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A swarm of submarine drones will scour the depths for MH370
- orvillew 9y agoWhat area? Near Borneo?
- orvillew 9y agoWhat is search area. Near Borneo?
- orvillew 9y agoHow do we get ahold of Ocean Affinity?
- perseusprime11 9y agoI hope they find MH370. At the very least, it will bring closure to families who lost their loved ones.
- hownottowrite 9y agohttp://archive.is/hrHyJ http://archive.is/hrHyJ
- the-dude 9y agoAFAIK it is MH370, not MA370. I am Dutch, we had our MH17. I just checked, apparently MAS17/370 is correct as well.
- privong 9y ago> AFAIK it is MH370, not MA370. Good catch. I think MH370 was more commonly used, so I've edited the title.
- aw3c2 9y agoThe "swarm of submarine drones" being "eight autonomous submarines called HUGINs, each six metres long, weighing 1,800kg, and containing a titanium sphere to protect the sensitive electronics therein from the pressure of the ocean’s depths."
- QAPereo 9y agoIn prior cruises in the Atlantic, the firm has, according to Josh Broussard, its technical director, managed to scan 890 square kilometres a day using six autonomous submarines. With eight, Mr Broussard thinks that the new mission will be able to manage 1,200 a day—enough to have covered the original search area in just 100 days. Seems up to the job, and while 8 may not be a swarm of bees, I think for deep sea subs it works as a term.
- twic 9y agoSurely it should be a school?
- taneq 9y agoPod?
- QAPereo 9y agoYeah actually kidding aside, why not that? Maybe the idea is that robots are more like insects than fish, but that seems a bit exotic imo.
- IgorPartola 9y ago
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- eric_h 9y agoFYI disabling javascript when loading the page disables the paywall. (It actually loads the whole page, then removes the article when it figures out you've reached your article limit)
- booleandilemma 9y agoOpening in private browsing mode also seems to work.
- proee 9y agoI wonder what other interesting things they'll discover doing the search. Surly they've already stumbled upon lots shipwrecks in the search for MH370?
- privong 9y agoHere's an article about one: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/malaysia-airlines-searchers-find-sunken-ship-instead-180955256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/malaysia-airlines-... ARCGIS had a fairly detailed visualization of the search and the data. At the bottom of the page, there are some examples of other things that were found: https://geoscience-au.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=038a72439bfa4d28b3dde81cc6ff3214 https://geoscience-au.maps.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.htm... (HN comments for the latter link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14802105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14802105)
- anaganisk 9y agoMaybe one day they will find captain america
- tajen 9y agoBlaine Gibson[1] did find a lot of wreckage on the coast of Africa and complains that the investigation didn’t consider how close it could have come to Africa [2], which would have been associated with an entirely other flight path after going offline, and I don’t remember what was the bureau’s answer about that. [1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/asia/blaine-gibson-mh370/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/03/asia/blaine-gibson-mh370/index... [2] French TV documentary about this complaint: https://youtu.be/ir-PBqynwII https://youtu.be/ir-PBqynwII Bonus: Just found that: http://www.thehuntformh370.info/ http://www.thehuntformh370.info/
- oh_sigh 9y agoProbably not as many as you may think - first, consider the sheer scale of the Indian ocean. Second, open-ocean sailing only became commonplace in the last 200 years. Before then, if you were going from say Spice Islands to Zanzibar, you would hug the mainland Asian coast line as long as possible, except for "short" jumps across the Arabian sea and bay of bengal.
- AlexMuir 9y agoIt astounds me that they wouldn't already have used the best equipment on the market? I mean, it's the most prominent underwater search of recent decades, funded by three sovereign states. My gut feeling is that some people in power do not want this plane found.
- user5994461 9y agoDo not underestimate the power of thousands of meters of water.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Razengan 9y agoAs a sibling comment alludes, everyone underestimates how astoundingly vast Earth's oceans are. I did too, until I looked out the window on my first daytime flight over the sea. A seemingly endless stretch of unbroken blue. It was probably the next best thing to being in space and made me appreciate just how much water there is! And that's just the surface.
