Technology

59168 readers

3304 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

442

OceanGate’s ill-fated Titan sub relied on a hand-typed Excel spreadsheet (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 month ago by Korkki@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

84 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] TommySoda@lemmy.world 167 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (16 children)

Jesus Christ that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The submarine in the game Iron Lung was safer to drive than this thing.

But Wilby said that for the Titan, the coordinate data was transcribed into a notebook by hand and then entered into Excel before loading the spreadsheet into mapping software to track the sub’s position on a hand-drawn map of the wreckage.

The OceanGate team tried to perform these updates at least every five minutes, but it was a slow, manual process done while communicating with the gamepad-controlled sub via short text messages.

Updates every FIVE MINUTES?! I wouldn't even trust this thing in a damn swimming pool.

[–] Korkki@lemmy.world 93 points 1 month ago (10 children)

I really do wonder why they ended up in this. It can' be that hard to make even a hacky DIY system to do it automatically. The navigation system just had to have some digital or even analog output, then it would be just the problem of interpreting the signal with some script and writing it into a file.

When Wilby recommended the company use standard software to process ping data and plot the sub’s telemetry automatically, the response was that the company wanted to develop an in-house system, but didn’t have enough time.

[–] superkret@feddit.org 102 points 1 month ago (4 children)

To write a script, you need someone who can write scripts.
If all you have is someone who can write VLOOKUPs in Excel, and the CEO is too cheap to hire someone, then that's what you use.

[–] DogEatWaffle@startrek.website 31 points 1 month ago

someone who can write VLOOKUPs

I think you're overestimating the competence on display here...

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (8 replies)

load more comments (13 replies)