Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Loses Deep Sea Vehicle 93
First time accepted submitter Mr D from 63 (3395377) writes in with news about a WHOI vehicle that has been feared lost. "On Saturday, May 10, 2014, at 2 p.m. local time (10 p.m. Friday EDT), the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereus was confirmed lost at 9,990 meters (6.2 miles) depth in the Kermadec Trench northeast of New Zealand. The unmanned vehicle was working as part of a mission to explore the ocean's hadal region from 6,000 to nearly 11,000 meters deep. Scientists say a portion of it likely imploded under pressure as great as 16,000 pounds per square inch."
I'm not buying you another one (Score:4, Funny)
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Did they look behind the fridge? If you lose something it's nearly always there.
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Why are you watching TV in the fridge?
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Some wild research students must have gone for a joy ride with the professor's submersible. Kids these days! Get off my oceanic trench!
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Said the actress to the bishop. :-P
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In a hole in the bottom of the sea.
Re:I'm not buying you another one (Score:4)
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I'm not buying you another one
Especially since, apparently, they weren't playing with it nicely.
It's not a fishing expedition, for f*ck's sake, it's an exploratory mission. "Probably" imploded? WTF? The damned thing is on a tether. If you pull up the tether, and it's not there (even if part of it imploded), then you didn't have your tether secured properly.
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IIRC, such an implosion is not unlike an explosive device going off -- it sends shock waves that shatter things, send shrapnel out, etc. It's likely that the tether that was close to the imploding vehicle was got cut up as well.
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A larger catastrophic implosion would naturally result in an even larger amount of damage.
Plus, the ROV that was lost was only trailing a slim fiber optic cable for control signals, not for power, and definitely not strong enough to haul up a ton or two of metal off the ocean floor.
One stone, two birds (Score:4, Funny)
They can look for the Deep Sea Vehicle and flight MH370 at the same time in that area. Very economical.
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Wrong side of that little island down there called Australia...
How do you know? Do you have some inside knowledge that everyone else doesn't?
The fact that they haven't found the plane means that it's somewhat likely that they
are searching in the wrong spot. It easily has the range to reach this spot so it's
probably about as good as spot to look as the next as from what I gather they are
basically throwing darts at a dartboard at this point.
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Wrong side of that little island down there called Australia...
It easily has the range to reach this spot
Sure. Their fuel load was about 4000km shy of reaching the Kermadec Trench, but they could have easily made that up by playing some Queen over the PA system.
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Wrong side of that little island down there called Australia...
How do you know? Do you have some inside knowledge that everyone else doesn't? The fact that they haven't found the plane means that it's somewhat likely that they are searching in the wrong spot. It easily has the range to reach this spot so it's probably about as good as spot to look as the next as from what I gather they are basically throwing darts at a dartboard at this point.
Didn't you know, MH370 landed on top of the mythical city of Atlantis.
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You linked to a wikipedia article on the game Battleship?
I've read the comments on three stories this morning. Anything remotely scientific is full of nothing but lame joke comments. The one about the sun is full of "my hot sister" comments. It's pathetic.
Got down to this comment on this story, and it's nothing but idiotic jokes.
The flipside is anything political. Those stories will get hundreds of comments with nothing but pointless bickering.
There is no useful discussion on this site anymore. I'd lis
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I've read the comments on three stories this morning. Anything remotely scientific is full of nothing but lame joke comments. The one about the sun is full of "my hot sister" comments. It's pathetic.
Agreed. Let's talk about planets in the solar system instead. The 7th from the Sun seems like an interesting one, don't you think?
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Agreed. Let's talk about planets in the solar system instead. The 7th from the Sun seems like an interesting one, don't you think?
So, when that one gets downgraded like Pluto did, will they call it a planetoid or an assteroid?
Thanks folks, I'll be here all week. Try the veal, tip your waitress.
He he, the button I need to click next says "sub-mit". He he.
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You do know that they renamed it in 2620 to put an end to that joke....
