It’s okay to deconstruct this now that it is over. This design story is very tragic on so many levels. In this video, many tenets of Rush’s design philosophy are revealed. For now, many media outlets are covering this story as a design and technology failure fueled by hubris and a desire to over-simplify the user experience.
Titan postmortem. Very similar themes to the Theranos failure. (affordability, cycle repeatability, profit vs cost, allowable system failures during testing, operating outside of regulatory environments to make certain claims)
I’m kind of fascinated by this, I live onboard on the canals in England and he reminds me of some of the dreamers I see who make something out of unsuitable materials - the authorities once stopped a man from launching a canal boat that he’d painstakingly built out of plywood. Not even marine ply, just bare plywood, no waterproofing, no epoxy coating. There was the man who tried building a boat out of 2’’ x 4’’ wood frame and bedsheets stretched over and nailed on and he manically slapped fibre glass onto the bedsheets to stiffen them. On launch day, thankfully his wife and child refused to board, the thing drifted towards the lock, which was open, it went in there and sank like a stone!
I think the water brings out some madcap pioneer spirit in some folks, as if they’re the first one to clap eyes on it and start building things.
He also reminds me of entrepreneurs I’ve decided not to take on as clients, once I’d done my due diligence. It’s breathtaking (and tragic) that he got this far to be honest.
Stockton behaved just like a dreamer on the River Lea - but 4000 metres underwater, didn’t expect that but here we are.
The nautical spirit to innovate was among the strongest in the UK during the 19th and 20th centuries. With the decline of the British Empire, that came to an end. We can see a similar declines here in the USA with this story. The rivalry and differences between space and deep sea exploring communities is legendary. This is my last post mortem on this story.
