support vessels

[David Buchner <buchner@wcta.net>]

I've been hearing bits of the news about this latest downed-at-sea airliner, and the salvage efforts. It's supposed to be in like 250 feet of water, and they keep having to delay because of the weather. I'm guessing this is due to the requirements of the surface vessels rather than the zubmersibles. There are the ships from which they operate the ROV, and the ones dragging sonar instruments, and so on.

It occurred to me that it would be useful for people conducting this kind of operation to be able to run the whole thing underwater, and ignore the surface conditions altogether. Wouldn't it be great to have undewater operations, including this kind but also research and exploration ones, supported by really big submarines? A navy nuclear sub has all those torpedo and missile-launcher tubes which could launch smaller vessels -- all kinds of sensing equipment -- communications -- the ability to hang around underwater a really long time. Why don't they do this? This isn't really a P-Subs issue, as few of us have that kind of money, but hey.

-- 
David
buchner@wcta.net 
Osage MN USA
http://customer.wcta.net/buchner