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Alvin Submersible Retired After 40 Years Work
An anonymous reader writes "The legendary deep-sea manned submersible Alvin is retiring after 40 years of scientific work. Alvin has taken 12,000 people on over 4,000 dives, helping to confirm plate tectonics and continental drift. It discovered hydrothermal vents, salvaged a hydrogen bomb from the Mediterranean Sea and explored the Titanic. Alvin will be replaced by a larger vehicle that will come into service in 2008."
For those who don't know, DSV Alvin is better known as DSV-2 in most of serious historical documents.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
I've always been fascinated by discovery of hydrothermal vents via Alvin.
Hydrothermal vents are located on divergent plate boundaries (i.e. the Atlantic Rift in the middle of the Atlantic).
Here exist these vents (black smokers) warming the very cold water to around 400C.
The fact that life (tubeworms) is sustainable in these highly toxic environments is simply short of amazing.
Yes! I listen to NYC Speedcore and do math at 3AM. I suggest you try it too.
The titanium hull was not installed until she had been in service many years.
Incorrect.
Alvin has not one but *three* emergency ascent capabilities.
- Electromagnetic release of ballast plates. (Also used to initate a normal ascent.)
- Electromagnetic release of the battery tubs.
- *Manual* seperation of the sphere and forward chassis from the remainder of the submarine. (No one is certain if this will work.)
Lastly, Alvin also has the ability to shed her arms and the experiment rack/ROV garage. This is used both if they get entangled or if they need to shed weight."DSV-0" Trieste - the bathyscathe that reached Challenger Deep, retired 1966, also called X1
DSV-1 Trieste II - an updated bathyscathe design, retired 1984, also called X2
DSV-2 Alvin - a deep diving sub, reaching only half as deep as the two Triestes
DSV-3 Turtle - Alvin's identical sibling, retired 1998, USN
DSV-4 Sea Cliff - another Alvin class DSV sub, retired 1998, USN
DSV-5 Nemo - another Alvin class DSV sub, retired 1998, USN
To me, this is old news. As I worki at WHOI, we have been tossing around ideas for a new Alvin for a long time.
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To correct a few other posts, on fatigue: the factor of saftey of Alvin is incredibly high. Meaning the operating depth is incredibly low for the hull. You can check the ASME boiler code. No one actually knows the crush depth of the sphere. They re-wrote the book when they built the spere. They built three spheres from the get go. One to be tested to failure. Instead of failing it caused the pressure chamber to explode. The rapid decompression also did nothing to the hull.
Related to that there are only two original pieces of Alving left: the name and the robotic arm. The rest has been replaced. Many times.
As many others have said cost is another factor. Sea Cliff, Alvin's sister sub, is housed at WHOI. I thought, wouldn't it be great to get two subs going? Looking over the systems it would take a lot to overhaul the entire system. The cost of operating Alvin is also climbing each year, as key compenents are harder to find. Our budget is also quite limited. Operating two submarines would be impossible. We would need a second support ship to be able to handle the second submarine, and no one would be willing to convert WHOI's two other Deep Sea ships to handling a submarine. As they do valuble research on their own using other tools. To convert Atlantis to handling a second sub, would be near impossible with out overhauling the entire ship. Lab space on ships is quite precious and I doubt any one would want to give it up. As the two subs will be different an many if not all aspects, they would not beable to share parts, doubling the inventory on the ship taking away even more room. Also Alvin's view ports aren't set up the best. Since the sub was experimental they didn't know what would work out best. It has about 180 degrees of view, but only one person can see any one third of that. Meaning the scientist can't see what the pilot sees with out displacing him. As some one else said: scrab the obsolete. It costs somwhere in the neighbor hood of one to two million dollars to run the sub each year. We deffinately don't have the resources to deal with twice that. We are stretched to the limits already. WHOI gets minimal amount of Goverment funds already. The cost that a scientist will pay for a trip in the submarine doesn't actually cover the entire dive.
If you want to read more on Alvin I suggest Water Baby. An excellent tale of a submarine and it's life.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
Yes, the Navy Museum in Washington, DC. They already have the Trieste (the ship which reached the bottom of the Marianas Trench) there, it would be quite cool to have the two most famous submarines in the same place. Alvin WAS used for Navy operations (as were two sister ships) so it should qualify.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes, but there is a subtle difference in the types of technology. The manned submarines that reached the deepest part of the ocean were thick skinned vessels with no manipulators or propulsion. Alvin was submersible with a large glass window, manipulators, and self-propelled, allowing the ability to examine specimens.You can see how the technology has evolved; lighting and propulsion migrate to the sides to maintain a hydrodynamic shape. The visual field expands to 180 degrees at each end.
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Suprised no one has alinked to the actual WHOI announcement.
There was also a very good NPR Science Friday Discussion on this back in August.
January 16, 1966, Palomares, Spain.
A B-52 carrying four H-bombs collided with a KC-135 tanker above the coast of Spain. The tanker exploded; both aircraft were wrecked. Four of the seven B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety.
Three of the four H-bombs crashed on land near the village of Palomares. The last one landed about five miles offshore.
After some searching, Alvin located the last H-bomb in March. An initial attempt to lift the bomb failed, and it slid into deeper water. Alvin relocated the bomb. An unmanned submersible (CURV) got tangled in the parachute lines of the bomb (deliberately, by one story, as part of a rivalry between manned and unmanned programs) and was hauled to the surface with bomb dangling below.
Of the three bombs that hit land, two detonated their high explosive components, creating a ten-foot crater and scattering plutonium (and less interesting bits) over about a square mile. Approximately 1400 tons of soil and vegetation were excavated and removed to the US for disposal at the Savannah River Plant. The third bomb did not detonate, and was recovered more or less intact.
Sure; it was in January 1966. A B-52 collided with the tanker it was refueling from over the coast of Spain. The airplane disintegrated and dropped four thermonuclear bombs. One landed intact near the town of Palomares, two burst open on impact and scattered radioactive debris, and one fell in the ocean. It took three months of underwater operations to find and recover the sunken bomb, and a huge cleanup effort to get rid of the radiation on land.
The film "Men of Honor" opens with Carl Brashear, the first Black diver in the Navy, losing a leg in the recovery effort.
rj
They are no longer in mothballs. the Turtle was retired several years ago, and is now in a museum on the east coast. the Sea Cliff was retired just a few years ago, and WHOI got first crack at seeing if any of the Sea Cliff equipment could be borrowed for the Alvin. After looking into it, they decided that it would cost less to just build a new Alvin replacement than to alter the existing one.
re:Aluminaut is retired, too (Score:1)
by Animats (122034) on Saturday October 23,
>>They're all gone now, the record-holding vehicles of the 1960s. The Concorde, the SR-71, the Saturn V, Alvinn, the Aluminaut. All gone, with the will to replace them gone as well
Actually the recordholder for DSV's is Trieste II which got the ultimate record in 1960 of 37800 feet. There is nowhere deeper. FWIW, I don't think anyone's been back since.
She's at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington.