Submarine Tech Reaches For Deep Ocean Record

disco_tracy writes "US Submarines CEO Bruce Jones and his team have just announced that they've developed new technology for a submersible that could take ocean explorers 36,000 feet deep, to the bottom of the Pacific's Mariana Trench."

Comments

11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's really impressive.

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[Cwix]

Because furlongs, and chains are not in common usage?
And because if the submitter did put it in furlongs and chains there would be a million assholes (Im gonna guess including you) bitching about slashdot using an anachronistic form of measure.

Now you can claim that the imperial measurement system itself is by and large outdated, but it is still in use here in the US, and this is a US based webpage. So if you dont mind, we would prefer keeping the words that are in common usage here in the states.

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[daem0n1x]

Thanks for the information. Slashdot should adopt a policy, like Wikipedia, that all measurement units should be metric with the alternatives in parenthesis. This way, everybody would be happy. Slashdot has editors. Is it so hard for them to fix this?

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[moonbender]

I think in metric myself, but really, this is very far down the list of things I want the editors to be more diligent about.

In fact, at this point the entire editing process is far down the list of Slashdot annoyances: the freaking browser window keeps scrolling up several pages to expand the fucking parent post when I just want to middle- or right-click a link, leaving it up to me to find the post and sentence I was just reading. I swear I have never seen a more aggravating non-feature than this.

(PS: I know I can just disable the new UI to stop Slashdot from messing with mouse clicks. I actually like the new UI, but I might have to do that. I keep hoping they're going to fix it RSN.)

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[jittles]

Thanks for the information. Slashdot should adopt a policy, like Wikipedia, that all measurement units should be metric with the alternatives in parenthesis. This way, everybody would be happy. Slashdot has editors. Is it so hard for them to fix this?

I'm sorry but that is the most asinine comment I have read all day. All month even. What's the point of using the metric system when we have the Library of Congress system. If you're dealing with something that cannot be converted to the Library of Congress system, then it must not be worth mentioning.

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[LWATCDR]

Funny but when I watch Top Gear UK they actually say things like "miles per hour", "miles per gallon", "zero to sixty", and "quarter mile time". When I read the UK magazine Bike I see many of the same measurements but most frustrating is that they give the size of the fuel tank in liters but the fuel economy in MPG! Same thing when I read UK car magazines. When I go to car websites in the UK they also have MPG listed.
So do the whiners spend as much time on the Top Gear website and sending letters to the editors, letters to the BBC, and complaining to the car companies about them using miles, gallons and so on as they do when a US based website does?

Re:11000m for the other 95% of the world.

[somersault]

think a little bit about why you think the world should mold itself to your desires.

Dear gods, the irony lobe in my brain is fit to burst.. America's whole international policy seems to be to mold the rest of the world to its desires..

Transparent Aluminum

[broggyr]

I am surprised no one said "Transparent Aluminum" yet. "How do we know he didn't invent the thing?!"

WOW!

[wisebabo]

So I'm astonished that (they claim) they'll be able to make a FULL SPHERE of glass as opposed to some puny porthole.

Some questions:
A part (half?) of the sphere will have to be removed to allow people/things in and out (unlike "ecospheres") it can't be seamlessly sealed. Isn't that the most likely place of failure?

I assume there will have to be holes to allow power, cooling/heating, communications right? Another point of failure?
(Actually I read a story where some grad student had figured out a way of transmitting powe/communications THROUGH a submarine's metal hull using sonic waves.)

Where in the world will they test this thing to one and a quarter times the max. pressure? (And I thought engineering standards were to one and a half max.)

Re:WOW!

[vlm]

When I was a kid, I wanted to make one of these to dive to the bottom of the 60 foot lake in our backyard, sorta...

So I'm astonished that (they claim) they'll be able to make a FULL SPHERE of glass as opposed to some puny porthole.

Probably Plexiglass. Plexiglass is a trademarked brand name. Everyone else calls it acrylic or PMMA. My grandfather's B-17 had a hemisphere of plexiglass for the "ball turret". Lexan (tm) aka polycarbonate would have been a heck of a lot more bullet proof, other than it was invented by the Germans, and in 1953, a bit late for the war. Anyway, two acrylic hemispheres is a traditional design technique for "diving bell" style / non-propulsion submersibles, for many decades. The gasket in between tends to be compressed tighter, which is great on the descent, maybe a bit worrisome on the ascent. In other words, other than utter failure scenarios, if its gonna leak, its gonna leak on ascent, and the leak is gonna get worse as pressure decreases, which is a bummer.

I assume there will have to be holes to allow power, cooling/heating, communications right? Another point of failure?

Wedge shaped plugs. No stress concentrations. The other trick is only passing communications signals thru the acrylic... I suppose a modern system would use bluetooth. The outside electrical gear is flooded in mineral oil at full sea pressure just like a (real not toy) radio controlled submarine. Its not hard to design a system that literally has no holes, just two clear hemispheres, a gasket, and some manner of radio or lightwave comms to control the outside gear. Traditionally, however, they always seem to install a way overengineered hatch and some mechanical gadget inside the sub to release both the tow cable and the heavy keel (worst case, if the winch on top jams or the tow cable breaks, they can rocket up to the surface like a cork.)

Where in the world will they test this thing to one and a quarter times the max. pressure? (And I thought engineering standards were to one and a half max.)

Well lets use some "engineering estimating". An atmospheric water column is about thirty-something feet. So thirty-something thousand feet divided by thirty-something feet is about one thousand atmospheres pressure. One atmosphere pressure is about fifteen PSI. Fifteen PSI per atmosphere times about a thousand atmospheres equals about fifteen thousand PSI. Personally I'd test it to double, so we'll call that thirty thousand PSI.

"Off the shelf at autozone" err maybe off the shelf at TSC, you can buy a couple thousand psi rated hydraulic hose. Just giving an idea of what you're in for, its about ten times that pressure. Its gonna take more than a ginned-up log splitter and a big tank. Supposedly Buffalo Hydraulic sells off the shelf 40 ksi systems, i donno about that being true or false. Anyway the general idea involves "supertanker size" hydraulic cylinder (or equivalent) with the sub inside it floating in oil or water, and then pump in a small amount of air until you get to 30 ksi. For obvious reasons you fill the vessel almost completely with liquid rather than just using air.

Frankly the simplest way to "prove" it is to make about three of them, massively overengineer them, and set off depth charges around an unmanned one on the bottom. Of course that is a bit hard on the exotic sea life you're trying to investigate.... You could sink an unmanned one, with a giant hydraulic "nut splitter" around it, and see what it takes to crack it, hopefully a heck of lot.

Crib notes

[Rogerborg]

"We're going to repeat something that was already done 50 years ago, except we're be filing patents to stop anyone else doing it again. Click here to invest."

Title needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad title considering that (as the article states in the first paragraph) Trieste made it to the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean (Challenger Deep in Mariana Trench) in 1960 with a crew of two. I'd say they have the record and since you can't go deeper...not sure it can be broken unless the ocean changes depth there.

Trieste info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathyscaphe_Trieste

If you're in the DC area the Washington Navy Yard museum (open to the public) has Trieste hanging in the back (right next to Alvin -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin which was used to explore the Titanic). It's worth the trip if you're local or you've been to DC enough that you're not interested in going to the Air and Space museum again.

Museum visit info:

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org8_Visit.htm

Re:Title needs work

[LWATCDR]

It may be an accurate title but in a nit picking sort of way. The Trieste was not a submarine but was a bathyscaphe. I believe that it used a guide line and was not freely maneuverable. But in general I would agree with you that it was the first and so far only.

Re:Title needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Also the article says that borosilicate is another name for soda-lime glass, which it isn't. Borosilicate is the good, strong, high temperature glass. Soda lime is the cheap, easy melting bulk glass.

Re:record ?

[Eivind]

The article indeed uses the word, twice even. Once in the title, and once in stating that submarines have a "good safety record" which is a different kind of record.

i.e. the article doesn't even hint at what kind of record is intended.

Going deeper than to the bottom of the worlds deepest trench, would be quite a trick. Do you suppose this new sub can submerge in geology ?

Re:Giant squid?

[mangu]

"You can hire some giant squid to come over with a sledgehammer and just start bashing away on that glass sphere. And it won't hurt it."

That's correct. The glass sphere won't hurt a giant squid.

A glass by any other name ...

[clyde_cadiddlehopper]

TFA: "Borosilicate glass, also known as soda-lime glass..." That's like saying "Bronze, also known as brass..." The two are compositionally quite different.

Pyrex (R) is Corning's trademark for the borosilicate type and it is commonly used for laboratory ware, oven windows and such. It was also used for the big 200 inch (a bit under 5 meters) mirror at Mt Palomar.

Soda lime glass is the more common type used for windows and beer bottles. You can quickly tell the two apart by looking edge-on into the piece, soda lime glass has a greenish cast.