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Raising the Kursk
imrdkl writes: "Theres a conglomeration of Euro companies, from Euro countries renowned for their sea-prowess, who are working together with the Russians to raise their stricken sub. This will be some happy news, when they get it finished. Hopefully before winter gets bad up there in the "circle". A pretty good article, with a nifty flash animation which gives some notion of the scope of this engineering feat is to be found at USA Today."
Someone remind me why it sank? Or did the Russians just vaguely avoid this question?
It's very encouraging to hear about some good news throughout this very unsettling time. The Kursk is certainly a tragedy to itself, and I'm glad to hear that the men who died on that submarine are not being forgotten, especially in something as terrible as the recent terror attacks. Perhaps is this acceptance from Russia of European help a side-effect of the world-unity we are starting to experience? Hopefully this is a trend we can look forward to.
I think its definitely good that the Russians are finally accepting help from other countries now. I mean, Russia is one of the super powers of the world, and by accepting help from others (finally) they show that they will not be a country staying isolated from the rest. Wouldn't it be great if we could make some good ties with russia and help them out to restore their once beautiful country?
I'm sure the initial goal will be investigation.
After that, perhaps a memorial to people who've died at sea for (the soviet union || CIS || russia) would be constructed out of it? I'll be interested to see what they do with it, it'd be a shame if they just ended up scrapping it to make cheap razor blades or something. (OTOH, if somehow they reconstruct her I imagine most sailors would be hesitant to sail on a ship with that sort of history...)
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Yes, two weeks ago a horrible, tragic thing occured. I knew people inside. Should we spend the rest of our lives talking about nothing but September 11th? OR is there just a certain period of time the news must stop reporting anything other than the facts we've already heard a dozen times?
Way to give in to terrorism...dwell on it forever.
And way to get suckered in by a troll, BreakWindows. doh!
Little link I found with some good info on the Kursk: http://www.subexpo.com/oscar/
Insert conspiracy theories here.
Goat sex free since 2001
The CIA tried to do something just like this in the 70's it only kinda worked out for them though.
Here is a blurb about it:
1974
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency attempted to raise a Soviet Golf-class diesel-powered boat, K-129, which sank in 1968. The agency did so under cover of a deep-ocean mineral recovery effort using a ship built for the purpose, the Glomar Explorer. The submarine apparently broke apart and the stern half fell back to the bottom.
I stole that from NOVA online by they way.
Too tired for more google searches, but perhaps you aren't.
...or "Old habits die hard"
Russian officials say they want to: "eliminate any potential threat to the area's rich fishing grounds from its twin nuclear reactors" The country doesn't have a history of taking great care with nuclear hazards.
I think everyone would be OK with it if the Russians just went ahead and said "we don't want other countries snooping around our submarine technology".
Yeah, I guess 10 sentences is a pretty good USA Today article!
No, seriously, the graphic is pretty nice. I would have thought that cutting off the nose would be dangerous, given that explosives were stored nearby and may have moved in the blast. Getting the people back is good, and I'm sure the russians had a few secrets on that sub they wouldn't want anyone else to see, but I would have thought that the nose was the most interesting part of the wreck: It would be the best evidence for the still-debated cause of the sinking.
(and the article is actually from the AP, as much as I like to knock USA Today for their "short attention span" journalism)
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Remember that this is basically farther north than Norway and East Of Lapland. Even with the last traces of the Gulf Stream up there, I expect snow and ice to appear soon.
I was up there in that sea once on a navy ship. The terrain is barren for a reason!
I wish them luck!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
shut up!! we are america and we can kill anyone we want!! we can bomb them into the stone age too!! i dont care about other countries. its our right to bomb the fuck out of them. people in other countries are inferior and we can kill them for any reason and its not wrong. fuckers are gonna pay if they fuck with us though. bin laden and all other shit SCUZLIMS are gonna get butchered and no one will give a damn. so take your gay fucking post and ram it up your fuckin ass sideways you fucking islamic pig sympathizer!!!
Second resource is a transcript from a recent BBC program on the Kursk that reviews the various theories about the sinking of the Kursk. It discusses the Russian allegations of US sub hitting the Kursk (as nation's subs have bumped each other numerous times in the past.) It also goes into depth on the popular British theory that a torpedo ran amuck in a way similar to a 40-year old incident of theirs only recently explained. Interesting and reasonably current thinking on the why.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
IIRC they've used balloons before to raise sunken ships. This give you the advantage that it's relatively cheap and you don't need to do a lot of work, just drop down some compressed air with it and once they're all attached just pump'em full of air and it raises itself. Why wasn't this done in this case?
