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Steam Powered Underwater Jet Engine
Bob Vila's Hammer writes "An Australian engineer, Alan Burns invented a very efficient underwater steam powered jet engine. "Steam that is produced from a petrol or gasoline fueled boiler emerges at high speed from a rearward-facing ring-shaped nozzle into a cone-shaped chamber. Shock waves created as the steam condenses are focused by the chamber to blast water out of the back. Besides powering watercraft pretty efficiently, it can also be used as an extremely robust pump. Pretty Cool."
I remember reading in a super-cavtation article about underwater engines like that - basically "underwater jet-engines" - I mean, of course it's not quite true, it operates on different principles, but the functionality is pretty similar.
;-)
btw, super cavtation is where you make the nose of your _insert_vessel_here_ blunt but it goes so fast that the vapor pressure drops until the vessel (usually a torpedo / bullet / whatever) would be in an airbubble (technically steam bubble! - though there are dissolved air that boils into the bubble too) that it creates itself (and maintains) and hence has no liquid drag for the rest of the vessel (as in, besides the blunt nose).
The engine I read about was actually reacting seawater directly with aluminum shavings and expelling hot steam (or something like that). I am pretty sure there were something else but I can't remember what it was (I don't think it was iron-rust, though, for all of you thinking of thermite). Anyway - neat stuff; should change underwater combat a whole lot.
should get myself one of those to go war(ship) driving
My life in the land of the rising sun.
why electrolosys of course, just like in all the serious boats out there.
Imagine if the drive which produces steam is not desiel or petrol, but nuclear!
Enough "air" and steam for everybody.
Moreover, imagine if the sub doesn't use neutral bouyancy but flies through the water.
One thought though, if you're doing 90 knots underwater when the sea is full of debris, you might want really good maps and a kick ass gps+VR rig to guide you through the canyons, because I doubt sonar will be able to image for you fast enough.
I'll refer to your paragraphed by numbers.
1. The article says it is quiet, but doesn't specify if this is because noise is ultrasonic, or the process is just plan quiet. Regardless a ship doesn't avoid submarines by being quiet. It avoids submarines by using bloody huge active sonar, propulsion noise hardly matters, a ship still makes a lot of noise carving through the water, unlike a sub it is not completely covered in the same medium, but two (air, water).
Also torpedoes do not home on noise (aka passive sonar), they home on returned "pings" from active sonar, who cares if they know where the torp is, if they have no hope of out running it.
The article doesn't speculate that this will necessarily make ships faster. It will certainly mean less drydock mantainence, and better reliability from the drive.
2. Until they develop completely unjammable communication links between machine and pilot, with zero possibility of being hijacked by the enemy, there will always be a need for manned aircraft.
Even if we get sentient un-manned aircraft, would you trust it carrying a bomb? Would you want to take responsibility when it decides to bomb a school?
3. On the contrary I think many of them would love to do something to stop their men from being killed, so long as they don't lose control of air defence. eg: SAM sites were proposed to be run by the army, so the airforce fought tooth and nail when it was suggested that interceptors, etc were unnecessary.