The Tech Behind James Cameron's Trench-Bound Submarine 111
MrSeb writes "Yesterday, James Cameron completed a five-mile-deep test dive in the Pacific Ocean, in preparation for a seven-mile (36,000ft, 11,000m) dive to Challenger Deep, in the Mariana Trench; the deepest place in the world. We don't know when the actual dive will occur, but it will probably be soon. At 36,000ft, the pressure exerted on the hull is 16,000 psi; over 1000 atmospheres, and equivalent to eight tons pushing down on every square inch of your body. Understandably, building a submersible (and equipment, such as cameras, motors, and batteries) that can withstand that kind of pressure, and then safely return to the surface, is difficult. This article digs into the technology required to get Cameron safely to the bottom of the ocean, film some 3D, IMAX footage, and then return to the surface."
Re:Avatar (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Avatar (Score:5, Funny)
It did, but they got enough Unobtainium to build this sub.
Actually the alchemy that Mr Cameron performed was to transform 3D hypium and virutal Unobtainum into gold by using a motion picture catalyst derived from a pocahontas precursor...
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If Avatar is Pocahontas, then 2001 Space Odyssey is a western about a lonestar cowboy and his unfaithful companion. Oh and Star Wars is just some Russian opera.
Old stories get retold in new ways every time a story is told. They're all ripoffs of each other. Besides, Avatar never ripped off Pocahontas. It was obviously a Dances with Wolves space adaptation.
Re:Avatar (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Avatar (Score:5, Funny)
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i wonder who modded this troll? this is the most accurate and concise post i've seen here today! and in a first post, no less.
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But it was funnier than Titanic.
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Those of us with sub-100 IQs are offndd and also wonder WTF are yopu talking about.
I like boobies.
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I've found that nerds estimate people's IQ's by what movies they watch.
Re:Avatar (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that people with an IQ of over 80 think that judging people's IQ by the movies they watch says more about the observer than the observed.
units? (Score:5, Insightful)
How does one reconcile 16,000 psi with 8,000 tons per square inch?
Seems something is off.
Also pretty sure no human bodies will be experiencing that pressure
Re:units? (Score:5, Informative)
Seems something is off.
Yeah, seems someone read "8" and then added three orders of magnitude. 1 ton = 2000 pounds.
Re:units? (Score:4, Insightful)
Who cares. Those units don't exist anyway. How many pascal are we talking about?
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Re:units? (Score:5, Informative)
... Also pretty sure no human bodies will be experiencing that pressure
On the contrary, it's most likely that they have and will ... though not while alive.
Some years ago I was into technical diving and learned that the deepest dive ever for a human was a simulated one in a pressure chamber. Using a special, and no-doubt constantly changing mixture of gasses that included plenty of helium, they were able to crank up the pressure to a simulated depth of about 750 meters (only about 7% of the Challenger Deep) before the "diver" could go no further. Apparently, his nervous system was no longer able to function properly beyond that point... just because of the pressure. His simulated ascent, by the way, took something like a month.
I was somewhat disappointed to learn all this, because it meant that a really deep dive using a liquid rebreather, like in The Abyss (1989, James Cameron), would never be possible.
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You should read up (Score:5, Informative)
At higher pressures, gasses that are normally "inert" to the human body tissue, will form chemical bonds with your tissues, making the gasses poisonous. That is why there are different gas mixtures used for high pressure (deep) dives.
Even if you can overcome this by using liquids to replace the gasses, it appears that your nerve tissue will have electrical/chemical problems transmitting signals at about 750 meters (75 times atmospheric pressure).
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I wonder how often Slashdotters admit they were wrong.
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Also pretty sure no human bodies will be experiencing that pressure
That made me think of a question burning in my mind. It is inconceivable that the trench would not be a spot for dramatic body dumping or suicides or just plain old fashioned accidents. What does a body look like under all that pressure?
Also, it seems when someone may want something besides a body lost to the world, that would be a good place to drop it. Maybe they'll find some odd treasure.
Enquiring mi
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... What does a body look like under all that pressure? ...
Pretty much the same as at the surface.
