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USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg To Be Sunk For a Reef
caffiend666 writes "On Wednesday the USNS Hoyt S. Vandenberg is to be sunk in 140 feet of water off of Key West to become the world's second largest artificial reef. (The largest was created by sinking the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany off of Pensacola, Florida, in 2006.) The Vandenberg was built in 1943 (chronology) and commissioned the USS Gen. Harry Taylor. In 1963 the Air Force took it over and recommissioned it, naming it after the Air Force general. For decades the ship served as a missile tracker and space relay. It was used in NASA's Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects and the Shuttle program. The Vandenberg was the set for some of the scenes in the '90s movie Virus as the Russian MIR relay station. Soon it will become one of the world's most awesome diving spots."
...because it's information on a very historic ship. Sure, I'd imagine the number of geek divers might is pretty limited, but I do know a few.
The wreck will likely be stable for 50+ years, despite the recent photographs.
(It's also of interest to me, because I work on USNS vessels, and live near the reserve fleet where it spent the past few years)
Too bad at 140 feet it's beyond the limits for sports/recreational diving.
Yeah, like almost a whole *gasp* year.
Steel is quite good to recycle.
It takes about 25 gigajoules of energy per tonne to make steel, but if you recycle it you can get back 18 gigajoules per tonne.
In carbon emissions it takes 2 tonnes of CO2 to a tonne and you get back about 1.5 tonnes.
If most of the boat is steel that makes 9,000 tonnes of steel wasted , 163 petajoules of energy wasted or 13500 tonnes of CO2 emitted for an artificial reef.
The energy is around the same required to run a 1 GW power station for almost a day.
Sure, I'd imagine the number of geek divers might is pretty limited, but I do know a few.
It's actually quite a geeky activity. Although being unfit makes decompression sickness more likely, it's not an activity that requires much in the way of physical prowess. There's maths in those dive tables, or if you prefer gadgets there's dive computers. Not that there's not plenty of gadgetry involved in the breathing apparatus side of things.
Then there's the geekery of exploring a different world - it's amazing what's there underwater. And (as PADI put it) "floating weightless like an astronaut" (which you don't really, but there you go).
The thing that scares me more is geeks who think they can second guess the tolerances in the dive tables. I'd rather turn my brain off and obey them to the letter.
Diving geek reporting in.
As for the floating weightless... When you get everything just right and you can move up or down at will, just by breathing... I think *that* is even cooler than space style weightlessness.
This means that it was sold off as private property. The people that bought it decided that a reef would be a good idea and went through the approval process with the state to get permission to sink the ship. So they basically did what they wanted to do with the property that they bought.
Unless you're not into private property, they're pretty much allowed to do this.
I got my PADI certification in Hawaii and for the "deep" dive, we went out to where the U of H had sunk a research vessel that had once been a minesweeper. It was sitting upright at 100ft and that was an experience nothing to date had prepared me for: we descended down and down and suddenly this enormous black shape appeared right below me, and there was this ship, in all its sunken glory.
Standing on the ocean floor, looking up at the ship from "ground" level, was wild. I'm not certified to do the kind of diving you'd need for the Vandenberg, but if I thought swimming over a minesweeper was a mind-blowing experience, I can't imagine what something like that Vandenberg would be.
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Except for apparently about the only way the steel is worth more than the cost of disassembly is when you send it to India. And then you get stuff like this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13443629/
Where they pay a bunch of workers the bare minimum to wade through the asbestos and other chemicals, risking fire and falling, and leave the leftovers on the beach. I'm not sure the environmental and human cost of these operations makes the energy savings for the steel really pay off.
Of course, I'm all for finding better ways to scrap ships, but the cost of steel right now is low enough there isn't a ton of a market.
You don't have to go all the way to 140 ft to see the wreck. The Spiegal grove is in 140 ft of water and the structure starts around 60 feet. you have plenty to see around 80 feet.
Oh Crap, I'm an optimist.....
USS, or United States Ship is a designation that is specific to a warship. Being a warship implies active service under the United States Navy.
USNS, or United States Naval Ship is a designation that is specific to a non-warship. Naval hospitals, certain research vessels, some surveillance ships, and other ships not appropriate for combat are included. These are not under direct command of the United States Navy, but are under the command of the Military Sealift Command. Often these ships are crewed by civilians and merchant marines, sometimes with armed forces personnel on board.
USAFS is an United States Air Force Ship. Apparently the Air Force thought it important enough to designate their ships differently to prevent confusion over whether the ship is Navy controlled or Air Force controlled.
While in the NAVY, I worked about USNS Mercy (TAH-19), so take the Air Force notes with a grain of salt. We had a civilian crew, Marines for small arms / internal defence, and USN military for the entire embedded hospital. I say embedded hospital because the USN personnel couldn't direct the crew, and the hospital was practically self contained and administered.