Nearly every news report I have heard is calling the 5 men dead in the Titan Submersible accident “adventurers” and “explorers”. They were neither. They were tourists.
Adventurers and explorers forge new paths, break new trails, find new ways to places where mankind has not been before.
Tourists are driven, flown or otherwise transported to a place for sightseeing.
Calling these men “adventurers” is like calling someone who helicoptered to the peak of Mt Everest (yes, I know, too high) for photos an “adventurer”….They were Tourists. Paid big money for a ride into the deep.
That they chose a shady company for their ride to the depths is sad, but they weren’t “Brave Adventurers”….they were tourists and sightseers.
Sometimes, the lions eat the safari tourists. Dulce et decorum est.
Fortunately, in this case, they also ate the tour guide.
So no more tours. At least for some time.
FAFO.
Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Tourists v Adventurers. Indeed!
Tourists who forgot, or never knew, that the ost of travel included testing, redundancy, inspections, fail safe designs, and a knowledgeable operator. The “tourists”:had no idea that there was no test available for carbon fiber fatigue and that failure at depth would be sudden, total, and lethal. Aircraft can be dangerous but the ride on the Titan was suicidal. Hollywood loves the drama of cracks and leaks. The Titan was going to be operating with about 6,000 psi on the entire hull made of carbon fiber that tends to fail instantaneously by “shattering”. The “drama” was going to be limited to those hunting for identifiable remains to give to the families of those whose lives were snuffed out by the implosion that resulted from the hull failure. The passengers and crew died from factors which they could not comprehend. Reality hurts.
After a couple of days to think on it, I’m getting the feeling that the submersible tourism company got a big head, too much too fast, thinking that they were going to replicate underwater what Elon Musk did with space travel but on the cheap and ignoring folks who have real-world experience with this kind of thing.