World's Deepest-Diving Unmanned Submarine Lost

XenonOfArcticus writes "Kaiko, the world's deepest-diving submarine was lost in in late May off Japan, after it snapped its tether as a typhoon approached. Kaiko entered the record books in 1995 by diving 36,008 feet to the bottom of the Challenger Deep - the ocean's deepest point."

Re:No remote control?

[srn_test]

Nice troll.

Either that, or you need to think about how well radio works in water (think ELF, for example).

Re:No remote control?

[WhiteBandit]

Taken directly from the article:

Kaiko is designed to float to the surface and emit a tracking signal if its tether is broken. Although searchers briefly detected the beacon, they were unable to locate the probe and suspected it has either drifted off site or sunk to the bottom.

Re:No remote control?

[Sherloqq]

Oh sure, mod me all the way down to Challenger Deep, so I can share the fate of that submarine... :)

Allright, I guess I forgot about issues with radio wave propagation in water. I hang my head in shame instead.

Re:Recent events

[Muhammar]

"With the loss of the Challenger, the crash of the Helios, and now this, it makes me wonder what next."

Tragic demise of Bill Gates, I fear.

Re:Recent events

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Next is learning from these mistakes. Like we have done throughout history.

Re:Recent events

[Mt._Honkey]

I am concerned about the recent setbacks in many scientific fields. With the loss of the Challenger, the crash of the Helios, and now this, it makes me wonder what next.

Hang on there cowboy. This probably just needs to be filed under the "Shit Happens" category. Spacecraft have always been blowing up because it is mighty difficult to build something that reliable goes through all that punishment. Experimental aircraft have always crashed, because they're experimental. You do experiments, and when s

Re:Recent events

[OctaneZ]

Science is all about failure, hell even the way we look at experimentation is ALL about failure. You never prove that something worked, you only prove that it didn't catachimically explode in your face, forcing your funding agency to bludgen you to death.

Admittedly that is no the kind of thing you are talking about, but when you are doing somethign "experimental," you know going to space, trying to keep somethign at 1 bar pressure over a trench that extends 7 miles down; in an oncoming typhoon no less, fai

Re:hmmm

[Captain Nitpick]

I'm no naval engineer, but wouldn't it make sense for the onboard computer to surface the sub if communication to the ship above is lost? Then, once it surfaces, have it emit a distress signal that the master ship can hone in on

READ THE [CENSORED] ARTICLE

Kaiko is designed to float to the surface and emit a tracking signal if its tether is broken. Although searchers briefly detected the beacon, they were unable to locate the probe and suspected it has either drifted off site or sunk to the bottom.

Re:hmmm

[phantomlord]

yep... I'm an idiot. I was distracted when I RTFA and I missed that paragraph.

Thanks

[flikx]

On behalf of all naval engineers, I would like to thank you. You see, with all the design tradeoffs involved in engineering a submarine, we completely forgot to add any useful safety features or redundancy of any kind. Thank you very much for you excellent insight, we will incorporate these obvious, yet overlooked features into the next generaion of unmanned submersibles.

Re:Thanks

[zangdesign]

Hey, remember to put some screen doors in the submarine so it's easy to tell if you're underwater or not. And so you can step outside for a whizz and a smoke.

Re:hmmm

[anubi]

I just read the article.. and it sure looks like there is a bug in there somewhere. The article [guardian.co.uk] claimed exactly the design you describe.

"Kaiko is designed to float to the surface and emit a tracking signal if its tether is broken. Although searchers briefly detected the beacon, they were unable to locate the probe and suspected it has either drifted off site or sunk to the bottom."

I would assume the sub has local batteries, albeit rechargeable via the tether, for cacheing energy. As you noted, in the event the sub detected its tether being broken ( I would probably try to sense a loss of power feed ), use the cached energy in the battery to blow the ballast tanks.. or maybe have some sort of fire extinguishing system using liquid CO2 that could be routed into the ballast tanks to insure floatation in failsafe mode.

I am not privy to the design plans, but somehow this whole episode reeks of a malfunction of some failsafe system. I find it difficult to conceive of some design engineer not hedging his bets against something as inevitable as a severed tether.

Another poster noted RF being lossy underwater. My guess would been to place piezoelectric sonar transducers on the hull and ping them in the event the sub considered itself lost. It wouldn't take that much energy, but if you knew what kind of racket you were listening for, it would stand out from the normal oceanic noises.. kinda like those old war sub stories of marooned submariners taking a wrench and tapping out the morse code for SOS on the steel hull of the submarine.

