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by boysabr3
3095 days ago
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It 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.) |
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- 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.