The notion that everything gets "crushed" at great depths is a common misconception. Submarines (and submersibles) run the risk of getting crushed at depth because they usually include cavities of air held at a constant surface pressure. Therefore, the deeper they go, the more their internal pressure gets out of equilibrium with the ambient pressure and the greater the risk becomes of violent equalization.
On the other hand, not much happens to a human body (or an
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K
Thanks.
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I recall some experiments with dogs (back in the late 1960s?), where they were able to keep a dog alive in a highly oxygenated water tank, breathing water essentially. But IIRC they were unable to wean the dogs off afterward, so they all died.
Our blood is about 1/2 as salty as the ocean, so it is possible that a some kind of system to reduce the salt level and increase the oxygen level of a salt water solution might be developed that would not be seriously damaging to the lungs, so mammals could breathe wi
Do not mix imperial with metric in this one!! (Score:2)
Re:Cameron (Score:5, Informative)
Remember how he was going to single-handedly fix the Horizon oil disaster off the coast of Louisiana? Never happened. Actually, not a single thing this guy has made headlines for has actually panned out.
Cameron != Kevin Costner you retard
Re:Cameron (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't Cameron find the Titanic?
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he made a MOVIE about Titanic. He didn't find it. The guy who did was Robert Ballard.
Cameron's just a guy who makes movies. Some of them good (Terminator 2), some of them shit (Avatar). He ain't King of the World, no matter what he thinks.
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Queue the kooks who "want to get off this planet" and have far-seeing abilities based on computer games.
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he made a MOVIE about Titanic. He didn't find it. The guy who did was Robert Ballard.
Cameron's just a guy who makes movies. Some of them good (Terminator 2), some of them shit (Avatar). He ain't King of the World, no matter what he thinks.
Well, Cameron "gets" technology. He's raised the bar a few times when it comes to deploying advanced video capture technologies to create *great* FX. He also *gets* storytelling (can't believe you left "Aliens" off!) which is something that makes all of his films eminently watchable.
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Homeschooled tea-party supporter, huh?
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He is actually quite the philanthropist and oceanographer. Much more than just making movies. I don't believe he think's he's king of the world. I've never read of him or hear him saying this once. From my recollection, he's actually very humble. As for Ballard, him and Cameron work very closely together. They are both accomplished oceanographers. It was Ballard who loaned the equipment to Cameron to film the Abyss and Titanic. I'm fairly certain he is involved with this submersible project as well.
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No. It was found in 1985 by a joint American-French expedition.
As far as filming it, Cameron *may* have been the first to do so.
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Remember how he offered to help with the Horizon oil disaster off the coast of Louisiana? Never happened. BP said they didn't need his help.
Fixed that for you.
To answer your question, yes, you likely are the only one since you don't really know much about the topic you're blasting us with your opinion about.
Hard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't this 1961 technology we're talking about? Remember the Treste!
Re:Hard? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed, we do remember the Trieste [wikipedia.org].
Just like going to the moon... something we did in the 60's, we've basically forgotten how to do for the lack of will to do it. So we have to reinvent the wheel, only this time in a more risk-averse environment (and therefore far more expensive to accomplish).
Re:Hard? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Idiot. Trieste was self contained and (barely) self mobile horizontally, just like this thing. This thing can go up and down faster; and it has better batteries. And it uses syntactic foam for buoyancy instead of a thin hull filled with gasoline. That's basically it.
Don't get me wrong; it's an improvement, and I'm happy to see the project under way. But both vehicles are minimally mobile down there. We're talking a fraction of a kilometer per hour.
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A porthole is a specific type of portal.
But yeah, I've got no defence for syntactic foam, unless they pureed a ton of style guides to make the thing.
Yes, 'syntactic foam' is correct (Score:2)
I quote Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
Syntactic foams are composite materials synthesized by filling a metal, polymer or ceramic matrix with hollow particles called microballoons, "syntactic" meaning "put together".[1] The presence of hollow particles results in lower density, higher strength, a lower coefficient of thermal expansion, and, in some cases, radar or sonar transparency.
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We will probably build better Lunar modules too if/when we go back to the moon.