- walrus01 9y agoEveryone also grossly underestimates how much it costs per-day to operate a large offshore services vessel in the open ocean, in terms of salaries/benefits, fuel, insurance, cost of the ship as a whole relative to whatever sort of financing paid for it, inmarsat services, food, etc. There's a reason why submarine cable laying and repair is so expensive...
- gehwartzen 9y agoFrom what I can tell, prior to this latest effort, around $200m dollars have already been spent looking for this plane.
- source99 9y ago“no find, no fee”. That's pretty bold.
- krisoft 9y agoMy private conspiracy theory (which I don't believe in really): One of the USA Inteligence services knows exactly where the plan splashed down (either due underwater acoustic monitoring ala K-129 submarine, or through satellite monitoring) They can't reveal that information, because that would hint at their capabilities and methods, so they let the information 'slip' to an underwater search company. They 'boldly' go searching and in due course stumble upon the plane. They know their cost is bounded because of the tip-off, and they really do search, just maybe select a pattern which will be more 'lucky' then other possible patterns could be.
- stareatgoats 9y agoAccording to amateur debris-finder Blaine Alan Gibson they are looking (mostly) in the wrong area. Somewhere near Diego Garcia should also be investigated, based for example on eyewitnesses in Kuda Huvadhoo in the Maldives. I subscribe to his open mindset; go where the evidence points and don't lock on to any theories based on scant such: http://thehuntformh370.info/content/blaines-independent-investigation http://thehuntformh370.info/content/blaines-independent-inve...
- sitkack 9y agoSo much scientifically important data. I hope this is overlap with previous surveys for a comparison. Or that they drop some sensor packs or markers for historical comparison later.
- computator 9y agoThis is what a HUGIN submarine drone looks like (from the manufacturer's site): https://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0240.nsf/AllWeb/B3F87A63D8E419E5C1256A68004E946C?OpenDocument https://www.km.kongsberg.com/ks/web/nokbg0240.nsf/AllWeb/B3F...
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago> When you purchase a HUGIN AUV you join the our family. That's an interesting point of view. I guess it's common with really expensive things?
- totalZero 9y agoIn the first world, it's also common with motorcycles, which are one of the most inexpensive forms of private powered transportation. The shared traits among motorcycles and an AUV include a more adventurous risk profile, affinity for mechanical devices, and less ubiquitous uptake than alternative forms of transportation.
- tesseract 9y agoOr even just an expectation that the product is going to require some DIY maintenance, and mutual support from other users. With, for instance, 3D printers, this works in inverse proportion to the expense of the purchase... if you buy a cheap one, you are joining a community - you don't expect it to be perfect, but tinkering and optimizing is likely part of the attraction in the first place. If you buy an expensive one, it's most likely because of a straightforward business need and you're going to rely on the manufacturer for support like any other product.
- oh_sigh 9y agoNot necessarily...InstantPot told me that when I bought their ~$100 device
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
- rubicon33 9y agoIt would be so cool to build one of these things with a collision detection system and a nuclear reactor so that it could crawl the entire ocean. Imagine what it might find. You could potentially become quite wealthy on treasure hunting expeditions alone I would imagine.
- averagewall 9y agoYou wouldn't need nuclear. It could surface for solar/wave generation as needed. That wouldn't necessarily slow it down because the reduced cost would allow you to have more of them operating simultaneously.
- hartator 9y agoIt seems way more fun to have a nuclear submarine.
- icdedppl 9y agoYour comment does nothing except reveal how you have zero understanding about the ocean or how far science has come attempting to understand it.
- salty_biscuits 9y agoIt is so disingenuous to say fugro only used 1 auv in the original search so this search will be better. Most of the scanning was done with towfish rated to 6000m using sidescan from three vessels rather than auv's. The article makes it sound like the original search was done with one auv that couldn't get to 6000m.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ern 9y agoEither way, though, the advance of technology may mean that it is the last such mystery. As the oceans are watched with ever closer scrutiny, from space and the depths, it is increasingly difficult for anything to get lost in the first place. Have things changed this much since 2014? What would happen if the exact same scenario happened again (airliner switches off all transponders and veers off course into an ocean) in 2018?
- manojlds 9y agoYeah, you would think this happened in the the last century or something. It was just 3 years ago!
