For those who are unaware: A couple billionaires, a pilot, and one of the billionaires’ son are currently stuck inside an extremely tiny sub a couple thousand meters under the sea (inside of the sub with the guys above).
They were supposed to dive down to the titanic, but lost connection about halfway down. They’ve been missing for the past 48 hours, and have 2 days until the oxygen in the sub runs out. Do you think they’ll make it?
I work on robotics and drones for the military and we use game controllers for teleoperation all the time. There are some times we use more rugged and robust controllers, but they are essentially just expensive, yellow Playstation controllers with e-stop buttons on the bottom (look up Fort robotics controller).
I think you’d be surprised at how often the military uses game controllers for mission critical tech. The convergent design of game controllers has kind of solved the problem of minimal, handheld, input-output machines that are capable of commanding difficult procedures.
Do you think it’s fun killing people and pretending it’s a video game?
What? They don’t pretend it’s a game, they just use game controllers. Killing people is the game for them.
I don’t operate anything in the field but I design and build the stuff. Fortunately, I haven’t had to build any weapon systems or combat vehicles yet because I also have some moral apprehension to that as well, but I try not to shame those who do work on that stuff if I can avoid it. It’s a pretty standard meme that wide-eyed aerospace engineers with dreams of space travel get stuck designing missiles to pay the bills. I’m sure there’s not that many engineers in weapons tech that wouldn’t switch to rockets or self driving cars in a heartbeat if they could afford to and had an in.
Hey I appreciate the honest response. I was being a bit of a dick and I feel bad now. Peace.
No it’s okay. I completely understand the sentiment and it’s the reason I tried my damnedest to avoid defense entirely in my job search, but with my skillset and the absolute cutthroat competitiveness of the space exploration industry, I had to broaden my search eventually. A lot of people that design the death machines also have similar reservations (I have met some that think explosions and death are cool but they are the minority…), but it’s usually those far outside the industry that hold such vitriol to those that work in the military industrial complex.
The problem isn’t the people, it’s the system and I try to remind people that when I see them attack me or others for working in defense (hopefully I can transfer out to space flight soon). Be mad at your representatives and politicians for voting for the ever expanding defense budget. Be mad at the CEOs and shareholder boards that push war for their war profiteering. Be mad at capitalism that forces the labourers into jobs they’d rather not have. Don’t be mad at the 23 year old fresh engineering grad that couldn’t land the job at NASA and Raytheon handed them a fat check to pay their loans back with.
That’s a great insight my friend, thanks for sharing. All the best to you.