So Titan, the little submersible that couldn’t, appears to have been squashed like a grape not quite two hours into its descent. According to some analyses I’ve read, an implosion at that depth, with that kind of pressure, would destroy a human being before his neurons had begun to fire.

The late Stockton Rush, who has earned a place for his visage alongside the entry for “hubris” in future dictionary—or should I say “dick-tionary?”—entries disdained regulatory oversight and certification. I ought to have saved the blog page in which the company set forth its reasons for blowing these off, and for hiring young, enthusiastic, inexperienced staff and disdaining veteran fifty year-olds (quoting from it today would be the stuff of high, if mordant, comedy), but since last night Oceangate’s site no esta aqui—I wonder why?

Danny Lunsford, whom regulars here will remember as “DeSitter”—brought to my attention this link, a video from a fifty-something guy conversant with the recognized standards and procedures for venturing under the sea. It’s a dispassionate but damning analysis of the several ways in which Titan was a deathtrap, and his conclusion that the likely explanation for the submersible’s disappearance was a catastrophic hull failure appears to have been borne out by events.

cordially,