Then again, it could be simply that the wireless Playstation controller crapped out. What was their backup, if any?
Using the up and down key on the keyboard?
Ping.
The primary controller was the wireless PS3 controller but the touchscreen displays in the submersible could be used to override the controller or replace it entirely if needed. *Supposedly* there was no functionality of the controller that was not available through the touchscreens, but that doesn’t mean it was as rapidly accessible or usable.
The manufacturer of the huge cockpit viewport and ring refused to certify it below 1300 meters due to some of the design elements, FYI.
Flaws and residual stresses in the carbon shell degrade the buckling/collapse margins and the thick walls do not transfer loads well to the Titanium closures. The adhesive bonded joint configuration is really hard to execute without bond line defects such as voids, delaminations, porosity, bond line thickness variations, resin starved areas and other defects. Any misalignment of the bonded titanium end caps will really meet up the loads in the vessel. It is a real hard joint to get right
“From some earlier reporting and discussion on FR, I am increasing curious about the dissimilar materials used—carbon fiber, titanium, glues, which as was noted, expand and contract differently as circumstances change. And mix that with it never apparently being tested to see real world results, not just engineering modeling, and considering fatigue over time, this increasingly sounds like an accident just waiting to happen.”
utterly insane design: GLUING titanium end rings onto a 5” thick carbon fiber tube to act as attachment points for the titanium end domes ... two utterly dissimilar materials with massively different deformation behavior at their junctions when under extreme pressure ...
REAL engineers would have started with computer simulations of the stresses at those junctions and then, assuming that THAT showed it might work, would have proceeded to pressure test the vessel at its maximum depth with dozens of attached telemetric stress gauges ... assuming THAT testing didn’t fail, then they would have proceeded to cycle the vessel between maximum pressure depth and atmospheric pressure until the vessel failed (or not).
of course, Stockton proudly hired only neophyte children for his engineers, instead of experienced submarine engineers, eschewing experienced sub engineers as fuddy duddy “old white men” ... after all, he said, fuddy duddys engineers wouldn’t “appreciate” (approve) of his “revolutionary designs” [where have we heard that before? oh yeah, from Elizabeth Holmes, who just started an eleven years Federal prison sentence related to her “revolutionary” medical testing scam ...]
and no doubt, sociopath Stockton Rush did none of the above standard materials engineering in his wannabe rush to join the ranks of true revolutionaries, Musk and Bezos ... instead, Stockton Rush joined the Elizabeth Holmes category: he killed customers with a bogus submarine, while she killed customers with bogus medical tests ...