What? I mean...what????!!!

[Bishop]

Read it here.

A nuclear submarine ran aground. A Los Angeles Class Nuclear sub ran aground. Gives you a lot of confidence, don't it?

[Reika]

Sounds like someone needs to go back to pilot school.

[DarkMage]

oh my....

[FlakJacket]

'Least it wasn't a boomer.

[Bishop]

How many people have to do how many things wrong to run such a vessel aground?

[Fortune]

Probably only one.

[Ancient History]

"Do not operate heavy machinery."

[FlakJacket]

How many people have to do how many things wrong to run such a vessel aground?

Well the bloke who was in command, whoever was in charge of navigation- they track position by both electronic means and physical charts IIRC, and possibly the lead sonarman on duty- but that really depends on what systems they were using at the time.

Edit: And in sad news it seems that the sailor that was in crtitical condition didn't make it.

[Anguirel]

Placement-wise, it's easily possible that the earthquake/tsunami have made all their charts useless. If they thought otherwise and were running by charts and GPS/gyroscopic position thingy (that's a technical name) or were running quiet and using distance from surface for their motion or the like, it doesn't seem so implausible or even unlikely.

[Salvation122]

Or they could have been blown severely off-course by the fucked-up tides.

[FlakJacket]

I don't know. That's still a fair distance away from the epicentre and there was quite a bit of physical land inbetween as well.

[FlameBlade]

Apparently, earth is still shaking like a bell from that tsumani quake.

[lorg]

Tsunami, earthquakes and all but still .. How on earth do you run a sub aground, that shit take skills. Don't they have instruments that monitor pretty much every possible variable and tell them how to pilot the sub?

[Twisted Sister]

Maybe I am oversimplifying - but surely a windscreen would be a good idea.

Dude van der Dude : "Ahoy, a fuck off large bit of land ahead, turn right!"
Dude McDude : "okie dokie"
Dude van der Dude : "Thank fuck for that large windscreen"

*Sam collects nobel windscreen in subs prize*

[Twisted Sister]

Okay so apparently there is a whole light issue thing going on. *sigh* Back to the drawing board.

[FlakJacket]

Okay so apparently there is a whole light issue thing going on. *sigh* Back to the drawing board.

Huh? You're from Essex aren't you? Just treat it like a Ford Escort and slap a load of extra headlights on the thing.

[3278]

Tsunami, earthquakes and all but still .. How on earth do you run a sub aground, that shit take skills. Don't they have instruments that monitor pretty much every possible variable and tell them how to pilot the sub?

Well, I don't know that much about [semi-]modern nuclear submarines, but let's stop and think about it. Certainly, the navigator should always be able to know where the sub /is,/ between magnetic compasses*, deduced reckoning, and possibly GPS [depending on depth]. However, besides charts, computerized topographical maps, and other similar resources, what methods does a sub have to analyze where the world is in relation to that? If the charts are wrong - the ocean floor is always moving, earthquakes or not - how can the sub get information about the world around them?

Certainly, despite Sam's ingenius suggestion, looking around is <i>right out.[/i] You can listen, but the ocean floor doesn't make all that much noise on its own. Unless you're using some active form of perception, which submarines strive mightily not to do, there's simply no way to know - that I can think of - where the ocean floor really might be <i>right now.[/i]

*I have no idea what degree the earthquake might have had an effect on the earth's magnetic field in this instance, or what duration that effect might have had, so I'm unable to fairly judge what causality might exist between the grounding of the sub and the recent earthquake in the Indian Ocean.

[Angel]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/natio ... &position=

...Navy officials have said that the submarine, which was headed for Australia, appeared to have smashed into an undersea mountain that was not on its charts. Mr. Ashley, who lives in Akron, Ohio, said Commander Mooney told him the same thing on Monday.

"He said, 'On the charts we have, this is a clear area all the way through to Australia,' " Mr. Ashley said.

Navy officials said the San Francisco was traveling at 30 knots when it careened off some part of the undersea mountain range. In one of the e-mail messages, Admiral Sullivan wrote that on impact, the vessel made a "nearly instantaneous deacceleration" to about 4 knots....

Imagine cruising along at 34.7 miles per hour (converted from knots) and running into a wall, without a seatbelt!

[lorg]

3278; Just as you say I don't really know very much about subs and their various systems for detecting their surroundings, except what has been on the discovery channel etc. But concidering they can detect and listen to fish one would assume (could be wrong) that they could and can also detect a large rock formation or whatever it was that they run aground on. After all they can't be piloting in the blind or just "using the force". How do they detect other subs and obsticles in general. Other subs and such arn't on the charts either so they must be able to detect other things at all times, I would one again assume that this would also include rocks, the bottom of the ocean etc.

Just take something like active vs passive sonar as an example, I am sure they have other systems to.

