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Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

I like the idea, but as a mariner who has ran into mysterious things in the sea i'm more ambiguous.

one of the major advantages of (most) ocean-going vessels, aside from usually having a crew aboard to negotiate with over VHF as to who goes where when trying to navigate around them , is that the above-water visibility aids in navigation and avoidance.

a future where trade channels are filled with AI-driven low-depth submarines that have no real crew aboard to communicate with sort of worries me, but all I can do is hope that the people who put them together and control them get it right -- otherwise it could turn a lot of trips dangerous.

for those that are in the business : is there an established method by which these unmanned ships that I keep reading about deal with VHF traffic of those around them? Perhaps the ship is receiving and sending back to some proxy site somewhere for a crew to communicate to nearby ships offsite?

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I think they'd need some serious lane marking around wherever they're going to come to surface (unless they somehow intend for these to surface vertically within a reception depot). I can imagine how "fun" it'd be to be in a teensy sailboat (like a sunfish) and have this thing surface under you - possibly chucking you into the sub's engine when you're thrown from the boat.

I have been on a small sailboat and had a submarine surface nearby. Good times!

Wow, do you think they knew you were there? Must have been a shock!

Probably not, considering even advanced nuclear subs just pop up without checking if there is a 200' ship above them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehime_Maru_and_USS_Greeneville...

They knew, it was a joke. It was a military research institute in a Chinese lake at 2000m altitude in the Himalayas. The lake is very deep so useful for submarine testing.

Seems to open up a new variation on "boat hitting whale" accidents only a lot more damaging to the boat. It's already bad for the whale.

I'm curious. What sort of mysterious things have you run into? Narco stuff? Military? Little Green Men?

I suspect the GP used 'run into' in the literal sense i.e. hiring submerged objects. There's a surprising amount of crap floating around out there from small logs right up to lost shipping containers. If you sail enough then it's an occupational hazard (and an extremely dangerous one if you're in a smaller boat).

> lost shipping containers

Reminds me of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Is_Lost

I've not heard of that film before, but as a sailor the plot reads like my worst nightmares.

The article is not clearly written, but they say these things:

1. it will run at 50m depth in trade routes

2. it can work in shallow waters where container ship can not

So I think the idea is that it does not need deep-water port infrastructure, but will get deep and out of the way when it's out of port. So a big ship would never see it.

And it can potentially go under the polar ice.

It will run at 50m depth until something breaks and it loses depth keeping control with no one on board to effect repairs.

So what? It's unmanned. Worst case it sinks and the shipment is lost. By default it surfaces and waits for someone to come fix it.

Worst case it surfaces without power and another vessel runs into it. Hitting a lost shipping container is bad enough. Hitting a submarine is likely to be worse since they're structurally much stronger.

Getting a tow line onto that thing is going to be hazardous in any kind of rough weather. As often happens in the Irish Sea.

Inflating a bright-colored radio-reflecting balloon and triggering a radio beacon is really easy.

Does that make it any different from the millions of pieces of flotsam/jetsam all over the ocean?

They'll be out of the way of surface ships.

But how will they be out of the way of each other?

Solvable problem, but not without some complexity.

> is that the above-water visibility aids in navigation and avoidance

You realize that submarines can travel at different depths depending on the direction (bearing), just like planes do?

When you move in 3 dimension it's very easy to avoid collisions.

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