I watched the video with the news reporter, and I'm quite shocked. The CEO says the vessel is the main thing that can't fail. So it's OK to use a Logitech gamecontroller from the 90s with some glued on extender levers on the sticks to highlight its unfit for purpose.
" Anything else can fail. "
So the lessons learnt from safety in aviation was all for nothing? Continuity is only a (nice) side effect of redundancy. That's not the purpose of redundancy. It's so you can live on borrowed time to sort shit out. Back in the day, only aircraft with 3+ engines were allowed to cross the big oceans. Today we have ETOPS ratings. In case one engine fails, the aircraft needs to continue or go back on its remaining engines. A 747 jet can go virtually anywhere on 3 out of 4 engines. It will stay safely airborne on 2. And on 1, well.. it's better than nothing. But I only know of 1 case where a 747 on a passenger flight had 1 engine fail, yet still continue its journey on 3 engines. They were called out on it by authorities, as it was argued the aircraft was not "airworthy". This level of scrutiny is what makes aviation so safe, even if technically its a "red tape" kind of scenario. I think the airliner won the argument as the 747 was certified to fly on 3 engines. It's probably also an economical decision by the airliner, as a 747 dumping half of its fuel to do an unplanned emergency landing + fixing the airplane out of base + arranging hotels/rebooking flights for 400+PAX is not cheap. But if the cause of failure is undertermined, IMO it's best to land and sort things out.
Saying that anything else can fail is like saying a modern jet is still a damn good glider when all of its engines fail. Sure modern jets have excellent glide ratios (IIRC most up to 15:1, so with a cruise altitude of 36kft, it still has a range of 100miles). But really a glider is absolute worst case. A plane can glide down quite gently and find a place to ditch. But what's the point if you're flying over seas or around mountains? The only point is you'll not die by the crash, but by hunger at best.
A submarine is worse, as by design it doesn't have "the glider" luxury. If anything fails, it's lost. This submarine had no tether back to the mothership. If it has no sonar beacon, then I imagine the mothership also doesn't have a "radar"/sonar visual at all times, so they can also lose sight of it during an expedition. Seeing how the CEO approaches its things, I wonder if that 96hr O2 supply is also theoretical. Who guarantees its been filled up between trips before they left? Going by the camper lightning, I wouldn't be surprised.
It's quite painful, as I just read that a passenger and the CEO have a background in aviation. My post is mostly speculation on my part, and that's perhaps at an ill point and time as the tragedy is still unfolding. But I agree, I'd rather be abducted by aliens I think.