It seems childish and stupid from the outside, but what would you rather have? A piece of equipment that has been made a million times, and has been tested to stand up to THOUSANDS of hours of abuse each?
Or a custom made controller with custom components that may break, and can't be replaced?
I wouldn't be surprised if they had 2 back ups in there with them. And didn't spend more than a hundred bucks on it, total.
I can understand that argument, like I said, lots of USN ships use similar controllers to use the 25/30mm guns now, but that's different than one of the controllers being the only method of controlling propulsion/depth/etc. Logitech's controllers are pretty reliable, but still, I wouldn't want my ONLY method of controlling systems that are crucial to my survival at that depth - or any depth - to be a video game controller. Sure, in the video they said they carried "a couple" spare ones on board, but this is my point - in the dark, sitting on one of those things, or pushing off on it with a foot in pitch black conditions, could easily bust that controller. Or what if the wireless antennae on the receiver inside that sub fails or breaks off - then wireless controller= useless. I'd much rather have that as an "additional" or secondary control system, and have a dedicated built for purpose industrial level control stick mounted high near a screen in that thing, in order to avoid the exact issue I described.
Supposedly there can be a lot of fishing nets in the area of the wreck, and getting caught up in one of those would be a catastrophe. I still don't get why they don't have an arm or at least an ROV that can take action against structures/nets.
Also, I wonder how tough it is to have a strong steel cable attached to that sub, that tethers that sub to the surface at that depth, so that in a worst case scenario they can just winch it back up. I know they do that with ROVs at that depth sometimes.
Great video here, this channel I've been watching for years, worth a watch and sub-