3 ms·

As an outsider (well, I have plenty of experience with pleasure boats/yachts, but none with large ships) it seems really extraordinary that just maintaining a h

by jabl 9y ago

As an outsider (well, I have plenty of experience with pleasure boats/yachts, but none with large ships) it seems really extraordinary that just maintaining a heading would be a full time job. Somehow in airplanes a single pilot manages to control not only the rudder, but throttles, ailerons, elevators, flaps and whatnot while also yakking on the radio. And airplanes zip along at 500 knots rather than 20 like a ship.

pas 9y ago
Fewer obstacles maybe? Also, with a fast plane you either land or take off, or do stuff in practically free space.
- vlehto 9y ago
  Also there is the example of infantry tank. There is the driver who has speed and direction. Then there is the commander who gives orders but apparently has backup system to drive if the driver is incapacitated. A ship just can't have as much obstacles as tank negotiating battlefield.
  - KineticLensman 9y ago
    > the example of infantry tank. There is the driver who has speed and direction. Then there is the commander who gives orders but apparently has backup system to drive The UK's Warrior armoured personnel carrier is an example of what I guess you mean by 'Infantry Tank'. It has a Commander, Gunner and Driver (plus the 'dismounts' - seven guys in the back who get out to fight on their feet). The driver - as the role name implies - does all the drving. The commander (who is also the loader, incidentally) directs the driver where to go. He does not have duplicate driving controls. If the driver is very inexperienced, the commander will give him very precise direction. If the driver is experienced - in the sense of understanding tactical movement considerations - the commander can be much more hands off. If the vehicle commander is also a platoon commander, he is also giving orders to the commnanders of the three other vehicles in the platoon. He is much more likely to be paired with an experienced driver so he can focus more on the overall battle than control of his own vehicle.
    - vlehto 9y ago
      "Infantry tank" was my mistake. Those things only existed around WWII. Regardless any modern tank, infantry fighting vehicle etc. has single man controlling both speed and direction.
lallysingh 9y ago
And in 3 dimensions (which a sub does too, but not a ship)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
zentiggr 9y ago
Navy sub vet and almost licensed as a pilot: The small aircraft case - one mind, one set of hands, to reduce the feedback loop to fractions of a second overall. Things other than throttle/ailerons/elevators get timeshared in when all else is stable momentarily. Larger ship - water is never still, and any vessel's helm left untended results in drift, both in heading and real speed vs ordered. Depending on traffic and the reaction time of the hull, corrections need to be made immediately or even well ahead of time. So helmsman watching constant compass shifts and adjusting steering is a full attention task. As is monitoring speed made vs speed ordered. Still need more eyeballs to keep a full 360 visual watch, radar watch, and a quartermaster to plot position against nav hazards and boundaries and warn against the 'invisible' navigation issues. If a destroyer could respond to control input like a plane, there would need to be a single person at the helm/throttle.
- saulrh 9y ago
  I understand that keeping on a desired course is not a simple task and requires prediction and understanding of the surrounding waters... But you can say the same thing about crosswinds and thermal layers and pockets of turbulence in the air over a runway, and autopilots land 747s every day. In a far more computationally intensive and less recoverable domain, with more complex system dynamics and controls even discounting the extra dimension, plus sensing that's both more limited and harder to interpret. If modern controls theory can land an aircraft, I'd expect it to be able to run a ship along a trajectory like it's nailed to a rail in space-time.
  - zentiggr 9y ago
    TL/DR: I have to boil this down to a gut feel, but I'd rather fly a known takeoff/landing profile at any airport, than take a n-thousand ton vessel through a port departure/arrival, simply because the overall situation in the air is so much simpler. Entering/leaving any decent sized port that handles larger vessels is a much more intense collision avoidance situation than any airspace management situation I can imagine. Reducing the reaction space from three to two dimensions and extending the reaction time from control input -> output by a factor of 100 to 1000 is part of it. The other complication is having a magnitude or more of different classes of "threats", from unexpected solid objects ( chart errors or new items unreported), other vessels both larger and smaller with faster or slower response times of their own, errors in SA... eyes and professional judgment help immensely. Thus the focus on keeping the OOD watching the whole SA. My sub had at least a dozen people involved in building the "picture" around the boat, visual, sonar, radar... plus two or three of us collating that into displays and reports the OOD could see immediately.