Sonar (Ultrasonic Sensing)
Sound Navigation and Ranging

* developed during WWII to find submarines. (works well underwater, where Radar - Radio Detection and Ranging - doesn't work.)
* uses sound energy to
- locate objects
- measure their distance
- produce pictures of them

Active vs Passive
Active: uses a transmitter to convert electrical enery to sound energy. Sound waves travel until they strike an object, which reflects them in various directions. Some reflected waves return to sonar, where they strike a receiver. Distance is determined by measuring the time it takes for the sound wave to travel from the transmitter, bounce, and travel back to the receiver.

Passive: only receives sound waves. Can be used to detect the direction of an object, for example.

I think that would do it. Since passive sonar doesn't give of anything it just takes what comes to it. While active and pinging or whatever they call it does give them away.

[WillyGilligan]

Fish are actively moving. Subs are moving, Rock..isn't, to my understanding. I've heard that an extremely good sonar op could hear a formation, but that's rare.

And we still haven't heard whether their systems were affected at all by outside conditions like the tsunami.

[3278]

Willy's point is also mine. While a sonar officer can detect schools of fish and other submarines, those are things which /make sound./ Unless using active sonar - which, as I noted previously, a submarine is unlikely to be doing [unless in a combat situation in which avoiding detection is no longer an issue] - the submarine has no active means of sensing. Passive sonar largely only detects things which make noise; the only exception I can think of would be a case in which the sonar officer is adept enough to notice the /absence/ of sound, as in the case of a large mass absorbing all sound around it, as a soft ocean floor would. [Rock formations and the like will reflect sonar, and thus are somewhat more likely to be detected through passive means.]

None of this is functionally different from the means blind persons use to navigate, or for that matter, bats. The concepts always remain the same, and thus may be logically applied across situations, allowing us to logically analyze the possibilities despite our communal ignorance of the specifics.

After all they can't be piloting in the blind...

It is my understanding that this is precisely what they are doing, with the aforementioned exceptions. This is much of the reason accurate charts of the ocean floor are so essential to submariners, as it has been explained to me.

[AtemHutlrt]

My girlfriend's brother is a navigator for a Navy aircraft carrier. We were discussing this, and he says it's really not that surprising. As he said: "We've got a lot of advanced shit, but if I read a chart wrong, we smash into something." The tools for navigation used by the Navy aren't magical; apparently, the ability to navigate by stars is vital on long hauls.

[Salvation122]

I'm sure it's real useful underwater. Get what you're saying, though. Interesting.

[3278]

The tools for navigation used by the Navy aren't magical; apparently, the ability to navigate by stars is vital on long hauls.

I think this raises an interesting point: we, grown-up inculated into a world of technology that is, for the most part, outside our understanding, often forget that /no one/ uses magic to navigate. We expect that technology will always be able to provide answers for questions like, "Where am I?"

This has given rise to common assumptions like, "Anywhere you go, someone can find you by your cellphone," which simply isn't true. We think tools like the Global Positioning System can always tell us where we are on the globe - because it usually can, and because most of us have no real idea how the system actually /works,/ we have no idea of its limitations - when in reality, there are a variety of circumstances and conditions under which it is useless, to a greater or lesser degree. And because we are familiar with the existance of the most advanced tools, we often forget the necessity of the older ones; we forget that sometimes it comes down to a map, or a magnetic bit of metal, or a sextant.

I think because of this, we are frequently unable to make use of the older technology, even if it were to be available. How many of us can figure out what time it is and where we are on the globe, based only on the night sky and a compass? How many of us could make a really accurate map of the entire seafloor /without/ using radar and computers, but simply a bit of string with some wax on the bottom, and a pencil and paper?

None of it's magic, and instead of treating it like it is, we should remember those basic principles - sound bounces off rocks, but not silt - and reason our way through the possibilities, instead of simply assuming that there must be some technological solution to whatever possibility has presented itself. When it comes down to it, none of it's rocket science,* and all of it can be reasoned from basic elemental principles that are familiar to everyone.

*Rocket science isn't even "rocket science;" you put compressed gasses in a thermos to keep them cold, because gasses in liquid form are a lot smaller, and letting them heat up would make them expand, then you put a valve on the end from which you release the gasses, which you then light. Rockets. Simple.

[Crazy Elf]

Yeah yeah, but it could still have been easily solved with a windscreen and some headlights.

[Twisted Sister]

That's what I'm /sayin'/, dawg!

[Angel]

http://www.navy.mil/view_gallery.asp?category_id=17

Photos of the "wreckage".

[TheScamp]

That's one fucked-up front end, yo!

[FlakJacket]

That's going to take more than a little bit of beating to get the dent out of that wing.

[Bishop]

They better have a /big/ dent puller.

[3278]

That looks a lot more like the damage you'd see running into a rock wall than a seabed.

[FlakJacket]

Well I suppose you can argue that a rock sitting on it is part of the seabed.

[Anguirel]

Now that all that stupid metal has been removed, they can install a windscreen (waterscreen?). And some lights.