Re:hmmm

[Almost-Retired]

'scuse me, but how are you going to blow the tanks when the exterior pressure is sufficient to keep your liquid CO2 liquid by a factor of 20+. CO2 can be kept liquid at a pressure of a few hundred psi at room temps, somewhat less at the somewhat lower water temp. In the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the external pressure is in the range of 15,500 psi. Your liquid CO2 may even be a solid.

What you do is drop (release) the ballast weight that made it heavier than water and become lighter, in the case of t

It's not lost...

[breon.halling]

... it's hanging out with James Cameron. ;)

Re:It's not lost...

[Gorny]

I'm the King of the Deep Sea!

Nitpick

[crashnbur]

I know this is a tedious point, but there are four oceans, and not everyone knows where Challenger Deep is. Also, it wouldn't hurt to let everyone know that Challenger Deep is allowed to be confused with the Marianas Trench, since Challenger Deep is the distinct section of the trench that reaches the deepest below the surface, almost seven miles.

An interesting article about how to calculate the ocean's depth [utdallas.edu] was put together by Nathan Becker, a student at the University of Hawaii when the report was written in 2001.

Re:Nitpick

[whm]

I know this is a tedious point, but there are four oceans, and not everyone knows where Challenger Deep is.

This may even be more tedious ... but how can you write a comment like that, and still not tell us proles where the hell it's at? :)

Re:Nitpick

[crashnbur]

I was actually expecting a reply like this, but the reason is simple: I don't know where it's at. That was the point of my comment... I just know it's a part of the trench.

The ocean in question would be the

[DoraLives]

Pacific.

Re:The ocean in question would be the

[TwP]

Off of the coast of Japan and heading roughly South-Southwest down towards Malyasia. The trench is formed where the Pacific continential plate dives underneath the Asian continential plate.

Re:The ocean in question would be the

[flewp]

Off of the coast of Japan and heading roughly South-Southwest down towards Malyasia.

YOU MEAN IT'S MOVING?!?! This can only be one thing, a WMD made by the Japanese. They better be prepared to be liberated.

Re:Nitpick

[Strange Ranger]

Continuing on the tedious nitpick theme...

What the hell is "where it's at "?

A preposition is something you should never end a sentence with. ;]

Ya'll ain't gots no good English or ya jist wanna sound uneduhkated?

"Where is it?"

Now that would be English.

Re:Nitpick

[t0qer]

What the hell is "where it's at "?

Don't you listen to Beck? The song goes..

Where it's at, I got 2 turntables and a microphone,
Where it's at, I got 2 turntables and a microphone,

Where is it, I got 2 turntables just doesn't sound right.

Location of The Deep

[OctaneZ]

"Map" of location of Marianas Trench [extremescience.com]
Wikipedia entry for Challenger Deep [wikipedia.org]
The Trench is located east of the Matianas Islands [graphicmaps.com]

Hope this helps you find it.

Re:Nitpick

[shthd]

Just an interesting article. A manned mission went almost as deep. http://popularmechanics.com/science/extreme_machin es/2003/5/submarine/index2.phtml

Nitpicking nitpick

[barakn]

There are actually 5 oceans. In 2000, the International Hydrographic Organization defined the Southern Ocean, all water below 60 degrees south.

Re:Probably destroyed.

[OctaneZ]

The article states that the beacon (only emitted at the surface) was briefly heard, this means that it at least *hit* the surface after the tether broke, thougth I agree, it most likely sank, and implosion of the sort you predict is unlikely.

Re:Probably destroyed.

[ivanmarsh]

It just set a new depth record. 8^>

Our entire world[view]

[cathouse]

is and is based on only the tiny [linear] fraction of the range of actual physical conditions which exist on just this one [3rd] rock from the [G3] sun.
Simple concept such as 'blow ballast' have NO relation at all to the conditions that exist just 7 miles from home, when that 7 miles is DOWN and there's WATER ALL THE WAY. IIRC the closest thing to Fail-Safe under such conditions is [was] a flotation envelope filled with gasoline and ballasted to negative with iron 'scrap' held in place by electro-magnets.
T

What I think happened...

[Rocky]

"Release the Kraken!"