Brit - French Nuke Subs Collide

[allardjd 1,853]

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2240543.ece

 

Well, this is interesting.

 

There are apparenly no fatalities, though there certainly could easily have been. With sub accidents, normally either everyone comes home or no one does. In this case, both appear to have been lucky.

 

Both are "Boomers", ballistic missile subs and it's highly unlikely either was stalking the other - it's unthinkable to use boomers for that kind of thing. What the missile boats mainly do is stay very, very quiet and hide - from everyone.

 

Their speed while on patrol is normally quite low and that may be the key factor in their mutual survival of the collision.

 

The key to the nuclear deterrence they provide is based on their locations remaining a complete mystery to everyone. For anyone to know where they are seriously compromises their effectiveness as a deterrent. This is likely just what they are saying, an accident, as probabalistically incredible as the two satellites colliding last week.

 

Both are nuclear powered and both are capable of - probably were - carrying nuclear tipped ballistic missiles. It's not the kind of thing you want to be littering the ocean floor with. As the article says, the chances of a nuclear detonation in an event like this are nil, but breaking open warheads or reactors, or just leaving them lying around on the ocean floor is not good policy. Britain and France both had some bad luck here, but also should be very thankful that they didn't lose boats, crews, weapons and reactors.

 

John

[hurricanemk1c 195]

Oopps!

[MartinW 0]

I no they are usually solitary, but i wonder if they had been on a exercise together fro some reason. A bit of a coincidence otherwise, that in a huge ocean they collide.

They claim they weren't of course but who knows.

[ddavid 149]

Go get yourselves a copy of this.....

It is by far the best book - O.K., it's fiction - on modern submarine operation that I've read. Makes "Hunt for Red October" feel like a Sunday School picnic. Joseph, the author, goes into sufficient detail on hydrophonics - not SONAR - as the basic facility that subs use to find out who shares their 'space'.

Methinks they would have benefited from a certain neutrino telescope development, mentioned elsewhere in the Hangar (!) - but for 'coincidence', read stalking.

Cheers - Dai.

[allardjd 1,853]

As incredibly improbable as it is, I still believe coincidence.

 

Boomers don't operate together and boomers don't stalk one another. If a boomer on patrol believes there's another sub nearby they get real quiet, show them their baffles and slither off to somewhere else at a slow, stealthy pace. It's the nature of the beast. They do not play chicken with these things.

 

Dai, I read that book once, a long time ago.

 

John

[MartinW 0]

John, our logic is irrelevant, a million conspiracy theories will no doubt still appear on the net.

:biggrin:

[allardjd 1,853]

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John, our logic is irrelevant, a million conspiracy theories will no doubt still appear on the net.

 

Absolutely correct, Martin, and one day, one of them will end up being right, encouraging the rest for the next thousand years.

 

John

[MartinW 0]

And just to encourage the conspiracy further.

1. What are the odds of two subs colliding in an ocean that size?

2. The French sub [Triomphant] is ten times more sensitive in regard to tracking other submarines than it's predecessor.

Embarrassment for the UK or an occurrence like winning the lottery twice in a row?

[allardjd 1,853]

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What are the odds of two subs colliding in an ocean that size?

 

Astronomical, though probably not nearly so improbable as two orbiting satellites colliding. When you consider the dimensions of the X, Y and Z space in which they operate, it begins to look positively crowded in the Atlantic compared to near-Earth space. The satellites operate in a much wider and deeper "sea" than the subs. They do traverse it at a bit higher velocity though.

 

By the way, did you notice the pun in the headline of the original Sun article? It took a while for it to dawn on me before I realized that it's a play on the typical names of British warships. I don't know if I approve, but I can't help but appreciate the cleverness.

 

John

[MartinW 0]

Satellites inhabit specific orbits though don't they?

You don't think much to my

[allardjd 1,853]

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Satellites inhabit specific orbits though don't they?

 

Well, yes. But consider - the average satellite, even with solar panels deployed probably spans less than 50 feet (some are larger, of course). If the paths of two pass 60 feet apart at closest approach, it's a miss.

 

Now consider the playing field. At a height of 500 miles the radius of the sphere that forms the satellite's playing field is Earth's radius + 500 miles or about 3959 + 500 = 4459 miles. The area of that sphere is about 250 million square miles.

Now adding the vertical dimension and considering only the satellites that are in the 500 mile high orbit, lets assume that the error of placing that satellite at that height is a mile + or -, or less. That puts all the satellites that are in the 500 mile high orbit in a 2 mile deep layer. The volume of that layer is around 500 million cubic miles.

 

For a collision to occur, the centers of our two hypothetical, 25' radius victims must pass within 50 feet of one another.

 

A final factor that adds to the uncertainty is the fact that most satellites don't have a constant height. Almost all have an apogee and perigee that are different, sometimes radically so. That means that two satellites that pass directly over the same point on Earth at the same time may very well miss because they are displaced in the Z axis - one is higher than the other.

 

So, it's pretty improbable, though obviously not impossible. When two do collide and two objects become a shotgun blast of thousands of fragments, as just happened, the probability of a future collision increases tremendously.

 

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You don't think much to my

[MartinW 0]

But John, don't forget, the two satellites that collided, that wasn't a coincidence at all. It was a deliberate attack on a spy satellite.

Pointy said so.

Sometimes people use other words, rather than 'interesting'.