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[...] In December, explorer and investor Victor Vescovo, along with scientist Alan Jamieson from Newcastle University, are embarking on a groundbreaking mission more than 6.5 miles under the waves. The two are heading out in a new $48 million dollar submarine system to better map the bottom of the world's five oceans.
They're calling the mission, which will be the first time people travel to the bottom of each of the world's seas, "Five Deeps."
"Our depth of ignorance about the oceans is quite dramatic," Vescovo said as he introduced the mission to an audience in New York. "Four of the oceans have never even had a human being go to their bottom. In fact, we don't even know with great certainty where the bottom of the four are."
First up on the five-dive trip will be the Puerto Rico Trench, the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. It's a spot no human has ever explored, and it's so deep that any communications from the submarine will take seven seconds to travel back up.
The team believes it's possible to find a location deeper than the Challenger Deep.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:44PM (2 children)
Need a buoy with a long antenna. Then ROVs with a form of AI to drive them around. Have thousands of them at every depth, and they would communicate as a mesh network. So the ones at the very bottom would send their message to nearest one higher up, and so on and so forth until that message gets to the antenna; to the buoy. Then the buoy radios it to a satellite or to a ship, or land station.
(Score: 2) by Username on Wednesday November 14 2018, @12:48PM
ROV can be recalled, and they latch onto the antenna to be moved to another location, or charging if they aren't equipped with an rtg.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 14 2018, @03:54PM
There are some very interesting phase change materials which go negatively buoyant at the surface and then positively buoyant when they reach depth, essentially riding the oceans' pressure/thermocline as a sort of unlimited source of free propulsion. A limited amount of electrical power generation is also possible while riding up and down the water column "for free" so, as long as you are operating in an area free of heavy currents and hazards to navigation (a strand of kelp or a fishing net can terminate your immortal ROV operation very quickly), then you could set up a mesh network of long dwelling ROVs covering an area. They're not going to be able to tow long antennae, or use high power transmission - even navigation will be a challenge: I'm thinking ROVs which have surfaced recently could relay GPS info via acoustic chirps - the acoustic signal delays are much more variable due to thermal and salinity gradients/boundaries, but should be good enough for rough stationkeeping in an area.
Still, if you want to cover from the surface to a depth of 6 miles with short-hop communications in a mesh network, that will probably require thousands of ROVs, and much more development time/effort/money than a manned mission. The ROV fleet might be superior at info gathering, but I think it's on a 10-20 year development timeline whereas a manned mission could be executed in under 5.
Simple: do both.
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