5 ms·

That whole series is really good, life on a submarine is so interesting

by polytely 6y ago

cbozeman 6y ago
I spent two and a half years on one. No it is not.
- dylan604 6y ago
  Just because you're over being in a submerged tube doesn't mean other people can't find it fascinating. I find the silent service totally fascinating, and would happily buy you beers to hear stories you are not allowed to tell.
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    Well how about I tell you the stories I can tell, for free? I have to go get a car battery replaced, but when I come back, I'll share a few tales. Sometimes, I would stare into the Reactor Compartment through the glass (there's a large-ish - around 6" - 8" if I recall correctly) porthole that allows you to look right into the reactor compartment at the nuclear reactor. I never stared for long... maybe 5-10 seconds at most, but staring at nuclear fission occurring is truly an awesome experience. There's no Cherenkov radiation emitted, so you're just staring through glass at a bunch of metal, but you still know its occurring... and that was enough for me.
  - GuB-42 6y ago
    I think it is like a lot of unusual things. Looks fascinating from the outside, but it gets really boring really quick. Everything military is a good example. Who doesn't like the idea of working on secret, state of the art technology? Truth is, the secret part mostly gets in the way, because of the "right to know", you don't really know what you are working on, and you may not even have internet access on your computer. As for the "state of the art", it tends to be pretty underwhelming. Besides military-specific constraints like stealth, it tends to lag behind civilian technology, probably related to the already mentioned secrecy that gets in the way. Same thing happen when you get to work with really expensive equipment. Sounds great because who doesn't want a machine almost no one can afford? In reality, you are unlikely to get to play with it. Because it is an expensive machine, your company is going to make sure it is used to make money and not just for your own curiosity. Personal use is likely to get you fired.
- dctoedt 6y ago
  > I spent two and a half years on [a submarine]. Hah! I spent a week aboard a fast attack, on TAD just before nuclear power school; the experience gradually convinced me that I should be a surface nuke. (My tuber buddies at nuke school joked that by making the switch, I raised the average IQ in both communities.)
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    That sounds like a submariner's joke alright. I used to hear that "Navy nuclear submarine personnel are the top 10% of the Navy!" They would repeat that shit over and over to us at Sub School. After a year onboard the USS Honolulu, I remember thinking, "If this is the top 10%, I'd fuckin' hate to see the bottom 90..." I did end up spending some time with the bottom 90%, briefly. After the Hono, I was transferred to Patrol Coastal Crew Charlie. At the time we were still attached to SOCOM, so it was a really great, if hard, life. The last 6 months or so of my time in the Navy, we got folded into "Big Navy". Not fun. At the time, each crew simply flew to an available PC boat, usually to relieve another crew, as 3 PC crews generally operated out of Bahrain and Kuwait at any given time. It was cheaper to ferry most of the PC boats over by large ship instead of trying to sail them, as you generally need to refuel a PC boat every 7 days, give or take. Having to actually do maintenance on our equipment instead of spending hours every week at the range shooting and hours at sea practicing on the twin-50s and the 25mm autocannon was a real drag. I'm glad I got out when I did. It was all of the fun with none of the work, and then become all of the work and 5% of the fun.
jbperry 6y ago
I spent 6 years in the Navy, 4 of those on a fast attack. I would say that it was an exercise in the extremes. There were times of extreme boredom and extreme stress. I leaned a ton of interesting things. The crash course in real world systems and how they work together is something that I'm not sure I could have gotten in any other environment. But on the other hand, I easily cleaned more than I have in the rest of my life. Another interesting thing, is to see how people react in these situations. Some people can't take the high stress, some the long hours, some the long stretches of boredom. And they deal with it in different ways. And it can bring out the best and worst in people. And everyone comes out of the experience changed.
learyjk 6y ago
Spent 3 years on a fast attack sub and can attest that though difficult and frustrating at times, life on a sub is indeed interesting. One of my favorite tools onboard was our sound speed profiling software. While it was often wildly inaccurate compared to what we were "seeing" in sonar in real-time, it was fascinating trying to predict what we would and would not hear. We definitely picked up MODUs (Mobile Offshore Drilling Units) form thousands of km away. Also, there are many older submarines still out at sea, and many of them don't use sound dampening tech (i.e. rubber grommets) on their noisy gear (pumps). Pretty loud too.

