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Steve Fossett's Unfinished Project
MazzThePianoman writes "Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Flight Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design, but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.
"Take Fossett off the grid immediately," he ordered. "We need to wrap this up with a minimum of red tape." The response was quick. Within a week, Fossett's "corpse" was found in the Nevada Desert, the naked visitors from Titan had their submarine, and the President had yet another embarrassing affair off his plate.
It was still Fossett's move, however. Much as he enjoyed false identities, Brazilian women, and homes built from Cold War nuclear bunkers, the time was right to begin his next project.
It would begin with a small dog, two pairs of socks, and a rolled-up copy of People magazine.
"The pressure is about 20,000 pounds per square inch, approximately 15,000 times the atmospheric pressure," Hawkes said.
I hope Mr. Hawkes was a bit more careful with the math in his design than the math in that statement.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
If Star Trek Voyager has taught us anything, when you need to go deep into the ocean, just send the bad boy Tom Paris with trusty sidkick Ensin Kim in the Delta Flier. Thats more than enough to get hte job done. The only downside is that Lt Paris may make everyone listen to some drawn out letter hes writing to his father.... and quite frankly, its too dramatic for my tastes.
WWPD - What Would Picard Do?
think the managers of the estate and his family would want his name to be remembered for something like this and release the vehicle, after all what will they do with it? And if Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design, can't they build a new one?
That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.
...away from us.
With Bridger gone and now this, we won't make it in 10 years ;/
One that hath name thou can not otter
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of land, And danced the seas on laughter-silvered fins;
Deepward I've fallen, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-absent fathoms...and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of...propelled and plummet and swung
Deep in the sunless silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting currents along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of water.
Down, Down, the long, delirious burning blue I've bottomed the current swept depths with easy grace
Where never jellyfish, nor even tubeworm grew.
And while with silent, buoyant mind I've trod
The low untrespassed sanctity of the abyss...
Come on fellow Mechanical Engineers, what do we need to see the core of Jupiter? Lets design it and open source it, because it will likely not be seen in our lifetimes.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Landing a plane safely.
You left out the rods and hogsheads, and the ways you likes 'em!
Dude, it's 2008 .
Even Teddy Roosevelt uses the Metric system now, and he's not even an engineer! Or alive!
It's the Deep Flight Challenger... scheez, all these NewSpace loonies.
Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being
A-hole! He deserved to die. Or maybe someone's comma key is busted.
It's nice to be liked, but it's better by far to get paid
really, nt
The water based ETs (The Abyss), took him, to prevent him from proving to the world they exist.
as the rich dude who lives the life every dork dreams of.
Many people dream of having riches but very few have dreams as amazing as what he was doing with them. Frankly it is people like this who make me realize that the majority of us are just boring.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
From google:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=20000+psi+in+atmospheres&meta=
20000 pounds per square inch = 1360.91928 atmospheres
Easy :). Just hoping people would do that more and complain less about imperial vs metric.
I have heard from a firefighter friend that the plane has been found.
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
You look at most rich people and you wonder what the hell they get for all that money. A few spend it on splashy things like big yachts, but that's just a bigger version of what most of us do with our more limited means. Once you have enough money to not have to worry about the rent and health insurance, what exactly does having more get you? Fossett actually had the answer for that. He did stuff that was completely different, stuff you couldn't do on any scale if you weren't that wealthy. It's too bad there aren't more like him.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
It's interesting how people generally see space as an unforgiving, hostile, and hard place to perform travel, far more so than the oceans. I guess it's further away, most of us will never experience it, so it holds more mystery.
But it's really mind-numbing how much harder it is to handle the pressure of the ocean depths. The difference between our normal atmospheric pressure (1 atmosphere) and space (0 atmospheres) is tiny as compared to the Marianas Trench at 1000 atmospheres. A depth of only 10M in water results in the same atmospheric differential as space vs. earth.