- jccooper 9y agoThey haven't changed much yet, but the Iridium Next constellation has hosted ADS-B payloads (as well as AIS). Sometime in 2018 these will be available globally, and make it much harder for either ships or planes to be lost outside the range of land-based receivers. That wouldn't help intentionally or accidentally disabled transceivers as was (probably) the case for MH370. That would require space based radar... which was once but is no longer a DoD project. It'll happen eventually.
- Myrmornis 9y ago> Seabed Constructor is the most advanced civilian survey vessel on the planet today. If its array of technology cannot find MH370, then it is likely that nothing will That sentence seemed gushing and overstated. Presumably a large metal plane isn't really going anywhere and if these 8 underwater drones don't find it then if people keep trying they will in the future.
- exabrial 9y agoSlightly off topic, but here's my favorite conspiracy theory about MH370: It landed Kazakhstan. Interestingly enough, this conspiracy theory was informative on how satellite pings actually work (whether or not you believe the theory is a different matter) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2967157/Vladimir-Putin-ordered-Russian-special-ops-steal-MH370-plane-secretly-landed-disused-space-port-Kazahkstan-expert-claims.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2967157/Vladimir-Put... It'll be interesting to see what what comes of this effort.
- mehrdadn 9y agoDidn't they pick up broken pieces of the plane wings and such from the Indian ocean?
- vzaliva 9y ago"Every block of sea floor that the HUGINs map will be examined by three sets of human eyes." They could publish the data and crowdsource the review process. Also perhaps some machine learning techniques could be applied to indentify most interesting segments to review.
- newman8r 9y agoAgreed. putting it on Tomnod would be nice (and they're already interested in the search for MH370)
- travelhead 9y agoWhat’s with HN linking to paywalled sites?
- grzm 9y agoFrom the FAQ: > "Are paywalls ok?" > "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds." > "In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html In this case, sibling comments have already described ways around the paywall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16056066 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16056066
- WalterBright 9y agoMakes one wonder just how much money people are willing to spend to find that plane. Not every mystery is worth unlimited funds to resolve.
- vaughanb 9y agoLike search and rescue operations, these are essentially exercises for defence forces. You can't make opportunities like these.
- agumonkey 9y agoFinally some interesting new tech, every country should have a group of similar things for sea incidents.
- coding123 9y agoIts crazy the amount of money spent on MH370... does anyone know how much it compares to the payout of the victim's families?
- jeron 9y agoProbably greater than the payout, but if I had a family member on that plane, I'd forgo the payout for search teams in hope of receiving closure
- tim333 9y agoAlso there's not really much "mystery of MH370." It was almost certainly suicide/murder by the pilot. Though I guess there's no harm confirming that.
- robbiep 9y ago'almost certainly'? Do you have any sources for that? Everything I've read has suggested it as possible but never going stronger than probable
- rurban 9y agoNo, it was with the same 'almost certainty' an overheating of a battery back in the load.
- tim333 9y agoOk maybe almost certain is a bit strong but the aircraft maneuvered after losing contact along a path towards the open ocean pretty similar to one the captain had practiced on his flight simulator less than a month before. Not sure how an overheating battery pack would do that. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/mh370-pilot-flew-suicide-route-on-home-simulator.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/07/mh370-pilot-fle...
- mathgenius 9y agoCabin filling with smoke, everyone panicking...
- mehrdadn 9y agoHow credible are the conspiracy theories on this? I recall reading about more than one instance where authorities did not cooperate or even misled or otherwise actively impeded investigations.
- matt4077 9y agoI wasn't following the investigation too closely, but the conspiracy theories I saw weren't too convincing: Mostly, they highlighted instances of authorities either correcting previous mistakes, or withholding information slightly longer than necessary. Yet it's quite obvious how these two errors are related: If you're eagerly accused of the former, you'll tend to indulge in the latter. It's also important to consider that the Indonesian authorities were simply overburdened by such an investigation, were likely to make all sorts of mistakes under stress, and had to content with competing interests that were impossible to satisfy. Then, this investigation happened to involve dozens of authorities and companies from different countries, making errors in communications, distrust, and cultural clashes much more likely than, say, a US-made aircraft crashing in Colorado. The debris that was discovered in Australia and Africa seems to, roughly, validate the initial search efforts. While there may be competing theories pointing to slightly different areas of the Indian Ocean to be searched, there's nothing supporting the "real" conspiracy theories that the plane was diverted to Riad and will be used to start WW III.