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You consider a story on the lose of a single submersible in an accident to be "remotely scientific," and you're calling the rest of *US* idiots?
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Maybe it defected... (Score:3)
Maybe it defected. Is the protocol officer still alive?
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Maybe it defected. Is the protocol officer still alive?
I think you mean political officer.
Columbia River. . . . (Score:2)
Well, if it crossed the Pacific and went upstream the Columbia River, it might have made it to Montana -- although there are a surfeit of dams to overcome along the way.
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slipped on some tea if I recall.
Oddly (Score:1)
We get so used to successful operations of these things that we forget how dangerous and harsh the environment is down at that depth.
Get another (Score:2)
Perhaps Wood's hole can fund another?
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Slashdot people don't get any pussy.
Not all Slashdot people are biologically male, you insensitive clod. Also, you are also Slashdot people. Yes, I am feeding the troll. I know I shouldn't.
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I'm fairly positive that Not all Slashdot people who are not biologically male are heterosexual, you insensitive clod. Though logically, if we assume that all Slashdot people who desire "pussy" are unable to acquire "pussy" (in the case of lesbians we assume that said "pussy" is not their own), then the ACs comment stands, even if it is a bit rash.
Though I am uncertain as to how this pertains to the discussion of a crushed submersible.
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I was indeed leaving out those that desire that which they already have.
Under Pressure (Score:1)
Under Pressure [rapgenius.com]: Brings a building down / Splits a sub in two
I Refuse to RTFA or take the summary in context (Score:1)
Who in their right mind would make a deep sea research submarine out of wood, which has holes in it! I mean we are in the 21st century. We rarely make boats out of wood anymore, We defiantly don't make million dollar research devices out of wood, and if they did, they would use high quality wood, not ones with holes in it!
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Who in their right mind would make a deep sea research submarine out of wood, which has holes in it! I mean we are in the 21st century. We rarely make boats out of wood anymore, We defiantly don't make million dollar research devices out of wood, and if they did, they would use high quality wood, not ones with holes in it!
The holes are in it to keep the pressure equalized. Duh.
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Those holes were an early version of Windows. Every once in a while, you'd see a Blue Sea of Death.
Blue Sea of Death = Niflheim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... [wikipedia.org]
Tethered? (Score:3)
The article said it had an optical fiber tether. Nothing on how strong the tether was, but I am assuming it was like breaking a fishing line, so no way to retrieve a portion of the device. They did say that they found pieces floating on surface though.
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Wonder how long it would take to arrive at the surface from that depth.
The Abyss (Score:1)
It's aliens hiding out in the deep. They will bring the submersible back once they are done studying it.
How about a string? (Score:1)
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They should have tied a string to it.
Yeah, nothing like a multi-ton submarine suddenly losing all its buoyancy to sink the mothership it's tethered to at the surface...
I think it's *designed* to cut loose.
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Well, since the machine weighs no more under water, when filled with water, than the empty sub does when lifted onto and off of the ship, I'd say the scenario of the sub somehow dragging the mother ship to the bottom in the event that it floods is pretty far fetched.
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But the sub and ship are not stationary objects or ones that will magically hold their positions, the sub and could be extremely far out side of the center of mass, adding an extra couple of tonnes of force suddenly pulling in one direction is not good. (dont forget the weight of your extremely long tether too)
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The tether weighs the same on the spool or in the sea.
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It's pulling down either way (I'd expect the tether to be much heavier than the sub, but maybe I'm wrong - the sub would have to be quite stout to nearly resist crushing at that depth).
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Once your centre of Mass moves past your center of balance you will tip over.
Just like how on old school scales moving the tiny weights to the side changes the balance, go to far and the scales tip over, their is no way to keep the ship and the sub directly located over each other, if it was dropped from the center of the boat and went straight down,and there were no ocean currents(they can change directions at different depths) No wind, No waves and you could manage to move both the ship and the sub in the
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But people really do operate RSVs this way, without much of a problem. The boat is very much heavier than the cable+minisub, and the cable will break long before it could capsize the ship. I've seen pictures of ships used for this purpose that were broad twin-hull designs with plenty of open space in the middle, but I know the Navy also does similar operations with conventional ship hulls.
