can't believe there's a relic of Windows Me that. I mean, the lives are sad, but that controller is the only Windows Me controller on the planet

that still works. Well, no, it's funny that actually, because there were gamers commenting on it saying that that controller notoriously had a lot of drift. Oh, no. So, you know, who knows? Maybe they will turn up. They'll just be like, you know, thousands of kilometres somewhere else because of the fucking controller.

But if they are found, so this is the thing. So, okay, obviously, there's... run into some troubles. They had the ability to release their safety weights, right, which means that they could slowly ascend to the surface, right? And they've got enough oxygen to survive, right? And that's why most of the rescue effort has been actually concentrating on will they be just floating somewhere. One of the problems that Stockton didn't think about is that the Atlantic there is incredibly choppy, very foggy. So the whole thing looks basically white, right? Like the sea is white because it's choppy and the air is white it's foggy they painted the vessel

white it is a white vessel what a metaphor so it's invisible essentially is what you're saying it's essentially i mean very cool at a puff daddy party yeah yeah so and and apparently there's no they didn't have a beacon they didn't buy a beacon that could then you know why would you need a beacon so yeah So it's just floating there. And the horrible, horrible fact, which I'm sure is metaphorical in some way that I haven't thought about it enough, is that they are bolted in. So the way you get into this vessel is you all get in, five of you get in.

And then they have 14 massive bolts that they bolt you in with. And so there is no way for them to get out. So even if they're bobbing along the surface, they'll be able to see the air. they'll be able to see the sky, or at least the fog, but not be able to get to. Because when you're paying a quarter of a million dollars to go into an ocean vessel, you wouldn't want them to come up with any sort of quick release system. Yes, yes. That's horrible.

The Chaser Report, now with extra whispers. Now, so, you know, you're probably thinking, well, it's a pity, but, you know, when you're innovating and when you're at the bleeding edge of things, you know, you do have to break things, you know, know, things do go wrong. There are risks. Everyone went in wider, it's open. The only little tiny problem with that narrative is that actually what happened was that the head

of marine safety of Ocean Gate in 2018... I'm amazed they have one. Well, they don't have one. Raised concerns about all these issues and a few others. Apparently there was a whole lot of flammable stuff. They were using flammable things on board, which is apparently a terrible thing to do in a submarine. I think so.

And so he tried to raise the alert on all this, and Ocean Gates, CEO, Stockton Rush, sacked him, right? And then he had a prolonged lawsuit against Ocean Gate, and it was a whistleblower lawsuit. And part of the whole thing was, part of the rest of things that he was seeking, which he ultimately didn't get because Ocean Gates' lawyers were, you know, better funded than this poor whistleblower, was he wanted. the people, the customers, to be informed of all the safety problems with this vessel. Like the rating of the, you know, the non-rating of the windows and the controller and the lack of beacon and the bolts and all that sort of stuff. I mean, I think if I was bolted into a submarine, I'd pay it a quarter of a million dollars and I saw that it was being piloted with a Logitech gaming controller.

I think I'd ask them do the bolts and get the fuck out of it, wouldn't you? Yeah, I know, yeah. Yeah, so anyway, so I just thought, like, presumably you'll hear a lot of stuff about this in the coming days. And look, we hope they survive because I want to hear the story of what the hell it was like. Yes. Oh, it would make a brilliant, I mean, it'll make a brilliant horror movie either way, won't it? I mean, it's just, do you suffer from claustrophobia? I'm the world's worst claustrophobic.

I don't normally. I think this would be the experience that made me realize I had it. I mean, being bolted into this tiny tin. can. What do they do about going to the bathroom? I know that's an indelicate question, but are they just all basically shitting next to each other for five days? Well, I, on the, there is a small toilet, yes. Right. On the CBS thing, they show you where there's a little private. All right, so they can move around inside it. There's 14 bolts that keep them inside the vessel.

I thought they were bolted into their chairs. Oh, no, no, they're bolted into the vessel. No, no, it's a, it's like a minivan. Oh, okay. It's about the size of a minivan, so you can move around in it. Although apparently it's very uncomfortable because you've got to sit along the side and the side is curved. So you sort of end up crouching the whole time. So anyway, and I'll just leave you with this thought,

which is that this comes a few days after a... You know how we were talking about fashions in killer whale colonies? Oh, yes, that's right. So the latest fashion in orca colonies is to attack rich yachts, right? I've heard of this, yeah. Yeah, so there's been several, you know, multi-million dollar fancy yachts who've been attacked in the last week. Another metaphor.

Yes. But a pot of orcas was seen swimming just near that submersable. Knocking on the glass. So I'm just saying there's a whole. whole conspiracy theory angle to this that is yet to come out. But I think the Orcas did it, Dom. Wow. Well, what an extraordinary episode this is.

Charles, this has been fascinating. I didn't know all these details. I'm just looking at the New York Times website, just to date this, just to prove that they're not dead yet as we record this. And the top story on their live blog of the event, very big story on the New York Times website, industry leaders had significant concerns about Titanic Tourist Sub. And it's basically just explaining, yeah, in detail that everyone thought it was a death trap, basically.

So, yeah, that's not good. I mean, look, if we're being a little bit sort of cynical about it, you know how, you know, there is an argument to say that billionaires shouldn't exist. Sure. Well, they're doing their dardist. It feels like they're doing their d'art. I think it might be a self-solving problem. Well, give the Orcas a chance. I don't know that they're going to be able to bring down Diff Bezos's half.

half a billion dollar yacht that he just... Every time I think about ordering Amazon now, I just remember Jeff Bezos's yacht and think I just can't. I just can't give that man more money. You can't. But if anyone can bring them down, competitors can't do it. But I think the Yorkers might find a way.

Well, there you go. And so I suppose my final point is, you know, as you hear all these theories over the coming weeks and the idea that, well, you know, they went in eyes wide open. I think the point is they didn't. Like literally these customers, It was like they were being sold to Tesla and they weren't told that it keeps crashing

and self-exploding on the road and stuff like that. And I'm just remembering that Elon Musk offered those poor people stuck in the cave a mini-submarine, do you remember? Yes. That would be the one vessel that makes this one look seaworthy, I'm thinking. I just wait till Elon learn launches underwater Tesla, it'll come in. Look, I'm waiting for Elon to launch a ridiculous takeover offer. Ocean Gate any day now.

Yes, and surely he should be mounting a rescue mission for his fellow billionaires. Anyway, Charles, fascinating his story. He did actually tweet out that they're using Starlink Internet to coordinate the rescue mission because it's the only internet you can get out in the middle of the Atlantic. So that, and Charles, I just hope we don't have to take this episode down in a few hours when they find the submarine under very tragic circumstances with a telltale sort of orca signature. Orca.

on the correct glass. I, for one, welcome our orca overlords. Our gurus from Rogue, we're part of the Iconapace network, and that's, anyway, that's, that's all. See ya. Welcome orcas.