by jabl 9y ago

pas 9y ago

Fewer obstacles maybe? Also, with a fast plane you either land or take off, or do stuff in practically free space.

vlehto 9y ago
Also there is the example of infantry tank. There is the driver who has speed and direction. Then there is the commander who gives orders but apparently has backup system to drive if the driver is incapacitated. A ship just can't have as much obstacles as tank negotiating battlefield.
- KineticLensman 9y ago
  > the example of infantry tank. There is the driver who has speed and direction. Then there is the commander who gives orders but apparently has backup system to drive The UK's Warrior armoured personnel carrier is an example of what I guess you mean by 'Infantry Tank'. It has a Commander, Gunner and Driver (plus the 'dismounts' - seven guys in the back who get out to fight on their feet). The driver - as the role name implies - does all the drving. The commander (who is also the loader, incidentally) directs the driver where to go. He does not have duplicate driving controls. If the driver is very inexperienced, the commander will give him very precise direction. If the driver is experienced - in the sense of understanding tactical movement considerations - the commander can be much more hands off. If the vehicle commander is also a platoon commander, he is also giving orders to the commnanders of the three other vehicles in the platoon. He is much more likely to be paired with an experienced driver so he can focus more on the overall battle than control of his own vehicle.
  - vlehto 9y ago
    "Infantry tank" was my mistake. Those things only existed around WWII. Regardless any modern tank, infantry fighting vehicle etc. has single man controlling both speed and direction.

lallysingh 9y ago

And in 3 dimensions (which a sub does too, but not a ship)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

zentiggr 9y ago

Navy sub vet and almost licensed as a pilot: The small aircraft case - one mind, one set of hands, to reduce the feedback loop to fractions of a second overall. Things other than throttle/ailerons/elevators get timeshared in when all else is stable momentarily. Larger ship - water is never still, and any vessel's helm left untended results in drift, both in heading and real speed vs ordered. Depending on traffic and the reaction time of the hull, corrections need to be made immediately or even well ahead of time. So helmsman watching constant compass shifts and adjusting steering is a full attention task. As is monitoring speed made vs speed ordered. Still need more eyeballs to keep a full 360 visual watch, radar watch, and a quartermaster to plot position against nav hazards and boundaries and warn against the 'invisible' navigation issues. If a destroyer could respond to control input like a plane, there would need to be a single person at the helm/throttle.

saulrh 9y ago
I understand that keeping on a desired course is not a simple task and requires prediction and understanding of the surrounding waters... But you can say the same thing about crosswinds and thermal layers and pockets of turbulence in the air over a runway, and autopilots land 747s every day. In a far more computationally intensive and less recoverable domain, with more complex system dynamics and controls even discounting the extra dimension, plus sensing that's both more limited and harder to interpret. If modern controls theory can land an aircraft, I'd expect it to be able to run a ship along a trajectory like it's nailed to a rail in space-time.
- zentiggr 9y ago
  TL/DR: I have to boil this down to a gut feel, but I'd rather fly a known takeoff/landing profile at any airport, than take a n-thousand ton vessel through a port departure/arrival, simply because the overall situation in the air is so much simpler. Entering/leaving any decent sized port that handles larger vessels is a much more intense collision avoidance situation than any airspace management situation I can imagine. Reducing the reaction space from three to two dimensions and extending the reaction time from control input -> output by a factor of 100 to 1000 is part of it. The other complication is having a magnitude or more of different classes of "threats", from unexpected solid objects ( chart errors or new items unreported), other vessels both larger and smaller with faster or slower response times of their own, errors in SA... eyes and professional judgment help immensely. Thus the focus on keeping the OOD watching the whole SA. My sub had at least a dozen people involved in building the "picture" around the boat, visual, sonar, radar... plus two or three of us collating that into displays and reports the OOD could see immediately.