SmarterEveryDay
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2021–2023
42:02 · 6.4M views · Jul 30, 2021
Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day explains how a US Navy nuclear submarine surfaces through Arctic ice, filmed during the ICEx exercise. It shows ballast and control systems and the physics involved.
HN points to it as the best accessible explanation of submarine ice breaking and sub controls.
4 comments from Hacker News
The Navy is understandably cagey about how they surface through ice-sheets, but this Smarter Every Day video is the best summary I have seen. this video Basically, some part of the sub needs to be strong enough to reliably break ice at sub-zero temps. The rest needs to maintain its strength at those temps.
The YouTube channel SmarterEveryDay was invited to film on an Ohio class nuclear submarine training in the Arctic. [0] You can see how many of the system are mechanical and not electronic in the demonstration especially the ballast controls. Most if not all boats and ships can control the throttle mechanically so if the boat loses its electronics such as a wave smashing the windshield in, it is still possible to control the rudder and throttles. I was very surprised at the lack if mechanical controls on the recreational submarine. [0] this video
They have upward-looking cameras, at least on some of them. You can see it in the last Smarter Every Day video[1] where they're talking about surfacing a submarine in the arctic ocean. At several points you can see a video monitor showing an upward view of the ice. [1] this video e: to be clear, that upward looking camera isn't going to be enough to detect much beyond your own footprint. If someone is about to cross that area you'd need some other way of detecting them.
Not an expert but Smarter Everyday has a playlist on a Nuclear Submarine. He explains the complicated math involved in various operations of the Submarine. As few others have pointed out, it also involves keeping the sub silent. this video