Alvin Submersible Retired After 40 Years Work 85
An anonymous reader writes "The legendary deep-sea manned submersible Alvin is retiring after 40 years of scientific work. Alvin has taken 12,000 people on over 4,000 dives, helping to confirm plate tectonics and continental drift. It discovered hydrothermal vents, salvaged a hydrogen bomb from the Mediterranean Sea and explored the Titanic. Alvin will be replaced by a larger vehicle that will come into service in 2008."
Keep Both (Score:5, Interesting)
It is useful for a lot of research. Even though it is not as good as a new one, why not keep in it action?
Parts (Score:5, Insightful)
And who is willing to make another alvin hull?
Might be better to build 2 of the next generation once it is proven, or build 20 of the original alvins from scratch, than to try and extend the service life of a sub that's given more than its due.
Re:Parts (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Parts (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Keep Both (Score:5, Insightful)
At a guess, after 40 years of the pressure it's been subject to it may be cheaper to replace that guarantee structural integrity.
Anyway, I hope "retire" is accurate and not a euphemism for scrap (which unfortunately happens sometimes). It deserves a pastures in a museum somewhere, at the very least.
Re:Keep Both (Score:2)
Re:Keep Both (Score:4, Interesting)
I certainly agree, but why would they need a "wet Smithsonian"? Get it close on a ship and truck it to the site.
Here in Chicago we have a big-ass WWII German submarine [msichicago.org] on land in a museum. Yes, it is near Lake Michigan (several hundred meters), but it is definitely on land, now indoors.
I have no idea how it got from the lake to the museum, but this was done 50 years ago, and it is much, much larger than Alvin. I am quite confident Alvin could be dropped on a flatbed and trucked to the main Smithsonian (or whatever museum) quite easily (at least relatively easy compared to the German sub). It is definitely a "wide load", but not much more than one of those pre-fab houses you see on the highway occasionally, and D.C. is accessible to the ocean via the Potomac so you can get darn close by ship and truck it the last several kilometers.
Re:Keep Both (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Keep Both (Score:1)
Awsome exhibit and terrific museum, BTW. Definitely a must-do when in Chicago!
Re:Keep Both (Score:1)
Re:Keep Both (Score:3, Informative)
Keeping both is a waste of money (Score:5, Interesting)
In the life of every scientific instrument comes the time when its capabilities are so much overshadowed by the more contemporary technology and its maintenance is such a drain on the funds that it simply must be retired. Sure you can do research with it, but it's low grade. They simply are not useful for good research anymore and maintaining them will take away funds from more important, new fields.
Personally, as a scientist, I don't much care what happens to what is essentially scrap metal at that point. In fact, I personally dismantled the equipment I did my PhD Thesis on in order to build another, better one. No tears shed there.
Re:Keeping both is a waste of money (Score:1, Redundant)
Re:Keep Both (Score:3, Insightful)
It is useful for a lot of research. Even though it is not as good as a new one, why not keep in it action?
Undersea exploration is like space travel. You can get more capabilities by eliminating the human factor; the space/energy requirements for
manned submersibles can be reused for retrieved scientific samples, more powerful propulsion, longer exploration times, or greater depth (longer tethers).
You can now get little itty-bitty ROV vehicles that can go down to 300 etres (1000 feet) [videoray.com].
These can be scaled
Re:Keep Both (Score:2)
The real differance is it is way cheaper to make a unmanned sub to do the same.
Re:Keep Both (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Keep Both (Score:1)
The Trieste was fitted with a manipulator in 1964. There is no technical reason that prevent submersibles operating in depths of over 6000meters. The only reason you don't see more submersibles going deeper than 6000meters is that the average depth of the oceans is 6000meters, so paying extra just to explore a few canyons isn't too apealing to everybody.
The two
Re:Keep Both (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Keep Both (Score:3, Interesting)
replaced over the years. But, when it was made, it was made a little too small. You can't change that. Also, the new (competition) replacements
can dive deeper and thus explore much more of
that almost unknown world.
