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Kursk Finally Lifted
Michiel writes: "This site, dedicated to the salvage of the Kursk by Mammoet Smit, announced today that the Kursk has been lifted from the seabed and is currently on it's way towards surface. The Giant 4 (which is lifting the Kursk) is at the same time already heading to Murmansk. Mamoet Smit expects to reach Murmansk Monday morning. More information about the Kursk (and its salvage) can be found at Strana" You might to revisit this post about just how the lifting is done as well.
Try http://www.kursksalvage.com/ for more info and pictures...
Ed
Check out the videos. They are really awesome.
The BBC has some good info on the practical aspects of the operation.
Low-tech, but still nice.
Mammoet's site on the salvage which has some nice simulations and technical details of the lifting mechanisms. also slightly OT but interesting none the less is information on the building of Mammoet's new office (flash), a 10 storey steel and concrete building that will be built off site, and transported lock stock to it's final resting place by canal. these guys don't do things by half measures!
-= This is a self-referential sig =-
Lifted, yes. Raised, not yet. The last story on this had a little slideshow on how it was going to go. The sub isn't going to be raised out of the water while at sea at all.
The plan, IIRC, was to lift the vessel from the bottom to the underside of the Giant 4 which will carry it to port where floats will be attached (submerged, filled with water) and then the floats will be "blown" to raise both the Giant and Kursk higher in the water so that both can sail into a dry-dock. The Giant will then deposit the sub in the dock and sail out. From there you pump out the dry-dock and you can start slavage or whatever.
Exactly. Seems like if your only concern was keeping the weapons tech out of anyone else's hands, you needn't go to the trouble of raising her.
This is a nuclear sub, right?
"We have experience of sunken Russian reactors," he added, referring to the Komsomolets nuclear submarine which lies at a depth of 4,500ft off north west Norway.
The Komsomolets, which sank in 1989 following a fire which killed 42 crewmen, is slowly leaking plutonium, although the depth of the water means it is less of a threat to marine life than the Kursk.
But Greenpeace says any possibility of radiation leakage was too much, and has demanded the Kursk be raised to the surface as soon as possible rather than just contained as other vessels have been.
Recovering human remains may be an important part of this mission, but I would think recovering the reactor would be the primary motivation.
Got this from the strana site -
h tml?eng
Theres a really well done VRML simulation of how it was all done. Its really just a series of still environment snapshots from various stages of the salvage operation but someone took ALOT of time on it. Good job -
http://www.parallelgraphics.com/vrml/kursk/index.
I usually dismiss VRML as crappy and slow but Im really impressed with this one.
10-9-01
After 10 hours of pulling cables, the Kursk has finally been brought to the surface. Russian inspectors onboard the Giant 4 entered the sub, and returned five minutes later. After a brief announcement that "all the vodka rations had been destroyed", the Kurst was dropped back into the Barents Sea.
I believe the Discovery channel is having a show on the raising of the Kursk. Unfortunatly, I cannot connect to their website at the moment to find out what time and what day it will be aired. Anybody know when the show might air?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
There were some preliminary talks about them joining NATO or the EU (forgotten which) but these broke down when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia. The majority of the Russian population is Slavic, and so they have historically protected the Slavs in the Balkans. That's how WWI started, when A-H wanted to retaliate against Serbia, Russia stepped in to defend the Slavs (so Germany supported A-H by attacking France, an ally of Russia, in a pre-emptive strike, and the rest is history).
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
You've confused Granit with Shkval.
What you've linked to are the Granit anti-ship cruise missiles. Those are the vertically-launched ramjet missiles, taken to ramjet speeds by a booster, and capable (or so the military says) of flying under the radar height in formation, then one rises up, turns its radar on, and dispatches the targets to others. Those are supposed to be capable of taking out an entire aircraft carrier battle group.
What possibly sank Kursk are the Shkval torpedoes - the supercavitating supersonic torpedoes that use jet propulsion and swim in a straight line to their target.
Both are supposed to be the most advanced missile and torpedo technologies in use by Russians, both have not been fully tested.
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However, only Russians are allowed inside. The retrieval of the crewmens' bodies earlier was by Russian divers only.
I don't know how this works about the bow section though. This would have been cut from outside but it is inevitable that a lot of information could have been gathered by divers after the bows were removed. Even just looking at the hull cross section would have been interesting (sound damping, etc.).
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