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James Cameron's entirely new submarine
- ck2 15y agoJames Cameron is going to personally descend 6.8 miles under water? I sure hope he comes back, I'd like to see Avatar 2. They need to come up with a brilliant way to make the water pressure work against itself to keep the hull intact. Otherwise gravity always wins.
- joshAg 15y ago> They need to come up with a brilliant way to make the water pressure work against itself to keep the hull intact. That's why they use a sphere.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- danssig 15y ago>I sure hope he comes back, I'd like to see Avatar 2. Why do we need more sequels? Wouldn't you rather see him make something new? And if you truly want a stupid Hollywood Sequel you probably have a better chance if he doesn't come back.
- sukuriant 15y agoYou know, you're absolutely right. Terminator 2 was a terrible movie. Not all sequels, especially when they're in the hands of James Cameron, are bad. And yes, I'd like to see Avatar 2, as well.
- samstave 15y agoRegardless of what one may think of his movies; this is bad ass. I am surprised that there is not a fleet of autonomous subs roving the ocean floor and mapping it which belong to Google. Or any other body for that matter. Seems like it would be a good idea to make small, unmanned subs that "roomba" the ocean floor collecting data, mapping and taking video and pics. They should surface whenever their batteries run low, solar re-charge and upload their data. His website is pretty cool too. http://deepseachallenge.com/ http://deepseachallenge.com/
- tomjen3 15y agoGoogle would totally build those as soon as they find a way to sell ads to angler fish (I am betting there is a market for dating services, at least for male angler fish). At the moment though there doesn't seem any reason to do that.
- pgbovine 15y agolong-term "blue sky" research is, by definition, done without an eye towards profitability.
- polyfractal 15y agoObligatory link to The Oatmeal's angler fish comic: "How the male angler fish gets completely screwed" http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler http://theoatmeal.com/comics/angler
- mkramlich 15y ago> Regardless of what one may think of his movies; this is bad ass. Hmmmmm.... Aliens, Titanic, Avatar... not to mention Terminator, T2, The Abyss. Many people consider his movies to be bad ass and innovative as well. He's one of the very few directors where I can count on him setting his own bar so high that I'm going to love whatever he makes. Along with Ridley Scott and Spielberg, and more recently Nolan and Fincher joining their ranks, in my eyes.
- leeoniya 15y agoi think it's interesting to see how the latest fad of successful public figures is it to take on pushing human exploration / travel. John Carmack has his Armadillo Aerospace...
- ChuckMcM 15y agoVery cool. I particularly like technologists which don't 'buy' the party line when it comes to how things are done. The foam story is a good one.
- andrewjshults 15y agoWhile it's not a submarine, the FLIPresearch vessel is an interesting example of laying out a sea going vessel in a vertical manner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP and http://worldphotocollections.blogspot.com/2009/06/flipping-ship-amazing-photos.html http://worldphotocollections.blogspot.com/2009/06/flipping-s...). In the case of the FLIP, the idea is to provide an ultra stable platform by putting the majority of the ship underwater. It's quite the spectacle to see it look like it's capsizing and then just continue to sit there once it has gone vertical.
- arjn 15y agoThis is good but IMHO he would be much safer in a spherical sub. I suppose the problem may be with having large enough viewports in a spherical vehicle.
- learc83 15y agoThe pilot does sit in a sphere. It's just like the Trieste; it's not possible to make a sphere that is strong enough to withstand the pressure and light enough to remain buoyant. To solve this they attach the sphere to a larger buoyant vessel. The non-spherical part of the Trieste was filled with gasoline for buoyancy, this submersible uses some kind of high density foam.
- Florin_Andrei 15y agoHm. I would imagine the foam is high strength, but low density. High density would kind of defeat the purpose.
- vineel 15y agoI believe you are correct. The article describes the foam as "buoyant" which is synonymous with low density.
- learc83 15y agoHigh density foam still floats. High density is in relation to other foam, it's still lower density than water.
- learc83 15y agoThe foam can be high density and still be less dense than water. They would have to use foam that wasn't easily compressed or the structure would collapse from the pressure. edit--I just checked, the type of foam used ranges from about 20 to 45 lbs/ft³. That qualifies as high density.
- deleted 15y ago
- mrsebastian 15y agoMore info on the tech behind Cameron's submarine: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/121183-the-tech-that-will-help-james-cameron-win-his-race-to-the-bottom-of-the-ocean http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/121183-the-tech-that-will...