If God gave us curiosity
well, i was waiting for this, i wonder if they will tell us why it really sank
What drives International Politics? If all you're concerned about what happens to your country, then you become isolated like Japan and China were for a time. The reason the US has so much support is because the US tries to help countries out (so long as it doesn't interfere with any other agendas -- i.e. power politics). The priority should be cooperation, not destruction. The only way the world will get better is with cooperation, not isolation (i.e. *nix vs. MS). We should try to show some civility being an industrially sophisticated Superpower...
Would the sailors who died on board under the sea really want to be raised? It has always been my understanding that, traditionally, this would be considered their final "grave" and, in a somewhat romantic way, this would be where a sailor who died with his ship would want to remain.
As late as last May, the major news services were all abuzz about supercavitation technology and the Kursk — everything pointed in the direction of Shkval, Russia's supercavitation torpedo that's been in development for the past couple decades and which is supposed to go in excess of hundreds of miles per hour under water inside an envelope of gas it generates.
Why haven't we heard anything more since? Even if it turns out not to be true, it's nevertheless intriguing and worthy of as much speculation as the rest of what we've been hearing (in the absence of any real news to report these past months on the subject). When they bring the Kursk back up, it's bound to be missing large chunks where classified hardware was stripped out in the intervening months.
If the media fail to titilate us with wild speculation about sexy technology, then they're not the media we've come to know and love. I for one am still waiting on baited breath.
rm -Rf /taliban
About six months ago PopSci had a good article on this task. . .they may have it on their web site by now (I'm too tired to kool right now. . .)
Note that we'll probably never know what sank hte Kursk - the bow has been cut off, meaning that all the evidence about the explosion/collision will remain at the bottom.
It just wouldn't do for the serfs to know what their government really does.
(This applies equally to the US as to Russia, but perhaps not in this context)
---
Book(n): Utensil used to pass time while waiting for the TV repairman
Any ideas how much will it cost to raise the sub?
ParallelGraphics has put together some slick VRML scenes depicting the salvage operation. There's a link from their home page. It needs their VRML browser, but if you're running Windows it's worth a look.
At the risk of being considered chauvenistic, there is a sense of pride for me as a Dutchman, that this job is being done by the Dutch. As a kid I would often get photobooks from the public library which had the work of these companies in there.
The things these companies have towed, lifted, salvaged and transported is amazing. If you want to have a look at some of their projects, go to the Mammoet projects site and go to the salvage website of Smit International
You should also have a look at Mammoet's new building. It is made from metal, looks like a 43 meter high bollard and is built indoors, up to the cabling, the sockets etc. etc. Then it needs to be transported whole over water for about 30km and lifted to its location.
The Van Seumeren family, that owns and runs the company is pretty down to earth and unconventional. When a journalist asked the Director Jan van Seumeren Sr. what he would do when they had lifted the Kursk, he replied: "Ooh man, that is going to be some party, we are going to be drunk for a week." (BTW the family also owns a small bar, that they bought when they thought too many yuppies came in.)
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How will they overcome the 35,000 tons of soil suction pressure with 25,100 tons of crane lifting power? Yes, I did read the words as well as look at the pictures!
There was a television program on here in Britain a few months ago investigating why the Kursk sank. Essentially, several seconds before the Kursk actually exploded, seimologists picked up a first, much smaller blast which was similar in waveform, which indicates a similar source of the blast.
The program claimed that an experimental torpedo in the ship sprung a leak of Hydrogen Peroxide propellant, which reacted with metal fittings inside the body of the torpedo, producing Oxygen and slowly pressurisng the torpedo. About 30 seconds before the Kursk actually exploded, they claim the body of the torpedo exploded, filling the forward hull of the submarine with Oxygen, and inevitably causing fires. The crew of the ship couldn't keep these fires under control, and after time the torpedo warheads exploded, flooding the forward torpedo compartments and sinking the boat.
They based this conclusion on the fate of a little-known (so little-known I can't remember it's name) British sub, which sank in harbour off the coast of Scotland. The Navy investigation concluded that this was due to a Hydrogen Peroxide leak inside an experimental torpedo the sub was carrying.
Yeah, just like Iraq which was once a good ally too!
Time Europe ran a feature on the raising of Kursk a week ago.
The story linked describes nicely the sideshow journalists find themselves in, when dealing with Russian officials. Lies, name-calling seem to be part of the norm when they have set dates for the recovery.
says official: "The information you're getting unofficially isn't the truth. The only information one must trust is what we say officially."
This is nicely followed up by an interview with Vice Admiral Yevgeny Chernov who believes Moscow is covering up the cause of the accident.
