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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.
Seat-of-the-pants.... 32' of water is about 1atm = 14.7psi, so 36k ft = about 1,125atm, on the order of 16.5kpsi, plus or minus. 20,000psi is in the ballpark, and that's "approximately" 1,500 atm; perhaps the reporter added a zero?
Or the reporter misquoted him...
1 Atmosphere = 14.7 psi.
Pressure increases 1A every 33 feet
36,000 / 33 = 1091 Atmospheres.
1091 * 14.7 = 16038 psi
16,000 ~= 15000
http://www.onr.navy.mil/Focus/ocean/water/pressure1.htm
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
you americans and your funny buggers math... every 10M of water adds 1 atmosphere of pressure. 10m = 2 atm, 20m = 3atm, 11000m = ~1101atm. why would you opt to use such "lovely round numbers" as 32 and 14.7, when you can use metric. IT'S SUPERIOR, BITCHES!
1 atm per 10 meters. 11km => 1,100 atm.
1,082 atm to be a little more exact.
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I dunno, Chuck Yeager is pretty bold and he's pushing 90. Scott Crossfield was 85 when he died (flying).
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I call bullshit. The metric unit for pressure isn't the atmosphere. It's the Pascal, aka N/m^2. Atmospheric pressure is 101325 Pa, or alternatively 1 Pa = 9.8692×106 atm. Very convenient? NOT PARTICULARLY.
SI is useful in calculations because it is self-consistent. You don't have weird factors like 32.2 lb-f/lb-m in calculations. But natural values like the atmospheric pressure at sea level are NOT metric values and are at exactly as difficult to work with in both systems.
Yar. I can count to 21 if I pull down my pants.
Seriously, base 12 is very practical because it has more factors than 10. 2,3,4, and 6 vs 2 and 5. We really should be using a base 12 decimal system rather base 10.
The Sumerians used a base 60 system which can be represented using two hands while counting. On your left hand there are three parts on each of four fingers (excluding the thumb). The parts are divided from each other by the joints in the fingers. Now one can count up to 60 by pointing at one of the twelve parts of the fingers of the left hand with one of the five fingers of the right hand.
This is the root of our 60 seconds per minute / 60 seconds per hour.
Bar, Kg/cm2 and Atmosphere are certainly valid expressions for pressure in the Metric systems.
Another Decimal system is the SI and it prefers the use of Pascal for pressure.
A more complete explanation can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI
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