After last week’s news cycle with the inflation gauges and FOMC meeting, this week felt like something of a breather. To that end, the biggest headline had nothing to do with the economy or the markets. It had to do with a missing submarine. As we all know, stories about missing submarines rarely end well.
In case you have been on the moon, a company named OceanGate sold 4 seats on a submersible to view the remains of the Titanic on the ocean floor. The CEO of the company served as the pilot, essentially using a videogame joystick as a steering device. Still, that wasn’t the biggest question. It was whether the tiny sub could withstand the pressure roughly 12,500 feet below the surface.
This would be no small task, as oceanographers estimate the water pressure at the debris field to be around 6,000 psi (pounds per square inch). To put that number into perspective, the atmospheric pressure at sea level is roughly 14.7 psi. While there are differences between the two types of pressure, the disparities still tell a powerful story.
At 55 years of age and somewhat claustrophobic, I am willing to sit this one out. Unfortunately, 4 unlucky soles paid $250K per person, plus the captain, to have the ocean ultimately crush them. While brutal, that is a completely accurate and honest statement.
Why did they do it? Why was that potential adrenaline rush so tempting, as to risk their very lives in a carbon fiber tube on the ocean floor?
Personally, I am not much of an adrenaline junkie, at least not of the extreme variety. To that end, bungee jumping, skydiving, base jumping and things of that nature have never held any appeal to me. Frankly, I am bit of a control freak, and those things seem to run counter to that.
For instance, in the summer of 1992, a number of my fraternity brothers and I met up at Wrightsville Beach, NC. After a long night, we went to a Waffle House the next morning (as one does). On the way to the restaurant, we passed a bungee jumping outfit, which was essentially a large crane in a deserted parking lot.
After Waffle House, we stopped at the place and all of my buddies shelled out $45 to jump off the thing. Yes, I still remember the price. That amount then is roughly the equivalent of $97 today. Let’s just say I wasn’t quite as established in my career then as I am now.
Boy, did they let me have it, calling me all sorts of names. Suffice it to say, decorum prohibits my listing them in this newsletter. However, I didn’t care. In fact, I thought they were foolish for jumping off a crane in a parking lot. Big whoop. Now, off the New River Gorge Bridge or something like that?
That possibly could have tempted me, but probably not.
But, again, why did THEY do it? I certainly can’t answer that. However – and this might come as something of a surprise – the world is a better place because of people who push the limits of reason.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not necessarily saying the world is a better place because people are willing to spend $250K to go to the bottom of the ocean or even more than that to get on a Russian spaceship.
No, the world is a better place because there are dreamers that create the technologies which make those things even remotely possible.
Imagine this. My father’s father was born in 1891. Although he died when I was only 6, I still knew the man. So? Well, he was born 12 years before the Wright Brothers left the ground in Kitty Hawk. That is how far humankind has come in a relatively short period of time.
We would not have come this far but for exceptional people who did exceptional things. People who pushed the limits of reason.
How much nerve do you think it took to sit atop a Gemini or Apollo rocket? To go on a space shuttle? To travel across salt flats at Utah in a vehicle going faster than the speed of sound, like Andy Green did in 1997? This slightly less than a century after Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the, then, land speed record (vehicles) at 38.24 mph.
Think about modern construction. Eleven men died building the Golden Gate Bridge. Constructing the Empire State Building claimed 5 lives. The former World Trade Center apparently sent some 60 construction workers to their deaths. Building the Panama Canal took an estimated 30,000 lives, mostly through disease. However, that was a fraction of the roughly 120,000 who died during the dredging of the Suez Canal (no one knows for certain).
The list goes on and on and, unfortunately, on.
Then you have to ask: what sort of intellect, acceptance of failure, persistence and, dare I say, arrogance do you have to have in order to be Nikola Tesla, Thomas Edison, Elon Musk, Mark Dean, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, Newton, Archimedes, da Vinci or Marie Curie?
Further, what sort of risk tolerance must you have to be John Rockefeller, J.P Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, Steve Jobs, Dave Thomas or Madam C.J. Walker.
Obviously, I am omitting any number of worthy people from that paragraph.
Where the rubber meets the road, what happened this week with the OceanGate Titan was horrific. I can’t imagine the pain the friends and families must be experiencing. Further, I am more than certain an enormous number of people will question why it had to be. However, I would counter that with: anything worth doing takes some measure of risk.
It doesn’t matter if you are walking outside or sitting on top of a rocket going to the moon. Most importantly, without risk taking, by people and/or societies, there can be no gain.
Moving forward, the experiences and lessons learned from this unfortunate circumstance will yield positive results. The technologies will be get better, and the risk taking will be more thoughtful. As a result of what we have learned, man will make substantial leaps in conquering the last frontier here on this blue marble we call home.
The ocean.
John Norris
Chief Economist
Thank you for your continued support. As always, I hope this newsletter finds you and your family well. May your blessings outweigh your sorrows on this any every day. Also, please be sure to tune into our podcast, Trading Perspectives, which is available on every platform.
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