Re:Hard? (Score:5, Informative)
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You don't seem to know exactly how slow 3 knots are. 3 nautical miles in an hour, or about 3.5 "real" miles per hour. That's 12% faster than the average human walking speed.
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why does the Trieste come up every time this new vehicle is the topic?
Because it's the obvious thing to do. Why wouldn't one bring up the short history of exploration at this depth?
The Trieste was an underwater elevator and no more.
Completely irrelevant.
For me, it's nice to know that people are willing to explore somewhere now that manned space flight is on it's way out the door.
To the contrary, manned space flight is just beginning. And for much the same reason as the Trieste is compared unfavorably by you to the Deepsea Challenger.
Re:Hard? (Score:5, Informative)
I suspect you are confusing a bathy*scape* with a bathy*sphere*.
Trieste could operate submerged 24 hours and could move freely at a speed of 1 kt. It was succesfully used to search for the wreck of the USS Thresher (SSN-593), which it found at a depth of 8400 ft, so obviously Trieste was a very capable boat.
In it's famous Challenger Deep mission it spent 20 minutes on the bottom made at least one important scientific discovery: sole and flounder swimming. Before that it was believed that vertebrate life could not survive at such pressures. Not a bad scientific haul for an 8h 23m work day.
The bathy*sphere* was no scientific slouch either, making significant contributions to both marine biology and physics.
Lack of will, or lack of need to prove oneself? (Score:2)
I think some people have the wrong view on why we don't do things that we have done before. The simplest reason is, been there, done that.
As in, the challenge has been met. Now lets find a new challenge. Is there a compelling reason to go to the floor of the ocean? The moon? Yeah it would be cool and there is good science in both, but is there a need.
Back in the fifties and sixties, if not the seventies, it was about East versus West. Funny how an arms race turned into a game of one up man ship along peacef
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I think some people have the wrong view on why we don't do things that we have done before. The simplest reason is, been there, done that.
As in, the challenge has been met. Now lets find a new challenge. Is there a compelling reason to go to the floor of the ocean? The moon? Yeah it would be cool and there is good science in both, but is there a need.
Back in the fifties and sixties, if not the seventies, it was about East versus West. Funny how an arms race turned into a game of one up man ship along peaceful lines.
Heh. I'll try to remember that when mass drivers in orbit have replaced ground-based nukes as our species' self-termination option.
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Many compelling reasons, above and beyond the "we must explore" philosophical position (which is, admittedly, not an axiom). Let's get practical.
How about recovering lost nuclear weapons [wikipedia.org], maintenance of deep-sea seismic sensors [sciencedaily.com] to detect and generate warnings for tsunami-generating underwater landslides? What about transoceanic optical fiber maintenance? Rescue of sailors from submarine accidents [wikipedia.org]? Maritime [wikipedia.org] accident [wikipedia.org] investigation [wikipedia.org]?
This is important stuff. In the U.S. this has (unsurprisingly) typically be
Why not a wireless waldo sub? (Score:3)
The biggest problem with remotes that I see is the freaking long cable. But why couldn't they lower for want of a better term, a wireless access point to the bottom with a submersible and then release the sub when it gets down there. Then you would have real time control and the freedom of a tetherless vehicle. Only the access point would be connected to the surface. I am assuming it is better to put the access point down there because that much water would interfere with the control signals if they tried t
Too expensive (Score:2)
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Wi-Fi has a range of a few feet underwater, if that. Radio waves do not propagate through a conducting medium, at least in any useful sense. 'Extremely low frequency' [wikipedia.org] waves (3-300 Hz) can propagate down a hundred meters or so. So radio ain't gonna cut it.
Some deepsea systems have used sound down to some pretty deep depths, but it requires thousands of watts of transducer output.
Onion (Score:3, Interesting)
Um, maybe it's not this simple, but...
Lets say you have a submarine with a metal shell that can withstand the pressure at 1000 feet below sea level. (For simplicity, call it a pressure of '1000'.). You can lower it only that far into the water before the pressure exceeds the amount it can handle, and the shell collapses. Okay. Now, what if you place that shell inside an slightly larger one? Lower them both to, say 999 feet, then open a valve to let the water in between the shells. Close the valve, and drop the shells another 999 feet. The inner shell has the pressure of 999 pressing in, which it can withstand. But that 999 water also presses out. The outer shell then has 999 pressing out and 1998 pressing in, a net of 999 pressing in, which it can withstand.
