Tag: OceanGate

From Titanic Quest to Venus Venture: Co-Creator of Submarine that Explored Titanic Sets Sights on New Mission

If he is known as “Earth’s evil brother” it is for a reason. You don’t want, a priori, to go to anything evil to visit (much less live there).

Millionaires, for some reason, feel lately compelled to build giant rockets and send humanity packing. Elon Musk wants to send a million people to Mars, Jeffrey Bezos wants to establish an industrial base in space, and Richard Branson aims to lead galactic tourism. While they play at being NASA, a new contender enters. And it doesn’t inspire much confidence.

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A flawed CV

Soon, the Mecano song that said “Déjalo ya, sabes que nunca has ido a Venus en un barco” (“Stop it now, you know you’ve never been to Venus on a boat”) might transition from surrealism to reality, thanks to Guillermo Söhnlein, a millionaire who wants to venture into the space race. You may know him better as one of the two founders of OceanGate and, therefore, Titán. Yes, that’s right, the vessel designed to explore the Titanic, which imploded upon itself.

To his credit, it’s been ten years since he left that project, but it’s not the best introduction. And even less so when he announces his new plan to establish a colony of a thousand people on Venus by the year 2050. If Venus is known as “the evil twin of Earth,” there’s a reason for it, Guille. Visiting anything malevolent doesn’t sound appealing (let alone living there).

Yes, Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system, with sulfuric acid rains, and atmospheric pressure 90 times that of Earth. However, our friend doesn’t see a reason why we shouldn’t give it a try: there’s a 48-kilometer area on the surface where apparently humans could survive. Oh, well! 48 kilometers! That changes everything!

The plan involves building a space station to shield against sulfuric acid in the clouds. If that happens, he says hundreds of thousands of people could establish a new Venusian civilization. In an interview with Business Insider (not Venus Insider), he ends by saying, “I have the recurring dream of being the commander of the first Martian colony.” Coming from the creator of the imploded submarine, we trust everything he has to tell us wholeheartedly. Let’s go to Venus tomorrow; I’ll pack my suitcase!

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Sailing to Success: Steam Game Soars as Titanic Submarine Drama Captivates Players

At the same time that the OceanGate tragedy happens, a submarine game that seems to predict the whole situation has increased its sales to the beast.

For days the main topic of conversation has been OceanGate. With good reason. Lost in the middle of the ocean looking for a live view of the Titanic, this pseudo-submarine carrying five billionaires who had paid a quarter of a million per head for the trip, at this point there is no chance that they will be rescued alive. Even with French, American and Canadian authorities conducting a search operation unheard of to this day, the chances of finding them in time are slim. The ocean is infinite, unpredictable and does not care about human life.

That is precisely what Iron Lung is about. A game developed by David Szymanski that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where humanity has exhausted all the Earth’s resources and has to explore other planets in search of them to try to survive. Our main character is a prisoner condemned to death who is given a chance to exonerate himself. They will give him freedom if he agrees to pilot a tiny submarine without windows, closed from the outside, in an ocean of blood of a distant planet where they suspect that there may be resources that may allow humanity to continue to exist some more time Our protagonist accepts and there begins our journey: in a tiny submarine, only with the information of a radar and an archaic map, and at the mercy of the elements. A very similar situation in which the OceanGate crew members have voluntarily put themselves.

That’s why it should come as no surprise that since this tragedy happened, sales of the game have increased. Exponentially. According to a graph shown by David Szymanski himself in his tweet, Iron Lung sales have suffered a very high peak from the second half of the 19th, coinciding with the news of what happened with the OceanGate.

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In any case, this is something that the developer himself has described as terrifying. In his own words, he made Iron Lung thinking about “the most nightmarish thing I could imagine, and to know that there are real people in that situation at this very moment is absolutely terrifying”. And while he confesses that he thinks some of the jokes that have been made about the situation are funny and that it was all a consequence of his bad decisions, no one deserves to suffer a death as absolutely horrifying as the one his game poses.

Moreover, this is not the only recent occasion in which Iron Lung has made the news. Although, let’s face it, on other occasions it has been for much happier reasons. The game has also received quite a bit of recent attention thanks to the fact that youtuber Mark Fischbach, better known as Markiplier, is set to make his feature film debut making a movie adaptation of the video game. With assistance from David Szymanski in all aspects of production, Markiplier will be directing, scripting, producing and playing the lead role in this quirky adaptation.

Iron Lung is a game that was released on March 10, 2022 and lasts about an hour and a half. Priced at €5, it is likely that many people may use the game as a way to manage their thalassophobia, or sea anxiety, which may have produced this whole situation in many people. Especially since, even with its relatively simple and primitive appearance, Iron Lung may be among the most terrifying games of recent years. In any case, while the situation is being resolved, the one thing that is clear is that Iron Lung is the game of the moment. Even if it is, to some extent, despite Szymanski’s own self-interest.

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