That whole series is really good, life on a submarine is so interesting

cbozeman 6y ago

I spent two and a half years on one. No it is not.

dylan604 6y ago
Just because you're over being in a submerged tube doesn't mean other people can't find it fascinating. I find the silent service totally fascinating, and would happily buy you beers to hear stories you are not allowed to tell.
- cbozeman 6y ago
  Well how about I tell you the stories I can tell, for free? I have to go get a car battery replaced, but when I come back, I'll share a few tales. Sometimes, I would stare into the Reactor Compartment through the glass (there's a large-ish - around 6" - 8" if I recall correctly) porthole that allows you to look right into the reactor compartment at the nuclear reactor. I never stared for long... maybe 5-10 seconds at most, but staring at nuclear fission occurring is truly an awesome experience. There's no Cherenkov radiation emitted, so you're just staring through glass at a bunch of metal, but you still know its occurring... and that was enough for me.
- GuB-42 6y ago
  I think it is like a lot of unusual things. Looks fascinating from the outside, but it gets really boring really quick. Everything military is a good example. Who doesn't like the idea of working on secret, state of the art technology? Truth is, the secret part mostly gets in the way, because of the "right to know", you don't really know what you are working on, and you may not even have internet access on your computer. As for the "state of the art", it tends to be pretty underwhelming. Besides military-specific constraints like stealth, it tends to lag behind civilian technology, probably related to the already mentioned secrecy that gets in the way. Same thing happen when you get to work with really expensive equipment. Sounds great because who doesn't want a machine almost no one can afford? In reality, you are unlikely to get to play with it. Because it is an expensive machine, your company is going to make sure it is used to make money and not just for your own curiosity. Personal use is likely to get you fired.
dctoedt 6y ago
> I spent two and a half years on [a submarine]. Hah! I spent a week aboard a fast attack, on TAD just before nuclear power school; the experience gradually convinced me that I should be a surface nuke. (My tuber buddies at nuke school joked that by making the switch, I raised the average IQ in both communities.)
- cbozeman 6y ago
  That sounds like a submariner's joke alright. I used to hear that "Navy nuclear submarine personnel are the top 10% of the Navy!" They would repeat that shit over and over to us at Sub School. After a year onboard the USS Honolulu, I remember thinking, "If this is the top 10%, I'd fuckin' hate to see the bottom 90..." I did end up spending some time with the bottom 90%, briefly. After the Hono, I was transferred to Patrol Coastal Crew Charlie. At the time we were still attached to SOCOM, so it was a really great, if hard, life. The last 6 months or so of my time in the Navy, we got folded into "Big Navy". Not fun. At the time, each crew simply flew to an available PC boat, usually to relieve another crew, as 3 PC crews generally operated out of Bahrain and Kuwait at any given time. It was cheaper to ferry most of the PC boats over by large ship instead of trying to sail them, as you generally need to refuel a PC boat every 7 days, give or take. Having to actually do maintenance on our equipment instead of spending hours every week at the range shooting and hours at sea practicing on the twin-50s and the 25mm autocannon was a real drag. I'm glad I got out when I did. It was all of the fun with none of the work, and then become all of the work and 5% of the fun.

jbperry 6y ago

I spent 6 years in the Navy, 4 of those on a fast attack. I would say that it was an exercise in the extremes. There were times of extreme boredom and extreme stress. I leaned a ton of interesting things. The crash course in real world systems and how they work together is something that I'm not sure I could have gotten in any other environment. But on the other hand, I easily cleaned more than I have in the rest of my life. Another interesting thing, is to see how people react in these situations. Some people can't take the high stress, some the long hours, some the long stretches of boredom. And they deal with it in different ways. And it can bring out the best and worst in people. And everyone comes out of the experience changed.

learyjk 6y ago

Spent 3 years on a fast attack sub and can attest that though difficult and frustrating at times, life on a sub is indeed interesting. One of my favorite tools onboard was our sound speed profiling software. While it was often wildly inaccurate compared to what we were "seeing" in sonar in real-time, it was fascinating trying to predict what we would and would not hear. We definitely picked up MODUs (Mobile Offshore Drilling Units) form thousands of km away. Also, there are many older submarines still out at sea, and many of them don't use sound dampening tech (i.e. rubber grommets) on their noisy gear (pumps). Pretty loud too.