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this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
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Explain Like I'm Five
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There has to be a solution that would have allowed them to send a buoy up to transmit a mayday and coordinates like some life boats do. This would help the rescue teams to narrow the search grid. I wouldn't have gone down in that thing, but if I WAS, I would at least feel better with something like that.
A beacon should work as I described in a separate response. A buoy could work too, but the buoy a) would need to be designed to float up from 4 km and still be functional at the surface b) the sub doesn't necessarily know where it is below the ocean. GPS doesn't work down there!
they were two miles deep. sending up a tethered buoy means holding two miles of string on the sub, which would be completely impractical. sending an untethered buoy doesn't really help anything, because by the time it goes two miles up to the surface, it could have drifted way further than that in any other direction.