CBS Sunday Morning
In a 2022 CBS Sunday Morning segment, CEO Stockton Rush of deep-sea submersible company OceanGate gave journalist David Pogue a fun revelation. “We’re running the whole thing with this game controller,” Rush said, holding up a Logitech F710 controller with 3D-printed thumbstick extensions. The controller was wireless, and it was the primary method of controlling the Titan submarine, which would soon visit the wreck of the Titanic. Pogue laughed. “Come on!” he said, covering his eyes with his hand.
Journalists loved the controller story, which discussed the low-cost F710 and the ways in which video game controllers have become common control solutions in various military and aerospace applications in recent years. If your engineers and pilots grew up using dual-stick controllers to waste their friends in Halo multiplayer, why not use that built-in muscle memory for other purposes?
So using a video game controller wasn't a crazy decision in itself. But after the Titan submarine imploded during a dive in June 2023 to the Titanic site, which killed all five passengers, including Stockton Rush, using a $30 wireless control interface started to look less “cool” and more “isn't that a little risky?” The only question at that point was how long it would be before the Logitech F710 turned up in a lawsuit.
This week we got our answer. In the first Titan The Logitech controller is coming under heavy criticism in a wrongful death lawsuit filed this week by the estate of Paul-Henri Louis Emile Nargeolet.
“Hip, contemporary, wireless”
Nargeolet “was known worldwide as 'Mr. Titanic,'” according to the new lawsuit (PDF) against OceanGate, Rush's estate and several companies that helped build the Titan. Nargeolet had made 37 dives to the Titanic wreck and worked with OceanGate during his last dive as Titan crew member who would “guide other crew members and assist in navigation through the Titanic wreck, which he knew so well.”
The lawsuit reiterates all the major criticisms of the Titan.
First, the sub wasn’t made of titanium (like most submersibles), which becomes stronger under pressure; instead, it was made of carbon fiber, which can crack under repeated pressure. Rush, who saw himself as an innovator like “Steve Jobs or Elon Musk,” the complaint says, once told Pogue, “At a certain point, safety is just waste.” Rush thought he had found a lighter way to build submersibles.
Second, the complaint specifically points to the Titan's “slick, modern, wireless electronic systems.” (Those adjectives are not compliments).
TITAN was controlled using a mass-produced Logitech video game controller (normally used with a PlayStation or Xbox) rather than a controller made specifically for the design and operation of TITAN. Additionally, the controller worked via Bluetooth, rather than being hard-wired. TITAN also had only “one button” (for power) in the main chamber – the rest of the controls (for lights, ballast, etc.) and gauges (for depth, oxygen level, etc.) were touch screen. RUSH stated that TITAN “was to other submarines what the iPhone was to the BlackBerry.” However, as with an iPhone, none of the controllers, controls, or gauges would function without a constant power source and a wireless signal.
OceanGate's previous submarine, the Cyclops Ialso used a video game controller (a Sony DualShock 3) and some other wireless technology.
The complaint quotes an expert as saying that such systems presented “multiple points of failure” and that “'every submarine in the world has fixed controls for a reason,' namely that a loss of signal would not endanger the vessel.” But such problems were “ignored by OceanGate, as Titan used virtually identical systems to Cyclops I“, the complaint said.
The lawsuit also targets the engineering team that designed and integrated all of the electronic systems. TitanHe said the team was made up mostly of current or recent Washington State University graduates with “virtually no real world experience and no prior experience in the scuba diving industry.”
The complaint does not allege that Logitech's wireless controller, its carbon fiber construction, of the Titan Innovative portholes, or the use of different materials with different expansion/compression coefficients—four main areas of criticism—were individually responsible for the submarine’s implosion. But it suggests that together these systems may have contributed to a “daisy chain of failures of multiple improperly designed or constructed components or systems.” The complaint claims that Nargeolet’s estate is entitled to at least $50 million in damages.
Too good to be true
Various government agencies have been working on a final investigation report for over a year, but it is not yet complete. However, it appears that the Logitech controller, along with the five people on the submarine, is gone for good.
But the prospect of a cheap piece of plastic surviving the catastrophic implosion was just too good to be ignored by social media. Shortly after the Titan disaster, people began sharing “a photo that purportedly shows the controller on the bottom of the sea,” according to a 2023 AP fact check. “The image shows a sandy ocean floor with part of the photo enlarged to supposedly show a close-up of the controller.”
“The cheapest part survived,” posted one X (Twitter) user.
Unfortunately, that was not the case; the photo was fake.
