
Boeing unveils autonomous submarine - curtis
http://www.gizmag.com/boeing-echo-voyager/42272/
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jfoutz
The article is a little thin on details.

The big breakthrough seems to be mission duration - possibly months. With such
a long duration, some other possibilities open up. Primarily, rather than
launching from a ship close to the target, the sub can be launched from shore,
navigate out to the target and then return.

I wonder what the "hybrid rechargeable power system" is. Diesel with
batteries? well understood and effective. It's gotta be something pretty
energy dense to move around that mass and still have space for useful stuff.

~~~
smoyer
James Gosling (the inventor of Java) has several videos on-line that describe
the hardware and software used in his company's WaveGliders. While they're not
submarines, they are autonomous and are powered by the waves they travel
through. Solar cells provide power for instrumentation as well as navigation.

I have no idea how you'd power such a vehicle as large as the Boeing system
without either fossil fuel or a nuclear reactor but it would be interesting to
compare the vehicle's missions.

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _powered by the waves they travel through._

How does this work? Wouldn't they expend more energy than they gain?

~~~
todd8
I happened to remember reading about a wave powered design that propels a
small model boat. I recall seeing it in an old Popular Mechanics and that the
year was maybe 1948. I read it while in I was in 7th or 8th grade in a stack
of my Uncle's old magazines stored in my Grandmother's basement over half a
century ago!

With the help of Google I found the article in less than a minute; I was off
by a year:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=9NgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA182&sour...](https://books.google.com/books?id=9NgDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA182&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false)
. Take a look it explains how such a design works.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Interesting. Thanks for sharing. I can see some challenges with this, but the
basic principle seems strikingly similar.

Not sure what's more impressive: your memory or how easy it is to access
relatively obscure information from well over a half-century ago.

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pavel_lishin
Anyone else's first thoughts jumping directly to the exploration of Europa?
(Or Enceladus, or Ganymede?)

~~~
vonklaus
Not me, I jumped right to WWII/Cold War. While the obvious extension of the
technology would be aqueous mobility because:

> Autonomy is a lot less complex in high friction environment with restricted
> pull of gravity and speed.

> The ocean being less spacially constrained

> less actors and objects to contend with relative to area/volume

> An extra dimension to use(if sub-surface) although this could make for more
> complex models to some degree, it likely would be much easier given the
> above points.

So this is somewhat obvious and expected, and likely being employed currently
but it is pretty fucking scary, because:

> indefinite deployment of war machines

> unlimited strike capability

> no human governance for last call strike decisions

> 100% likelihood of dead-hand insurance for all nuclear nations

> attack vector, while likely insane to penetrate, would imply remote control
> nukes. A human may not be needed on the other end to execute a strike.

It would be awesome to use this on Europa or even deep sea exploration and
research activities as we could really derisk the endeavor and also limit
costs as this reaches economies of scale, I think that may be a small part of
how humans employ this short term.

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melling
The should send a few to the Indian Ocean. MH370 is down there somewhere.

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tomjen3
Could this be used for smuggling?

~~~
ChuckMcM
Of course it could. I was thinking of adding "In related news, Boeing has over
$1B in bookings for the new sub from South American customers."

In the US at least one way to get a quick introduction to the local
representatives of the 3 letter agencies is to start sea trials of a long
duration autonomous underwater vehicle.

~~~
notatoad
>In the US at least one way to get a quick introduction to the local
representatives of the 3 letter agencies

Of course, if you're Boeing it's not really a concern to have the three letter
agencies knocking on your door. They call that a sales meeting.