Most of the expertise and folklore (care and feeding if you will) needed to babysit it are pretty
much locked up in extraordinary dedicated folk who have spent most of their *life* playing with this
Re:Keep Both (Score:5, Informative)
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
million with an M? (Score:1)
Re:Keep Both (Score:2)
Simon, Theodore to continue on (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Simon, Theodore to continue on (Score:3, Funny)
DSV-2 (Score:5, Informative)
USN DSVs (Score:4, Informative)
DSV-1 Trieste II - an updated bathyscathe design, retired 1984, also called X2
DSV-2 Alvin - a deep diving sub, reaching only half as deep as the two Triestes
DSV-3 Turtle - Alvin's identical sibling, retired 1998, USN
DSV-4 Sea Cliff - another Alvin class DSV sub, retired 1998, USN
DSV-5 Nemo - another Alvin class DSV sub, retired 1998, USN
Interesting... (Score:4, Funny)
Keep it going until the replacement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Keep it going until the replacement? (Score:2)
In short, 2 vehicles == twice the cost. Not sure they want to pay for it...
Re:Keep it going until the replacement? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Keep it going until the replacement? (Score:1)
Presumably, Alvin will be used for a few more years, as eliminating the research platform for most deep sea oceanography is going to leave a gaping hole. At some point the tender ship, the Atlantis (III :-) ), will nee
Re:Keep it going until the replacement? (Score:1)
Alvin is great and all, but (Score:4, Funny)
But aside from that, good work Alvin, and good retirement!
Re: Celine Dion (Score:2)
Re:Alvin is great and all, but (Score:2, Funny)
At least in Titanic, DiCaprio was somewhat fitting for the part. In Gangs of New York, using DiCaprio was like casting Tinker Bell for Captain Hook's role.
Heartbreaking... (Score:2)
40 years ago... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:40 years ago... (Score:3, Funny)
* we hadn't been on the moon yet (granted, that's a landmark in human history)
* C was way in the future
* LISP already existed
Well hmm, I guess it's all a matter of personal perspective...
Alvin and its contribution to geology (Score:2, Informative)
Hydrothermal vents are located on divergent plate boundaries (i.e. the Atlantic Rift in the middle of the Atlantic).
Here exist these vents (black smokers) warming the very cold water to around 400C.
The fact that life (tubeworms) is sustainable in these highly toxic environments is simply short of amazing.
Re:Alvin and its contribution to geology (Score:2)
Damn by your reckoning we are REALLY going to have to work hard to make the Amazing mark eh?
For me the bar is a tad lower, I find that a clear night sky makes the "simply" amazing mark for me. Life in highly toxic environments is beyond the simply amazing mark, hardly falling short of it
4 year gap? (Score:2)
Why (Score:2)
Re:Why (Score:1)
You've got the money, honey -- then they've got the time....
Alvin, submersible, dead at 40 (Score:2)
hmmm. (Score:2, Funny)
I also vote for keeping alvin alive, or elsewhere (Score:2, Interesting)
How many people vote fo keeping Alvin alive as a more mobile research vessel, to research places other than the oceans, but some of the more
I remember Alvin (Score:4, Interesting)
The magazine in which the column appeared was offered the opportunity to take Mr. P. on a dive, an opportunity which he would have accepted in a New York minute (hey, after all, he went for a boat ride on Grand Prismatic Spring: 160 degrees and no life jackets - what would be the point?), but as the trip would have cost the magazine the entire budget for publishing an issue, Mr. P. stayed sadly dry.
Alvin was an envelope-pusher from day one. The two halves of the titanium sphere that was the crew compartment were held together by one of the hardest titanium welding jobs ever done. The "penetrators" that carried the electronic wiring through the hull were always a concern. The inside of the sphere was unheated, so it "sweated" for the whole 12-hour dive. The pilot would check things out by wiping some of the "sweat" off the seam of a penetrator, if it looked like a "lot" of water, and would taste it for salt. Salt would have been a very, very bad sign.
