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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.
"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
I mean, the dude flew around the world in a balloon. Flew around the world again, nonstop, solo, in an aircraft. Set all kinds of records in sailboats and sailplanes. He was building a submarine to "fly" to the deepest point on earth, but meanwhile he killed himself while scouting for a location to run his 800 mph rocket car and break the land speed record.
My first thought was, "man, this guy has a freakin' deathwish, or else he's a goddamn idiot. It's amazing that someone with so little sense of self-preservation lived this long." Doesn't the guy know that there are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots?
But after thinking about it for a while... he probably did know that. He was flying long enough that he must have come to understand that if he kept it up the way he did, he wasn't going to die in his bed. Any one of his record-setting endeavors could have resulted in his death. But he must have decided that he'd rather live a brief life on his own terms, than a long, safe, boring life. After reading his Wikipedia entry, it's no surprise that he didn't die in an assisted living facility, but I think he'd probably be OK with the way he went out. Vicious downdrafts smashed his plane into bite-sized pieces against a granite escarpment of the Sierra Nevada mountains, while he was scouting a location to break the land speed record in a jet car, and he wasn't found for a year... the man had a hell of an interesting life, and one hell of a death, and packed more living into 63 years than most people could pack into 100. He did things on his terms, took chances, pushed things, and went out doing so. Personally, I'll play things a bit safer, but I do respect the guy's choices.
Are astronauts really bold? Or are they meticulous, training for years for a single flight?
The point is that it's not good to rush, you might overlook details.
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 :-)