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It's no lost (Score:4, Funny)
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It's just pining for the trenches.
Pining for the trenches, what kind of talk is that? Look, why did it implode on its back the moment I got down to 9999 meters?
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Ob. Slightly Scientific Comment... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ob. Slightly Scientific Comment... (Score:4, Informative)
The founder of Benthos gave us a lecture on the tech. When one of them implodes, the energy released is the ambient pressure at depth times the volume. This is why you can't simulate an implosion in a tank - the moment the implosion begins, the pressure drops, and the energy release stops But at depth, the water simply fills in any lost volume with more water at the same pressure, and the energy release continues until the entire volume of air is crushed. The smaller sphere in the link (13 inch or 33 cm diameter) has an air volume of about 15 liters. At 9000 meters, the pressure is 90.57 MPa. So its implosion releases 1.36 MJ - about as much energy as 2/3rds of a stick of dynamite. The glass spheres which implode basically revert back to sand. You can imagine how much more energetic it is if something as large as a submarine [wikipedia.org] implodes.
Thats more junk at the bottom of the ocean (Score:1)
I know it was unintentional, but scientific vehicle or not, its now just more scrap sitting at the bottom of the sea polluting it (battery chemicals, polymers etc). There should have been a contingency plan for an implosion - hardly an unexpected event at that depth.
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The debris from a two ton ROV doesn't even begin to compare to the daily avalanche of crap we dump on the seafloor.
My father in law was a sonar operator aboard P3's in the 70's and 80's. The thousands of sonor buoys he dropped in the ocean would probably surprise you. They're designed to operate for a while and then, when the batteries are nearly dead, flood and sink to the sea floor so they can't be recovered and reversed engineered. There's a stretch of ocean bed in the north atlantic that must just be ca
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Luckily the sea floor is a big place.
It's also a very corrosive place.
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No its not.
Salt water under high pressure is not corrosive? You've never dealt with stuff underwater for very long, have you?
The porous rusticles will eventually dissolve into fine powder. So most of those bouys will be consumed and meet the fate of the Titanic, dissolved to dust.
Which is what I'd call a corrosive environment.
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I'll find it, but it ain't goin' to be cheap (Score:3)
Definition of Lost (Score:2)
They pretty much know where it is, they just can't get it back.
As opposed to MH370, which nobody knows where TF it is.
Kudos to Wood's Hole (Score:2)
For pushing the boundaries. There wouldn't have been an implosion if they weren't pushing it to the edge.
Some people just don't have an appetite for exploration anymore - I say "job well done."
Either... (Score:2)
Put 1090 atmospheres or add 1125 Kg/cm^2... Not everyone is using an archaic unit system. Actually, only very few are...
Thank you,
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Put 1090 atmospheres or add 1125 Kg/cm^2... Not everyone is using an archaic unit system. Actually, only very few are...
Pretty sure kg/cm^2 is even more archaic than psi. Has that been in common use past the 1970s? The current newfangled unit of pressure is the pascal, which is N/m^2.
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Pressure is mass per unit area? Sounds like a specification for paper density.
Surely you meant force per unit area?
Finally! (Score:1)
This is a pretty significant loss :-( (Score:2)
Design flaws (Score:2)
I am by no means a submersible expert and I am curious as to what part of the sub imploded.
16,000 PSI might sound like a lot of pressure but in reality we use pressures close to that in hydraulic systems (10,000 PSI systems are quite common) and well over that in hydro-forming systems.
Would vacuuming and back filling the air spaces with a non conductive fluid such as Fluorinert or mineral oil be of any benefit? If you eliminate compressible gases from the design, nothing can implode. Weight could be an issu
First of all : one remark (Score:2)
... 11,000 meters deep... ...
Scientists say
... 16,000 pounds per square inch
Time to embrace the metric system [wikipedia.org], don't you think so ?