Repeat with however many layers you need, and you should be able to go down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, no?
Re:Onion (Score:5, Insightful)
So to go down to 10,000 feet below sea level, you'd essentially need ten shells, each with a valve, with each shell becoming a point of failure. And that's more of an ideal situation, not taking into account how you're gonna get shit in and out of the vessel.
I work in this industry(shoutout to DeepSea Power and Light, here in San Diego), and we used pressurized oil to add structural integrity to certain electronic components. In fact, it was even mentioned in the article.
You could have one onion layer of super-high pressurized oil, but it would essentially behave like a solid which could be pushed into the inner shell. Shit, why not, oh, just have one shell designed to withstand the pressure? Or, better yet, fill the whole vessel with oil pressurized to 1000 bar? That'll show those damn skeptics.
Re:Onion (Score:4, Interesting)
A few problems with that approach. Among other things, I don't think you'd want an incompressible (or at least difficult to compress) fluid between the outer and inner shell. If it's "pushing out" on the outer shell, then it's also pushing in on the inner shell. Not to mention that you actually want to be able to see out of the thing with a window. Given the complexity of a window and how well our cameras work these days, the window represents a whole lot of complex engineering for very little benefit, but if you're going to have a manned craft, you might as well have a window, otherwise you have to shrug your shoulders and mumble when someone asks you why you bothered to actually go down there rather than spend that engineering money on a telepresence system you could operate from a ship on the surface or even from the comfort of home. So, if you need a window, you would have to have a window in every layer of your system and figure out a very complex system with super-high precision optics that work properly even when the high pressure has warped their shape. Then there's your connections between the controls in the inner part of the sub and all the equipment outside. I imagine the sub has two or more power systems with one or more for the cockpit and one or more living at outside pressure for the outside of the sub and with all the equipment outside the cockpit controlled "wirelessly" (or using the whole cockpit hull for a "wire" anyway). Having nested shells is going to require such a system to be very complicated and to be multi-layered as well, with each layer presenting another point of failure. Overall, you're better off in just about every way if your multiple shells are all merged into one shell.
Essentially, the only special technology you need for a human to survive to that depth is a thick enough shell around them. Nothing technologically amazing or any new ideas needed. Having a well sealed hatch and a well-sealed window are the more complicated parts, since those may not deform evenly with the rest of the shell, but even those aren't really hugely complex engineering problems. The trickier problems are getting all the stuff that needs to survive _outside_ the shell to survive at that pressure and to not explode from internal pressure back up at sea-level. Every single little part needs to considered,and not just mechanically since, at that pressure, materials may have altered chemical and electrical properties. The cockpit is simple and well-understood by comparison.
For some reason I'm not quite clear on, your suggestion has made me think of _Star Trek IV_, when Scotty trades the formula for transparent aluminium for plexiglass to make the aquarium for the whales since plexiglass is the best substitute for transparent aluminium. I still to this day have not been able to fathom why they couldn't just use regular, non-transparent aluminium, or whatever metal the Klingon ships inner structure was made from to make their tank. Why did it need to be transparent? I don't know and I don't know why this conversation so strongly reminds me of that.
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I still to this day have not been able to fathom why they couldn't just use regular, non-transparent aluminium, or whatever metal the Klingon ships inner structure was made from to make their tank. Why did it need to be transparent? I don't know and I don't know why this conversation so strongly reminds me of that.
I've wondered this myself. I think it has to do with what happens when the whales suddenly find themselves inside a dark, enclosed space. They are used to an enclosure, so that wouldn't be an issue, but a non-transparent one might. Of course, Spock was supposed to have mind-melded to tell them it wouldn't be an issue. But I think the idea is without being able to see someone they know, they might freak out. And several pissed-off whales in an enclosed and not terribly strong space traveling through the vacu
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Because then you wouldn't have had the scene where the audience gets to see the whales transported to the tanks.