Alvin did have an emergency ascent capability. Explosive bolts would shear the sphere clear of the boat-shaped outer chassis which contained the ballast, batteries and engines, allowing the sphere, a giant bubble, to race to the surface. The conning tower, though, was permanently attached, which meant that the sphere would spiral vigorously during the entire ascent, which would take twenty minutes or so. It was expected that the crew, under the best of circumstances, would be violently ill by the time they reached the surface, but they'd be alive.
This capability was never used, thank heavens.
Mr. Protocol wishes to thank Tom T. Tengdin for that golden opportunity.
Re:I remember Alvin (Score:5, Informative)
The titanium hull was not installed until she had been in service many years.
Incorrect.
Alvin has not one but *three* emergency ascent capabilities.
- Electromagnetic release of ballast plates. (Also used to initate a normal ascent.)
- Electromagnetic release of the battery tubs.
- *Manual* seperation of the sphere and forward chassis from the remainder of the submarine. (No one is certain if this will work.)
Lastly, Alvin also has the ability to shed her arms and the experiment rack/ROV garage. This is used both if they get entangled or if they need to shed weight.Where's the undersea tourism? (Score:2)
On that note though, why isn't there any rush to undersea tourism? The seabeds are certainly more interesting places than the areas immediately outside the atmosphere, aren't they? They're teeming with unusual lifeforms (much of which would seem to qualify for sci-fi blockbuster film fare), you get a longer stay, and you aren't exposed to radiation. I'm sure the physical requirements are le
Well, If you're looking for me.. (Score:1)
How will I ever... (Score:1)
It's not a toy. It makes real cupcakes with a 40 watt bulb, and ther's icing packets, but the secret ingerdient is love, damnit.
Have to hide my dirty sheets, Michael Caine would be so ashamed of me.
Age concerns (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out the history of Alvin [whoi.edu] at the Woods Hole site and you'll see that concerns about fatigue in a 40-year-old pressure hull are misplaced. Alvin has been repeatedly overhauled, with pressure hull and other components replaced. The vehicle has undergone recertification by the U.S. Navy every few years, most recently in 2002. In fact, Alvin has gone deeper in recent years; until 1994 the DSV was only certified to 4000m, not the present 4500m.
However, the next Alvin will be larger (27 more cubic feet in the pressure sphere, adding about the volume of a good-sized coffin!) and have greater range, both horizontally and vertically. As "Rosco" pointed out above, operating two DSV's at once would be much more expensive. And frankly, any lesser facility than Woods Hole that can afford to operate a DSV would probably prefer to build their own.
Still, I'm sad to hear Alvin will be retired. Alvin was the first name I learned in deep-sea research as a child, as Jacques Cousteau was the first for shallower waters. A long and brilliant career, averaging (even with overhauls and most of one year stuck on the sea floor) better than a dive every four days for forty years.Aluminaut is retired, too (Score:3, Insightful)
They're all gone now, the record-holding vehicles of the 1960s. The Concorde, the SR-71, the Saturn V, Alvinn, the Aluminaut. All gone, with the will to replace them gone as well.
Re:Aluminaut is retired, too (Score:2)
Re:Aluminaut is retired, too (Score:1)
Re:Aluminaut is retired, too (Score:1, Informative)
by Animats (122034) on Saturday October 23,
>>They're all gone now, the record-holding vehicles of the 1960s. The Concorde, the SR-71, the Saturn V, Alvinn, the Aluminaut. All gone, with the will to replace them gone as well
Actually the recordholder for DSV's is Trieste II which got the ultimate record in 1960 of 37800 feet. There is nowhere deeper. FWIW, I don't think anyone's been back since.
She's at the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Washington.
The original Alvin is long gone... (Score:2)
Alvin is kind of like a living organism, I guess. It recycled all its parts from birth.
