Good stuff, water... :D
One of the discovery channels had an interesting program on the deep ocean the other night. The main focus throughout, was on the bathyscaphe Trieste, following it down through the ocean from surface environment to the bottom of the deep abyssal trench.
Prior to the Mariana trench dive, according to one of the pilots (Lt Don Walsh USN, I think it was) being interviewed, the three sections of the pressure sphere were bonded together using an epoxy resin. On an early test dive the bonded materials broke, leaving the exterior water pressure as the only thing holding the sections together :eek: One of his navy engineering guys bodged a repair together by surrounding the sphere with steel straps to hold everything together as visible here
Following this, they made the dive, only to have one of the windows crack under the enormous pressure of the water. Rather than being made of glass the windows were constructed from a cone of lucite plastic that has the odd property of becoming a kind of liquid under high pressure, to the extent that when descending to the abyss, the inner surface of the window would deform and flow into the crew compartment by one or two millimetres!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
On January 23, 1960, Trieste reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep (the deepest southern part of the Mariana Trench), carrying Jacques Piccard (son of Auguste) and Lieutenant Don Walsh, USN. This was the first time a vessel, manned or unmanned, had reached the deepest point in the Earth's oceans. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 11 521 m (37,800 ft), although this was later revised to 10 916 m (35,813 ft), and more accurate measurements made in 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be slightly shallower, at 10 911 m (35,798 ft).
|
Crazy stuff indeed. |
