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."

Comments

Keep Both

[darkmeridian]

Is there any reason not to keep Alvin going along with its replacement? I'm sure some country or foundation is willing to run it. There's nothing top-secret in it, is there, considering that it is forty years old.

It is useful for a lot of research. Even though it is not as good as a new one, why not keep in it action?

Keeping both is a waste of money

[October_30th]

It is useful for a lot of research.

In the life of every scientific instrument comes the time when its capabilities are so much overshadowed by the more contemporary technology and its maintenance is such a drain on the funds that it simply must be retired. Sure you can do research with it, but it's low grade. They simply are not useful for good research anymore and maintaining them will take away funds from more important, new fields.

Personally, as a scientist, I don't much care what happens to what is essentially scrap metal at that point. In fact, I personally dismantled the equipment I did my PhD Thesis on in order to build another, better one. No tears shed there.