More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered

Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by Loic on Saturday April 22, 2023 @05:19AM (#35664727)

Yes, but noise would be a problem.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by bheadmaster on Saturday April 22, 2023 @05:32AM (#35664786)

What about using a pressure sensor fixed to a long pole in front of the submarine? That way, if they hit anything, the pole would hit first, and could activate the stopping mechanism.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by adastra22 on Saturday April 22, 2023 @06:30AM (#35665075)

These things can't stop on a dime.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by bheadmaster on Saturday April 22, 2023 @06:50AM (#35665189)

How long would the pole have to be to stop a 40mph submarine?

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by adastra22 on Saturday April 22, 2023 @07:04AM (#35665280)

You could probably find the data you need here:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/36725639.pdf

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by hutzlibu on Saturday April 22, 2023 @07:35AM (#35665479)

Imagine swimming with a long pole attached to the front of you. Even if it would be thin, it would still disturb you very much. Also the disturbances in the water created by the pole would make noise, that can be detected.

Submarines are optimised in everything for absolute stealth, up to the point that the crew may not make any noise, like dropping a wrench.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by hyperthesis on Saturday April 22, 2023 @05:25AM (#35664757)

Wouldn't a small drone make less noise than a submarine?

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by jvanderbot on Saturday April 22, 2023 @08:29AM (#35665940)

That seems intuitive but one thing I've learned in my career is that obvious easy ideas that nobody does are usually missing key details.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by dragonwriter on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:37AM (#35667623)

A small drone and a submarine would make more noise than either alone.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by kyriakos on Saturday April 22, 2023 @05:20AM (#35664732)

Noise from the drone propeller?

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by rdl on Saturday April 22, 2023 @07:29AM (#35665436)

Best solution is to pre-map the ocean to the degree possible (mountains don't tend to move, at least on the timescales we care about...); this wouldn't need to be done stealthily (so you could use active sensors), and using surface ships is one option, also drone surface ships and drone underwater vehicles now. I assume there are relatively highly classified high-detail government maps of certain parts of the ocean of particular interest.

We also have highly classified models of the exact shape and mass distribution of the Earth, as this is essential to accurate long-range ballistics (i.e. for ICBMs to hit their targets) -- it affects the gravity experienced over the course, and the precision/accuracy needed is higher than just uniform-density sphere or oblate spheroid. Also of magnetic and other anomalies since that can be used as a baseline when searching for submarines or ships using magnetic sensors, although I think this is less important now.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by michelb on Saturday April 22, 2023 @08:52AM (#35666133)

How many decades/centuries would it take to map the ocean?

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by ipaddr on Saturday April 22, 2023 @09:26AM (#35666397)

It sounds like the Human Genome Project. Well worth the effort.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by dragonwriter on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:12AM (#35666792)

Its already been largely done, which is why when subs run into seamounts, you tend to see the leadership team relieved.

“Maybe it would help to have a map of the space we’re going to be driving very large, very expensive, strategically important pieces of equipment (that also have crews) through blind” is not, as it turns out, something that never occurred to the Navy.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by tomrod on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:13AM (#35666798)

Oceans cover 361M km^2. So if we built 13,333 drones with a failure rate of 25% and they map at a rate of 50 km^2/day at a higher column depth with active sonar, it would take approximately 2 years

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by cagenut on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:30AM (#35667553)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83FQzfH_r2U

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by tomrod on Saturday April 22, 2023 @01:17PM (#35668782)

There you go.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by rdl on Saturday April 22, 2023 @07:18PM (#35671793)

Also don’t need to do the entire ocean; there are specific routes and zones we care about the most, can easily prioritize those.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by tomrod on Sunday April 23, 2023 @08:37PM (#35682311)

Indeed. It can certainly be accomplished.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by toomuchtodo on Monday April 24, 2023 @12:02AM (#35683528)

https://seabed2030.org/

Project goal is 2030.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by nonethewiser on Saturday April 22, 2023 @08:41AM (#35666037)

How would it communicate stealthily?

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by theelous3 on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:04AM (#35666718)

It wouldn't because it wouldn't be stealthy.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by kyriakos on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:12AM (#35666796)

Why does everyone assume you need wireless communication? You can have a cable running between the submarine and the drone, same channel would be used to power the sub.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by swayvil on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:38AM (#35667001)

Like a Medusa. Submarines would get scarier.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by lazide on Saturday April 22, 2023 @11:11AM (#35667357)

That is a lot of heavy, droopy, cable (if it is going to be able to withstand the stresses and ‘unkindness’ of the ocean) which is very likely to get tangled in things like spinning propellers unless very carefully managed.

Also, fishing trawlers, whales, etc.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by theelous3 on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:03AM (#35666710)

Even worse than letting an enemy know where you are now, is letting them know where you will be in the future.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by swayvil on Saturday April 22, 2023 @10:36AM (#35666987)

Also speaking from utter naivety, this seems like a super good idea. Each submarine gets a little attendant constellation of drones. Control them with Bluetooth. Or usb cables.

Or whiskers! That's how cats and catfish do it. A dozen 300' plastic prongs protruding frontward.

Or, to combine the two : TENTACLES!

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by amelius on Saturday April 22, 2023 @02:38PM (#35669627)

Nice idea, but how many ship-lengths does a submarine need to slow down from full to zero speed? Probably more than a few.

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Re:More than 19,000 undersea volcanoes discovered by thebruce87m on Sunday April 23, 2023 @03:14AM (#35674083)

The submarine in SeaQuest DSV had mini underwater drones called whiskers that did this job:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeaQuest_DSV

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