- drucken 15y ago"The Abyss"? James Cameron literally takes it to another level... Anyone know if there is any additional risk of decompression sickness or other health issues merely from the speed of descent/ascent?
- joshAg 15y agoAlmost certainly not since the submarine is pressurized, just like how an airplane is.
- sopooneo 15y agoSo it starts out at as high a pressure as it will end up at the bottom? Because of course the problems of pressure are reversed in deep sea submersion as compared to high altitude flight. You have to pressurize a plane, the submarine will pressurize itself.
- elithrar 15y ago> the submarine will pressurize itself. It's a sealed unit, so presumably it's "pressurized" at ~1 atmosphere by the way of closing it up prior to launch.
- panacea 15y agoPresumably if they set the initial pressure at something greater than 1 atmosphere, but still within the comfort level of a human they wouldn't need to engineer the hull to withstand as much?
- maxerickson 15y agoWater is roughly incompressible and ~10 meters (33 feet) of it will generate 1 atmosphere of pressure, so at 6 miles deep, I would guess even a very small safety factor would dominate any gains from pressurizing the capsule (I don't know anything about diving, but Wikipedia says that saturation diving is good down to about 150 meters, and the most extreme experiments went down to about 700 meters).
- ry0ohki 15y agoThe Nereus has already been down there unmanned: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nereus_(underwater_vehicle) If you are wondering what it saw there are some videos here: http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=33775 http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=33775
- alaskamiller 15y agoYesterday we had a love fest over Elon Musk, but I for one always thought James Cameron's sidetrack into deep sea exploration to be really, really awesome. We know more about the moon than our own deep seas. Chilling in a Martian greenhouse is cool but meeting the Bloop is cooler.
- psykotic 15y ago> He is to cram his 6-foot-2 frame into a personnel sphere just 43 inches wide, forcing him to keep his knees bent and his body largely immobile. The dive plan calls for him to remain in that position for up to nine hours. My heartfelt sympathies go out to Cameron--it sounds like riding coach on a transcontinental flight.
- funthree 15y agoI bet he'll do some great filming down there. He might make an awesome deep sea documentary
- Devilboy 15y agoI'd pay to see that
- asdkl234890 15y agoand announced plans to ride it solo into the planet’s deepest recess Why? What can he do in the sub, that he couldn't do remotely? Nothing obviously, he wants to be in the sub, because he wants to be in the sub.
- ctdonath 15y agoBe there.
- DrStalker 15y agoIf he digs a hole while he is down there then he can set a new world depth record.
- jholman 15y agoI don't think so. The depth record for an artificial hole is held by the Kola Superdeep Borehole. It reached a depth of 12,262m (relative, presumably, to ground level). The lowest known point in the Challenger Deep is 10,911m below sea level. Unless they started 1350m or so above sea level, he's gonna hafta do some serious digging down there to make up the difference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_superdeep_borehole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kola_superdeep_borehole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_points_of_Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_points_of_Earth
- deathwarmedover 15y agoWikipedia seems to indicate that the Kola superdeep borehole has since been surpassed in 2008 and 2011 by oil drilling operations. The current record holder is Sakhalin-I at 12,345 meters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakhalin-I
- jholman 15y agoIn fact, if you read that article more carefully, you'll find you're not reading the relevant part of that article. The Kola Superdeep Borehole set two records: deepest point reached, and longest borehole. The latter record was, as you say, surpassed twice by oil operations. But if you look at the context of the comment I was replying to, it's clear that Dr Stalker was talking about deepest point reached (surely no one thinks Cameron could dig a multiple-kilometer hole from his submarine). And so it is the deepest-point-reached record that is relevant, which was not surpassed by oil operations. This is because those oil boreholes are diagonal, with a large horizontal component. Also, based on the information I could find, I don't actually know how deep the KSB is, relative to sea level, because I don't know what altitude its "ground level" is, and all the depth measurements I could find are relative to ground level.
- indubitably 15y ago"He is to cram his 6-foot-2 frame into a personnel sphere just 43 inches wide, forcing him to keep his knees bent and his body largely immobile. The dive plan calls for him to remain in that position for up to nine hours." Thanks no.
- eps 15y agoThe project's website - http://deepseachallenge.com http://deepseachallenge.com - truly fascinating stuff
- sargun 15y agoWhat's great is how much of this tech is going to the open market. The foam that's being used for this is already on the open market. It's really an ideal model of how private research can help our society as a whole.