“If Anyone Finds MH370, It Will Be the Men on This Ship” is a well-researched Esquire article on the technical details of the continuing search for the missing Boeing 777 (which I expected to have been found already). It turns out that the ocean floor had never been mapped in this part of the world. The fundamental process is then (a) make a reasonably precise map using sonar from the surface, (b) make a more detailed map, including looking for debris, using a towed sonar system roughly 500′ above the ocean floor.
[Separately, the article, starting with the title, implies that the crew of this search is 100-percent male. Yet I have seen no New York Times articles demanding to know why women are being excluded from the job of spending months on a 200′ boat in the world’s heaviest seas.]
How long before autonomous drones map the entire seabed?
10 years? 20?
I happen to detest that macho “men’s magazine” writing style.
As for drones mapping the sea floor – someone would have to pay for it. In most places, there’s nothing down there anyone wants to pay for mapping.
Then you would have to have some source of self-propulsion and you’d have to store all the data on board and you’d have to retrieve the drone. It’s probably easier to tow the mapping device behind a boat which is what they are doing now.