Shannon Palus in Slate:
But this week, like so many of us, I’ve been thinking about the other direction that can apply to that comment about Silicon Valley—what happens when the goal, having achieved so much else, is not extending life, but risking it? Because if placing a bet on living forever is one leisure activity to put your vast wealth toward, another is extreme feats of travel. The rich people of today can buy tickets to outer space. Or to the deep ocean. Where things can go very wrong, very quickly.
Scrambling to make sense of the unfolding submersible tragedy—it is very strange to know a group of people only has a handful of oxygen hours left—writers, including this one, turned our attention to the sheer cost of it all: tickets aboard OceanGate’s Titan were $250,000 a pop. Interestingly, that’s double what the CEO originally charged—he set the price tag to be more on par with space travel, after realizing his offering, a seatless minivan-sized can that dips to wild depths, really was similar to space travel.
Did the people floating with—checks the live blogs—20 hours of oxygen left now know what they were getting into when they boarded the vessel? A video clip of David Pogue, who took a press trip aboard the Titan last summer for CBS, went viral. He flipped through the waiver form, and told the camera: “An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma, or death. Where do I sign?”
More here.