- mehrdadn 9y agoOh, right, by conspiracy theories I meant something involving foul play closer to it being ditched in the ocean, not those theories that claim it was diverted to somewhere in Asia. By contradictions I meant the stuff like this [1]. Malaysia got slammed internationally by governments all over the world for their misleading and contradictory statements. It was hard for everyone to explain the particulars away as the being overburdened and stressed. If it had been, I imagine other governments would have been more understanding of that and not slammed them so hard. One particular incident that left me flabbergasted -- but which perhaps could be explained (though not excused) by miscommunication -- was this one, where I seem to recall (though I can't find the exact article) that they confirmed the flaperon found belonged to the plane before even the French -- who were the ones doing the analysis -- came to such a conclusion [2]: > On Wednesday, Najib Razak, the Malaysian prime minister, said the flaperon that washed up on the French territory in the Indian Ocean, since transported to France for analysis, was from the doomed flight. But his assertion has not been backed up by the other authorities involved in the investigation, and the dissonant stances have infuriated many relatives of those on board the plane, who have waited more than 500 days for concrete clues into the fates of their loved ones. > Transport minister Liow Tiong Lai says more possible MH370 debris has been sent to France for analysis. “Why the hell do you have one confirm and one not?” Sara Weeks, the sister of New Zealander Paul Weeks, who was on board, told Associated Press. “Why not wait and get everybody on the same page so the families don’t need to go through this turmoil?” > The claims and counter-claims continued on Thursday when Liow said a team on the French territory of Réunion had collected more apparent plane debris. The claim was contradicted by French officials, who said no new material in the search for MH370 had been turned over to French authorities. How in the world they could jump to conclusions before the people actually doing the investigations certainly beats me. I could see it as being a miscommunication, but this was not a one-off incident, and that got harder and harder for the international community swallow the more times it occurred. I recall getting pretty convinced that they were covering up something, though I couldn't go farther and speculate on what exactly that might have been. (When I heard about the misdetected pings I thought perhaps they should have been looking into the Asia possibility too, but only because they had already poured so much effort into other dead end that this seemed worth a shot, not because it seemed otherwise particularly plausible. I dismissed that idea pretty quickly after they found parts from the plane.) [1] http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/china-slams-malaysia-for-contradictory-information-on-mh370 http://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/china-slams-malaysi... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/06/mh370-search-plane-window-and-more-debris-found-on-reunion-says-minister https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/06/mh370-search-p...
- boysabr3 9y agoIt would be super cool if these submarines could be made completely autonomous. They could come up to the surface to recharge their solar batteries or maybe charge them using turbines rotated by the water movements. They could remotely relay images and data to a publicly accessible services where they could be crowdsourced for interesting findings. I think something like this could be useful for more than just the search for MH370 (oceanography, marine biology, etc.)
- matt4077 9y agoI've actually been thinking about this, and, on a small scale, it should be possibly with almost no budget (i. e. retrofitting an RC model with solar power, an arduino, GPS/WIFI/Cellular). Some thoughts: - Submarines aren't great because solar is your best source for power, and you don't want to divide each day to "work" and "rest" because you need to recharge on the surface. - Electric propulsion will also require some rather substantial solar setup. For these reasons, I think either "passive" sensors just following the currents, or sailing vessels, are better candidates at first. There's also the "glider" concept, where you fill/empty a ballast tank and achieve forward momentum by changing depth while having an aerodynamically-shaped hull. I'm wondering if these could also drag a turbine for electric power, but I fear that idea is coming dangerously close to breaking the laws of thermodynamics. - Satellite internet is, unfortunately, too expensive for anything beyond short status codes / coordinates / commands. It's something like 10 cents for every 80bytes. You'd need to navigate to coastal waters and pick up cellular/wifi signals to transmit the payloads.
- ape4 9y agoSomebody alive knows where it really is.
- m0llusk 9y agoThat is likely false. If it for any reason nose dived into the ocean at high speed then there may be no witnesses and most of the material would have either vaporized or been shredded into fine particles.
- artur_makly 9y agoi thought they were refferring to lookin for the Argentine sub that went missing more recently. maybe that one will be next i hope.