Posted on 02/23/2012 2:21:09 PM PST by csvset
The race is on to reach the deepest place in the ocean: the Mariana Trench, which plunges 11km (7 miles) down.
Fifty years after it was first conquered, four teams are vying to return. It will be an epic journey that will push submersible technology to its limits and put the lives of those piloting the vessels at grave risk.
Each team has a unique approach, but over the course of the next year only one will be crowned the winner in this journey beyond the abyss.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
Some big money behind the efforts of the teams.
Eric Schmidt of Google (damn 1%'er! /s), Richard Branson of Virgin fame, film maker James Cameron and a group that wants to sell seats to tourist/adventurers @ 250K a seat.
How did they do it the first time? It says it was conquered 50 years ago. Is it really harder to do now, or was that a one-way trip for someone?
We probably could say the same thing about going to the moon.
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.....
While I’m a big fan of manned space missions, I swing the other way on deep sea missions. The risk is too high when its so easily alleviated by using ROVs to do the same job. If someone wants to do it, I’m fine with it if it doesn’t cost me anything.
So I googled that and came up with this.
From wikipedia, an excerpt of their article:
The Trieste is a Swiss-designed, Italian-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe ("deep boat") with a crew of two, which reached a record maximum depth of about 10,911 metres (35,797 ft), in the deepest known part of the Earth's oceans, the Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench near Guam, on 23 January 1960, crewed by Jacques Piccard (son of the boat's designer Auguste Piccard) and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh achieving the goal of Project Nekton.
Trieste remains the only manned vessel to have reached the bottom of Challenger Deep. The vessel is on display at the U.S. Navy Museum.
It was done in a sub specially made for the purpose. I can’t recall the name off hand but at around 3 miles deep, one of the exterior windows cracked.
They paused and decided to continue and did so successfully. If it had been me, as soon as I heard that crack, I would have been on the way up, as fast as I could.
It says the vessel shook when that happened. Yikes!
Geologists think that that portion of the Pacific plate is older and thus heavier than in other areas (more water, etc). The depth is greater because of weight and less friction between the plates. We will be able to see what is living at such depth and what the environment is like. Subduction is accompanied by volcanism. Lots to learn.
Seven miles under the sea
Don Walsh recalls a quiet trip to the depths of the ocean floor
One of my favorite memories of the Navy was holding swim call over the Challenger Deep. No land in sight and all that water beneath me - a truly incredible feeling.
From what I understand, the new vehicles that will be used will actually be steerable, whereas what was used 60 years ago was basically dropped straight down and pulled straight back up.
What will really blow your mind, the two halves of the round globe the men were in was super glued together.
Thing was filled with sand, when they wanted up they pulled a lever and the sand started running out. And up they came.
But, but,..., sand is a non-renewable resource.
The bastards!
That’s actually pretty cool.
Hopefully they could control how much they dropped so it wasn’t a quick ascent. I’ve seen picture of people who have gotten the bends and it’s not pretty.
Deep sea submarine pioneer dies
His father was Auguste Piccard a physicist, aeronaut, balloonist and inventor.
Yes, Piccard inspired Gene Roddenberry's Captain Picard as well as cartoonist Herge's character Professor Calculus from the TInTin comic. 
Auguste Piccard.
“Yes, Piccard inspired Gene Roddenberry’s Captain Picard...”
My brother’s response to Capt Picard/Star Trek, “C’mon, it’s waaay in the future and they still don’t have a cure for baldness?!”
I think you are thinking of a bathysphere. That is a spherical deep-sea submersible which is unpowered and lowered into the ocean on a cable. One was used to conduct a series of dives off the coast of Bermuda from 1930 to 1934 and set a number of records. At no time did it come close to seven and one half miles, more like a bit over 3000 feet.
The current record holder was a bathyscaphe which is a self contained diving vehicle. In principle it worked much like a dirigible does in air. It was constructed with a relatively light sheet metal body which was filled with gasoline for positive buoyancy. There were several tubular "silos" which ran through the gasoline tank from top to bottom. The silos were filled with steel shot for ballast, which was retained by strong electromagnets. There were also air filled ballast tanks used to bring the ship to negative buoyancy. Suspended beneath the gasoline tank was steel sphere much like the bathysphere mentioned above except that a tubular access way between the sphere and the conning tower was used to enter and exit the sphere. Batteries were carried outboard of the sphere and were topped off with oil to prevent salt water from shorting out the cells. Propulsion and maneuvering was accomplished with motorized thrusters.
To begin a dive one valved open the air tanks giving the ship negative bouyancy. To regain neutral or positive buoyancy one switched off the electromagnets on the shot silos and dropped steel shot, since the pressure anticipated prevented using compressed air to "blow tanks". This feature was designed to be fail safe as an electric failure would automatically drop all of the ballast, allowing the ship to rise.
If I recall correctly, the first deep dive was the record dive and was the last time the Trieste was in operation.
Regards,
GtG
I was talking about the bathyscaphe for going into the trench.
But Branson, Cameron, and whomever else are trying to do is something more than the bathyscaphe. They’d actually like to go into the trench and be able to do a tour of it.
A steerable submersible of some kind.
“To the BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN!”
(same as it ever was.)
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