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Comment by arresin | Hacker News Reader

If they’re that deep then they need to be autonomous because I don’t think there’s any way to reliably get a signal sub marine.

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Long distance communication with submarines is difficult but not impossible, there are four extra low frequency transmitters in the world to send signals in nuclear doomsday scenarios.

For shorter distances, there are acoustic and optical devices, and near surface some low frequency radios can be used.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarine...

“Communication” does not mean “can be used for command of a remote device”. The bandwidth is so low as to make it impractical (bytes per second or minute (in the case of ELF)), in addition to being one-way comm. You’re not remotely driving a boat with that.

You'd be amazed to learn what we do with spaceships then!

I’d be amazed if the use case were exactly the same, such that low bandwidth communication were equally useful in both cases, yes. Beside the fact that Voyager 1's 160 bits/s would be luxury for an underwater craft using VLF or ELF.

And it apparently bears repeating: communication with a submarine using VLF/ELF is one-way. Such is not the case with a spacecraft, even if the latency sucks.

Lots of folks forget the challenges of attenuation in a given medium... e.x. light doesnt go `c` in fiber....

> For shorter distances, there are acoustic and optical devices, and near surface some low frequency radios can be used.

So, not in any way an answer to the problem of controlling deep drone submarines?

I can't wait to see when the narcosubs are driven via long fiberoptic cables with an occasional surfacing for GPS lock. The sea floor between caches is just going to be littered.

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