For mroe details, check out Charles Pe
Smithsonian Institute (Score:2)
Re:Smithsonian Institute (Score:1)
Woods Hole Oceanographics Announcement (Score:3, Informative)
There was also a very good NPR Science Friday Discussion [sciencefriday.com] on this back in August.
Ahh good memories... (Score:2)
A classmate of mine chose nautilus. I thought that one was a good one...
The next best thing to being there (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel almost like I've taken a dive on Alvin myself... I work for an ocean conservation group [oceana.org], and this summer one of our staff scientists got the chance to go along on a NOAA expedition that used Alvin to dive on some Alaskan seamounts (mountains at the bottom of the ocean).
Before he left for the trip, I talked him into keeping a journal of it for our organizational blog [oceana.org]. Each time he made a new entry, he would e-mail it to me from Alvin's mother ship in the Gulf of Alaska, and then I would post it to the site in as close to real-time as possible. (He wanted to post the entries directly, but we were lucky to get e-mail access for him aboard ship, much less a reliable Web connection.)
You can read the archived journal here: Jon's Journal [oceana.org]
(The software defaults to showing the journal entries in reverse chronological order, so the one on top is the last one. Scroll to the bottom and read up to start from the beginning.)
We both just kind of figured it would be something interesting to try, but the result was really cool -- he did a great job describing what it's like to be on an Alvin expedition.
It was actually near the end of his trip that I first heard that Alvin was slated for retirement. From a mechanical perspective, it makes sense; she's seen a lot of wear under some of the most demanding conditions imaginable. It's that very history that makes it hard to imagine seeing her put to pasture, I guess. Here's hoping that we as a people have the vision and commitment to keep exploring the paths down which Alvin took those first tentative steps.
Re:The next best thing to being there (Score:1)
someone needs to study up on automation techniques, procmail, and $programming_language
This is a one line program if you know what you're doing.
Slightly incorrect statistics (Score:2)
That should be amended to "12,000 people, plus two lab mice bent on taking over the world."
Rescued hydrogen bomb? (Score:2)
Anyone have a clue about this?
I remember Alvin from some National Geographic article I read as a wee kid. Great stuff.
Re:Rescued hydrogen bomb? (Score:1, Informative)
A B-52 carrying four H-bombs collided with a KC-135 tanker above the coast of Spain. The tanker exploded; both aircraft were wrecked. Four of the seven B-52 crew managed to parachute to safety.
Three of the four H-bombs crashed on land near the village of Palomares. The last one landed about five miles offshore.
After some searching, Alvin located the last H-bomb in March. An initial attempt to lift the bomb failed, and it slid into deeper water. Alvin relocated the
Re:Rescued hydrogen bomb? (Score:3, Informative)
The film "Men of Honor" opens with Carl Brashear, the first
From the article: (Score:1)
Incredibly cool. I hope they actually do this, perhaps via the new all-science channel. [slashdot.org] Get a tv-friendly oceanographer to provide some running commentary (time permitting) as the crew goes about it's business, the result being good PR, a more educated public, and perhaps additional funding.
I'd watch that.
Titanic (Score:1)
http://www.btinternet.com/~dr_paul_lee/titanicfou
Makes Perfect Sense - NOT! (Score:2)
So what happens if we lose another H-Bomb between now and then? Why not overlap? And not just for H-Bomb reasons.
Do you really expect me to believe that there is so little to see down deep in our oceans that one vehicle at a time is enough to satisfy all the requests for its services?
Christmas Submerged (Score:1)
Okay.
Okay Theador?
Okay.
Okay Alvin?
Alvin?
Okay!
Christmas, Christmas time is near.
Time for toys and time for cheer.
We've been good, but we can't last.
Hurry, Christmas, hurry fast!
Want a plane that loops the loop.
Me, I want a hula hoop.
We can hardly stand the wait.
Please, Christmas, don't be late.