Originally Posted by
bimmerdriver
Thanks for your post. Now that you mention it, I recall reading that the CURV is deployed on the Ocean Shield. The CURV is a USN asset, designed to be deployed on "vessels of opportunity". Ocean Shield, like many offshore vessels is a "vessel of opportunity" for ROVs, specifically "work class" ROVs or WROVs, such as the CURV, as well as for AUVs.
[details deleted] AUVs do the searching and ROVs do the recovering.
FYI, a REMUS is an AUV, not an ROV. If the Ocean Shield has a REMUS 6000, I find it surprising they would be diving the Bluefin beyond its maximum operating depth, but there could be valid reasons for doing so.
I hope that helps.
Yes it does, thanks. i can see there might be better AUVs and ROVs but Ocean Shield is already in position and capable of going to the depth that is currently required and and bringing back some smaller pieces of debris if it finds them.
http://www.jacc.gov.au/media/release...ril/mr029.aspx
[quote]Early this morning, Bluefin-21 AUV completed mission seven in the underwater search area. Bluefin-21 has searched approximately 50 per cent of the focused underwater search area to date.
The focused underwater search area is defined as a circle of 10km radius around the second Towed Pinger Locator detection which occurred on 8 April
No contacts of interest have been found to date.
Bluefin-21 AUV's eighth mission has commenced.[unquote]
Whatever Abbott says, Bluefin will probably search for another week until they get 100 % of the 300 sq km target circle covered. I looked at a map of the AF747 debris field and the vast bulk of it was in a 500 m X 250 m oval. MH370's debris field may be a little bigger because it is deeper.
I don't want to exclude the possibility that they will bring in another AUV but it seems they would want a consistent mapping of the entire area using one method before they try another method to overlay the first.
In terms of luck, they wasted the first week searching the South China Sea. The search was reasonable based on what was known, but wrong. Then a lot of well-intentioned, but wasted effort went into chasing the satellite photos of ocean debris. When Inmarsat produced the arcs of actual radio contacts it narrowed the search area considerably and the refinement of the earlier radar contacts narrowed the search field even more. That is when the Ocean Shield deployed the TPL.
Ocean Shield was very lucky to have heard the pings from the FDR the first day out in the newly refined area. The pings faded fast over the next few days and are gone now, so they deployed the Bluefin.
I think the odds of the Bluefin finding some debris go up every day until they cover 100% of the search circle. The blackjack analogy is that the deck is getting richer so it's time to increase the bet. If the Bluefin finds something they can drop the CURV and try to pick it up.
If the Bluefin finds nothing they will have to try something else because they will have obviously missed it. Switching to craps: "Seven, the line loses. New shooter coming out."