The internet was so ruthless almost immediately on this one. I feel like every newsworthy event has detractors and defenders but this submarine business had literally everyone shitting on them the second the news broke. In a sick sort of internet way it was practically wholesome.
There were some bootlickers asking for decency but nah. This was basically billionaires paying an obscene amount of money for the most spectacular group suicide of the last 10 years and decency was already off the table after the word "billionaire"
When the news broke, we were talking about it at work (trust me, I’m an engineer) and looking at the design scratching our heads.
Then someone says “that main body is made of carbon fiber!” All of us started laughing in hysterics, then someone goes “yummy yummy crab food!” and it just got worse.
It was hilarious watching interviews with the owner, who had zero formal engineering training, talk about how he was a rule breaker and maverick, and how rules were just holding back his amazing design. Dive a little deeper (har har), and every actual trained engineer he hired was almost immediately fired for calling out the poor design and material.
He settled on an 18 and 19 year old kid (not the one that got squished) as his engineers. I can’t even comprehend how this was even allowed to happen, but appreciate the memes.
Even the choice of colour was an interesting one. "Should we make our submersible brightly coloured like every other submersible in the world? In case we are stuck floating barely above the surface of the ocean, literally bolted shut inside this tube?" "Nah, let's do white and grey, looks more modern."
It was allowed to happen because there are no regulations covering these submarines, especially in international waters. Safety is generally opt-in because the people who commission them intend to use them, so of course they'll listen to engineers and do it right.
Of course sometimes you'll get someone so far up their own ass that they can't hear anything except their own farts.
You can also see the move-fast-and-break-things bullshit in what he said. That mentality sort of works for software development but silicon valley is exporting it into realms where breaking things means killing people.
As Behind the Bastards elaborated Stockton Rush got a bit mad scientist about it and ignored all the deep-sea experts that were telling him the carbon fiber shell was deteriorating even from the test dives.
It didn't have standard safey mechanisms. For example, the door could be opened from the outside only. There was no emergency escape (say, in the event of an emergency surface situation.)
Rush laughed at safety, but then he went down in it, so full mad science cred.
The billionaires could afford to hire a team to do due diligence to make sure they would safely come back, and lawyers to tell them to do due diligence. But the kid and the family didn't. Superrich families often are super-dysfunctional.
So now, to get Stockton Rushed is to be sold a ride or experience for a conspicuously high price. And that kills you, like eating at the Hawthorn.
A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between people (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder, treason, or corruption, especially with a political motivation,[1] while keeping their agreement secret from the public or from other people affected by it.
so there seem to be some mayor points:
for what purpose or motivation was it (unlawful or harmful)?
under what surroundings (like breaking laws that were in effect)?
what would be done? (like murder,treason,corruption)
from whom would it be hidden?
purpose: unlawful or harmful?
i suggested a purpose, thats right.
wether a billionaire NOT dying actually is harmful is eworth a separate discussion, but having a plan to not die in a submarine "accident" by itself would usually rather be considered a rescue, not causing harm.
did physical harm to persons happen in the story that i suggested? nope, the opposite would be true.
but would it have been unlawful?
on open seas leaving a vessel that is about to sink usually also is not considered an unlawful action.
also to consider something to be unlawful, at least some law about the happening would need to have been in effect. this could maybe be answered with the question under which countries flag the submarine was registered with. For most or all ship accidents one can hear in the news like 'a ship under panama flag' which i did not hear a single time for the sub. also the sub was not even "transported" by the supporting vessel to the site but towed, thus it could be considered a completely separate vessel under assumingly no flag at all.
talking about unlawfullnes of actions in international territory seems a bit offtopic. but i guess that these oceanic laws have very few laws about any unlawfulness of leaving your own sub before letting it implode.
now of course there are other people involved. family members may suffer the loss.
but as for my suggested imaginary story line the persons that simply left the vessel would not contact their family any more at least for some time. but is it unlawful to not contact family members? i guess not.
it might be unlawful to claim youre dead (wtf) but that is not what would have happened in the imagined story line i suggested to make much more sense to me. in that scenario other people (like gov agencies) would do that claim. not preventing gov to do false claims is usually not considered unlawful by govs that do false claims, otherwise ... well that would be a very!! different story haha.
not telling anyone to still be alive may be odd, but not unlawful by itself. if one has a contract with an insurance company that states such an obligation, it would be failing to comply with a contract but not necessarily "unlawful" as such a contract is not a law, but a contract and might state like loss of xinsurance if one failed to comply. but then even if not telling your insurance company to still be alive is a crime within the us, outside of it things could be different. like some laws do not count in some countries and thus doing so is not unlawful there.
would the intent to get a new identity, dropping the old one be harmful or unlawful? Not directly, there are lawful ways to get new identities in many countries on the world, most of them are pretty lawful and mostly the harm had then already been done to the person that gets the new identity. so i guess the intent of getting a new id is neither harmful nor unlawful and could simply be a formal process within the laws of the destination country. it could even be part of a process to protect persons who are in danger and law enforcement said, that a billionaire to get abnew id should also do something to disappear also in the minds before getting their new id and thus it could be completely possible that disappearing is in compliance with the law to protect a person who claimed to have been in danger and needed a believable disappearancebfor their security.
now to me it looks like i found some good arguments how the imaginary story line was neither harmful nor unlawful. and also described that it could be argued that no laws were in effect that would apply and make a life rescue mission an unlawful event in the mids of the ocean. even laws could actually have been used in compliance with gov entities to protect someone from an imaginary danger in this imaginary case.
in theory i could say that its not a conspiracy i suggested as main factors do not apply or at least do bot have to apply and u should be done now but lets look at the other points for the sake of completeness:
murder: wouldn't have been done, but the exact opposite: saving lifes. again, saving lifes of billionaires could be considered harmful to the rest of the world, but thats a bit too offtopic and not even in question here.
Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance.
Now i do not see a state beeing attacked in this case.
corruption:
Corruption is a form of dishonesty or a criminal offense which is undertaken by a person or an organization which is entrusted in a position of authority, in order to acquire illicit benefits or abuse power for one's personal gain.
i don't see a person or organization which was entrusted in a position of authority. which authority was given to rush or oceangate? or which involved organization did?
same us with that "political motivation" mentioned in wikipedia about conspiracy, i do not see a political motivation involved in what i wrote.
i'ld say there is no conspiracy in the suggested imaginary story i wrote as not even one of the major points if a conspiracy would match at least a little bit.
did i overlook something? or are you just completely wrong?