"Had it been done, we would have known what happened to the Kursk. Now, there are three versions. A floating mine, which is nonsense. A collision with a submarine, but there were no other submarines there. Or a collision with a surface ship. Had they shown that there were no surface ships in the area, this version could have been ruled out for good. But their failure to have done so makes doubts linger."
Nb: the story 'Accidents can happen' requires a password, but if you access it here it works.
-Kraft
Live and let live
there should be a lameness filter on the submission engine which filters anything from USA-Today
They were doing their sea games out in the open sea, not in the harbor
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Like the world trade center collapse,
the Kurusk explosions were well recorded by
seimometers around northern European.
The sounds suggest two explosions: (1) a smaller
sub-disabling explosion and (2) a larger explosion
of a torpedo going off while inside the sub.
Sure. Raising 118 dead sailors from their eerie grave is way nifty. Didn't we address this before, and before?
Do you mean European companies or companies using the Euro currancy?
I saw a recent article (on a foreign website, I can't find it) on US technology that might be used in the upcoming war..
It described a new type of cruise missile that travels underwater for *hundreds* of miles at near the speed of sound before breaking the surface and taking a more conventional flight path.
Sure, we've been hearing about fast torpedos. But this isn't the modern version of Run Silent, Run Deep - it isn't just about sinking ships. It is about stealth cruise missiles.
So now they can launch a cruise missile and have it stay undetected underwater until it gets to the coast (or close to the target) and then it comes up and assumes a "normal" flight path.
It doesn't show up on radar until it is too late..
So Soviet subs don't even need to be close to the coast in order to attack with no warning.
How is Bush's missile defense system supposed to protect D.C. against missiles that don't even surface until they get to the coast??
How strange we don't hear about these things from domestic media sources..
I heard a rumor that the Kursk sank because of a faulty test of a so-called "Super-Cavitating Torpedo." The technology is said to allow ultrasonic underwater torpedos. The torpedo, in theory, travels fast enough to create a bubble of water vapor around its nose. Since gas offers less drag than water, the torpedo is able to accelerate to considerable speeds. Again, the rumor I heard was that a test of such an experimental torpedo went bad, causing to Kursk to go down.
Yeah, all diced up and dehydrated in packets labeled "BurgerMix".
Wierd, I gave him a lot more credence than you, because he actually said something rather than just spitting unreferenced bile. If you really feel such contempt for /. that you can't even be bothered posting one reference for all of your rantings, then why do you even bother infesting this site? You're just adding noise.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
somthing that struck me at the time was that while the US was able to confirm within 48 hours that none of their ships were involved, the brits took most of a week - and *then* one of thier hunter-subs turned up damaged a week later in ..... gibraltar (tip of spain just above africa). Very fishy.
/THAT/ fast.
I would imagine this excercise would have been very interesting to monitor, given that they were testing a new version of their underwater rocket-torpedoes that can approach the speed of sound in water. Yes,
On the maps, (beginning, and near the end) they couldn't spell "Barents". Subliterate...
Shame, because the graphics are nice, and also load decently fast at 50.666K.
Because it is a kursked submarine!
Plus, I would think that moderation is merely an opinion of what the moderators think of the intellectual property in question. It's the same as a bookstore moving a book from the main stacks to the "Bargain" bin. I can't understand how moderating a post changes the contents of the intellectual property. Plus, I've never read the TOS for slashdot (big surprise, I'm sure) but I should think it would cover such matters.
theory/rumor going around is that the new experimental torpedo (a supercavitating, possibly *supersonic*) torpedo was
designed to have a self-activating warhead based upon a simple time elapsing mechanism. It is believed that the shaft
chamber malfunctioned, but those in the control room were not aware of it. They ordered the launch, the torpedo chamber
flooded, the torpedo armed, and "boom".
The torpedo arm system is based on distance not time. It's based on distance for some very good reason and what you claim above is one of them. But consider that there is a great than one in 20 of to the torpedo being dub. How do you get the
torpedo out of the flooded tube and turn it off before the timer goes off???? You can't, this is why torpedo's don't use timers.
Another problem with timers is if the torpedo leaves the boat with engine problems and doesn't get to a safe distance, i.e. it limps a long at a inches a second, then arms and detinates itself next to it's boat of origin.
Submarine warfare has been around for 100s of years, over the last 100 years we've got more effective at it, but we still seem to mess up.... I'd say one of the more exciting things about the next 100 years is going to be more personal submarine tarvel.
M0571y H@rml355.
Can it approach the speed that sound travels in water? Or is the the speed that sound travels in air, and reaching that speed while in water?
Yes! That guy!
I hope they lift the Estonia next. And expose the Swedish role and responsability in the "accident".
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc