They are. The linked article doesn't mention anything of the retirment date. As another poster mentioned there are still dives planned for next year. And my boss was on NPR (there is a link further down the page) that talks about the plans. She will remain active until the new Alvin is completed.
To me, this is old news. As I worki at WHOI, we have been tossing around ideas for a new Alvin for a long time.
To correct a few other posts, on fatigue: the factor of saftey of Alvin is incredibly high. Meaning the operating depth is incredibly low for the hull. You can check the ASME boiler code. No one actually knows the crush depth of the sphere. They re-wrote the book when they built the spere. They built three spheres from the get go. One to be tested to failure. Instead of failing it caused the pressure chamber to explode. The rapid decompression also did nothing to the hull.
Related to that there are only two original pieces of Alving left: the name and the robotic arm. The rest has been replaced. Many times.
As many others have said cost is another factor. Sea Cliff, Alvin's sister sub, is housed at WHOI. I thought, wouldn't it be great to get two subs going? Looking over the systems it would take a lot to overhaul the entire system. The cost of operating Alvin is also climbing each year, as key compenents are harder to find. Our budget is also quite limited. Operating two submarines would be impossible. We would need a second support ship to be able to handle the second submarine, and no one would be willing to convert WHOI's two other Deep Sea ships to handling a submarine. As they do valuble research on their own using other tools. To convert Atlantis to handling a second sub, would be near impossible with out overhauling the entire ship. Lab space on ships is quite precious and I doubt any one would want to give it up. As the two subs will be different an many if not all aspects, they would not beable to share parts, doubling the inventory on the ship taking away even more room. Also Alvin's view ports aren't set up the best. Since the sub was experimental they didn't know what would work out best. It has about 180 degrees of view, but only one person can see any one third of that. Meaning the scientist can't see what the pilot sees with out displacing him. As some one else said: scrab the obsolete. It costs somwhere in the neighbor hood of one to two million dollars to run the sub each year. We deffinately don't have the resources to deal with twice that. We are stretched to the limits already. WHOI gets minimal amount of Goverment funds already. The cost that a scientist will pay for a trip in the submarine doesn't actually cover the entire dive.
If you want to read more on Alvin I suggest Water Baby. An excellent tale of a submarine and it's life. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail /-/0195 061918/qid=1098555276/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-829162 3-6347207?v=glance&s=books
The best way would be to get a bus with 1st class airline seats mounted in instead of bus seats. The ones that you can put a screen right in back of the seat in front of you. A trailer truck I fear would be too loud. Unless you insulate the trailer well (The truck's diesel engine would be loud and would be needed for the air conditioning). The advantage of the trailer truck would be the extra room. I believe both Bus and Truck engines can act as a generator when it is not being used for transportation. Remember get skylights. And either one of these vehicles can have advertising on the side.
The computer itself could be a small laptop (B-series Fujitsu for example) and seperate the screen from the keyboard. mount a small keyboard on the tray table and stick the computer under the seat with an easy to reach boot switch, CD-ROM Drive, and Floppy Drive.
The O/S choice depends on what you want to teach. If you are teaching Joe Smoe from Company X productivity teach him what he will be using. The easiest would to do dual boot systems and then reboot as needed. Or if you want to, you could install VMware and skip all the reboots.
If you are teaching Linux then Linux. If you are teaching Windows then Windows. If you are doing both... well then do both.
For internet connectivity use a satilite provider. It won't matter on your location.
I guess I was using the wrong version of Windows 95.
What will happen to all those people who think Windows 98 is the best that Microsoft has ever produced (Those who don't want to upgrade)?
What happens if you "down grade" your license? Do you get money back? Or do you pay more for the same thing?
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I have always wondered why we can't shoot it into the sun....
They are. The linked article doesn't mention anything of the retirment date. As another poster mentioned there are still dives planned for next year. And my boss was on NPR (there is a link further down the page) that talks about the plans. She will remain active until the new Alvin is completed.
To me, this is old news. As I worki at WHOI, we have been tossing around ideas for a new Alvin for a long time.
l /-/0195 061918/qid=1098555276/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-829162 3-6347207?v=glance&s=books
To correct a few other posts, on fatigue: the factor of saftey of Alvin is incredibly high. Meaning the operating depth is incredibly low for the hull. You can check the ASME boiler code. No one actually knows the crush depth of the sphere. They re-wrote the book when they built the spere. They built three spheres from the get go. One to be tested to failure. Instead of failing it caused the pressure chamber to explode. The rapid decompression also did nothing to the hull.
Related to that there are only two original pieces of Alving left: the name and the robotic arm. The rest has been replaced. Many times.
As many others have said cost is another factor. Sea Cliff, Alvin's sister sub, is housed at WHOI. I thought, wouldn't it be great to get two subs going? Looking over the systems it would take a lot to overhaul the entire system. The cost of operating Alvin is also climbing each year, as key compenents are harder to find. Our budget is also quite limited. Operating two submarines would be impossible. We would need a second support ship to be able to handle the second submarine, and no one would be willing to convert WHOI's two other Deep Sea ships to handling a submarine. As they do valuble research on their own using other tools. To convert Atlantis to handling a second sub, would be near impossible with out overhauling the entire ship. Lab space on ships is quite precious and I doubt any one would want to give it up. As the two subs will be different an many if not all aspects, they would not beable to share parts, doubling the inventory on the ship taking away even more room. Also Alvin's view ports aren't set up the best. Since the sub was experimental they didn't know what would work out best. It has about 180 degrees of view, but only one person can see any one third of that. Meaning the scientist can't see what the pilot sees with out displacing him. As some one else said: scrab the obsolete. It costs somwhere in the neighbor hood of one to two million dollars to run the sub each year. We deffinately don't have the resources to deal with twice that. We are stretched to the limits already. WHOI gets minimal amount of Goverment funds already. The cost that a scientist will pay for a trip in the submarine doesn't actually cover the entire dive.
If you want to read more on Alvin I suggest Water Baby. An excellent tale of a submarine and it's life.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
The best way would be to get a bus with 1st class airline seats mounted in instead of bus seats. The ones that you can put a screen right in back of the seat in front of you. A trailer truck I fear would be too loud. Unless you insulate the trailer well (The truck's diesel engine would be loud and would be needed for the air conditioning). The advantage of the trailer truck would be the extra room. I believe both Bus and Truck engines can act as a generator when it is not being used for transportation. Remember get skylights. And either one of these vehicles can have advertising on the side.
The computer itself could be a small laptop (B-series Fujitsu for example) and seperate the screen from the keyboard. mount a small keyboard on the tray table and stick the computer under the seat with an easy to reach boot switch, CD-ROM Drive, and Floppy Drive.
The O/S choice depends on what you want to teach. If you are teaching Joe Smoe from Company X productivity teach him what he will be using. The easiest would to do dual boot systems and then reboot as needed. Or if you want to, you could install VMware and skip all the reboots.
If you are teaching Linux then Linux. If you are teaching Windows then Windows. If you are doing both... well then do both.
For internet connectivity use a satilite provider. It won't matter on your location.
Immagine the paper airplane I could make out of tihs.... It would be the most hi-tech paper plane... It could have an inflight video!
Ooooh! Good idea make it more stable and give it all those nifty features it is lacking... wait that would make it bloated and into Windows 98....
I guess I was using the wrong version of Windows 95. What will happen to all those people who think Windows 98 is the best that Microsoft has ever produced (Those who don't want to upgrade)? What happens if you "down grade" your license? Do you get money back? Or do you pay more for the same thing?