Wednesday February 09, 2005

Nuclear submarine accident

I read an interesting article in Wired News yesterday. It was about a nuclear-powered submarine accident. What really struck me was that I never heard about this in the mainstream media. Did I just miss it? It seems like a nuclear submarine running into an undersea mountain and killing one crew member and seriously injuring 23 others would be a big deal.

The other thing that the story made me think about was how to solve the problem of undersea mapping. Why couldn't you put some of the new undersea imaging tools described in the story on ships already crossing the seas, combine them with GPS technology and collect the data. The data could then be downloaded to a Sun Grid and processed across the grid. Out of this would come updated more accurate maps. Perhaps it is already being done. It is the kind thing I would dig into some more if I had the time. It also seems like the the kind of story that distributed journalism, as described by Dan Gilmor, could really fill out.