It's sad that Fossett didn't get the chance to further explore these depths; hopefully someone will pick up where he left off.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Color me skeptical... Quoting from the summary;
The vehicle, as shown, wouldn't seem to be capable of more than a fraction of that - the pressure hull seems far, far too thin.
Um - how exactly? Globally we have plenty of capability to reach all but the deepest portion of the oceans, and beyond archeology, a little geology, and exploring a few famous wrecks... There hasn't been all that much demand.
Quoting from the article:
Mostly because there isn't any real value in visiting the truly deep ocean - the view is not really all that impressive. Imagine being in a dry side canyon of the Grand Canyon on a cloudy night... with only a glo-stick for illumination. That's what it is like being down in the truly deep.
I don't know where he's been... But the ocean bottoms have been in the process of intense exploration and mapping for several decades now.
In deep water submersibles the occupied portion is a sphere to best resist pressure. The rest of the craft is filled with water at ambient pressure. The drawing in the article shows this one to follow that pattern. Your first comment is refuted.
The Trieste was a tethered bathyscape. It went down on a cable and back up again. No ability to survey an area. I'd like to survey deep trenches as possible nuclear waste sites. Put the stuff in wedge shapped containers and drop it into deep muck at the bottom of such trenches. If it's 20m down in muck under 7-11 km of water it's going to be easier to produce new nuclear material than to retrieve
An untethered deep submersible with ability to survey an area could find many useful things on the sea floor. Like how to harvest methane:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
The land area of the Earth has been the subject of intense exploration for millenia yet we're still learning about it. Satellites, a 50 year old vehicle for exploration, have helped immensely. Why do you think a new undersea vehicle will not have a similar effect on ocean exploration?
If you spend a couple of seconds to check the wikipedia entry, you'll find that the Triest was not tethered unlike earlier vessels. The principle used was the same that makes a balloon fly - fill a container with something that is lighter than the surrounding medium to produce lift. The balloon uses hot air or helium, the Trieste used gasoline.
While I find the idea of exploring the abyssal regions of the oceans intriguing, I tend to agree with the GP poster in his opinion that the vessel pictured in TFA would not be capable of going there. The Trieste used a sphere with walls made of 5 inches of steel - somehow the bubble cockpit in the picture in the article does not seem like it has an equivalent structural strength.
Oh, btw - did anyone notice that Trieste's inventor was name Piccard? And that his grandson was part of the team that traveled around the world non-stop in a balloon? To boldly go where no man has gone before, indeed :-)
http://www.privateairdaily.com/magazine/article/12796.html
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" Franklin
http://www.ufoseries.com/barry/supercarTheme2.mp3
"Supercar... Supercar...
With beauty and grace,
it's fast as can be.
Watch it flying through the air.
It travels in space,
or under the sea,
and it can journey anywhere...
Supercar... Supercar...
It travels on land,
or roams the skies,
through the heavens' mighty rage.
It's Mercury-manned,
and everyone cries,
'it's the marvel of the age!'
Supercar... Supercar... Supercar!"
My first comment was referring to the sphere at the front, jackass. Not to mention that just having a sphere isn't enough - it has to be exceedingly strong. There doesn't seem to be enough room up front for a sphere of sufficient thickness.
Try again you ignorant fuck. Bathyspheres are tethered. Bathyscaphes are free diving.
True. But the areas capable of being mined in the foreseeable future are trivially within the capability of current vehicles. Assuming of course that methane's market price increases enough to make it worth the immense expense of deep sea mining - four or five orders of magnitude might make it worth it. That is, if it's not cheaper to use the power from non hydrocarbon power sources to directly synthesize any hydrocarbon material we need. Which they probably will by that point as they become economic long before hydrocarbon fuels reach that price range.
Had you read my comment and engaged that pile of putrid mush you use for a brain, you'll note I addressed that point in my original message.
And the son, being an adventurer himself, spent four weeks submerged drifting with the Gulf Stream. The whole family are decidedly overachievers.