To which you might say -- why didn't they just use shields to hold the water/whale solution in place?
To which I say that's not a very interesting time-travelly solution, and smacks of the "reverse the polarity and run it through the deflector beam" panacea.
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For some reason I'm not quite clear on, your suggestion has made me think of _Star Trek IV_, when Scotty trades the formula for transparent aluminium for plexiglass to make the aquarium for the whales since plexiglass is the best substitute for transparent aluminium. I still to this day have not been able to fathom why they couldn't just use regular, non-transparent aluminium, or whatever metal the Klingon ships inner structure was made from to make their tank. Why did it need to be transparent? I don't know and I don't know why this conversation so strongly reminds me of that.
Because....... it's a movie?
The average movie goer is not a terribly sophisticated person. Just slightly smarter than the average person watching a commercial. Keep in mind, that average is carefully calculated by some very smart people in Hollywood that understand the lowest common denominator and how to use that as an average. I know, but try to keep up.
Most people will think of whales and where to put them, and that means an aquarium, no different than gold fish. Aquariums have transparent sides to t
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Because if you use non-transparent aluminum you can't see the fucking whales and what kind of plot device would staring at a metal wall be! :)
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I suspect what your trying to suggest is a thicker shell, approaching that which is required to withstand the pressure. I think you can dispense with putting water in it.
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I have a feeling that you are the one who works at ACME and is responsible for all of Wile E Coyote's (Super Genius) failures.
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The diameter term on top means that your multi-shell design will actually use more metal than simply making a single metal sphere thick enough to withstand the target pressure. Essentially, the optimized form of your multi-shell design is one in which each sphere fits perfectly inside the next, and there is
Avatar II: In 2D! (Score:2, Funny)
After an unsuccessful attempt to film the sequel of Avatar at a depth of 36,000 feet in 3D resulted in the actors being squished into the ground under the intense pressures, Cameron vowed to continue filming the movie using a mix of scrapers to move the cast and stop-motion cameras to film the sequences.
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Not Avatar, the reason he went under sea is to film Titanic 2.
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That. Would. Be. AWESOME.
Deep Flight Challenger (Score:2)
So, it's a race then, between Cameron's Deep Sea Challenge and Hawke/Virgin Oceanic [wikipedia.org]'s Deep Flight Challenger [deepflight.com] (which I think is a lot cooler - it "flies" rather than just sinks).
Don't know any dates for either attempt, other than '2012' for Deep Flight's first descent.
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The deepest _known_ place in the world. (Score:3)
Despite what you may have been told, we don't know everything. It's a small but important distinction.
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Yeah! Nuts to all those satellites n'shit they use.
Interesting Trieste story (Score:3)
The bathyscape Trieste used a similar electromagnet-holding-shot system that Cameron's sub uses. They had a bit of a surprise after many successful dives.
It seemed that the steel shot that they obtained in Europe had a substantial amount of impurities in it; and the system worked just fine. When they filled the hoppers with American shot, though, it was pure enough that the electromagnets didn't just hold the shot, it magnetized it! Even when the electromagnets were turned off, the shot stayed in the hopper.
If I recall correctly (and I read about this 40 years ago!) they were able to dump the entire shot canister to get back to the surface.
Problems at depth (Score:1)
As I see it, the problems that they experience in construction all boil down to: prevent 3D objets from going 2D.
Figures thats why Cameron is involved.
Gotta Admire the way James Cameron rolls (Score:2, Insightful)
So, after making some of the best sci-fi action movies ever filmed, James Cameron kicks back with some dives to the bottom of the ocean.
You know what the best part of it is? Nearly every dive he has done has been paid for by others. After filming titanic, he did a bunch of dives as "research" for his next movie, Avatar. I must have missed the underwater scenes in that film...
Anyways, the beauty of doing it this way is :
1. He gets to charge the investors in the movie for the costs of the underwater dives
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His post-Titanic dives were for two underwater documentaries, Ghosts of the Abyss [imdb.com] and Aliens of the Deep [imdb.com], during which he also developed his 3D camera technology. He also did some TV in there too (Dark Angel and a couple other things). People make it sound like he was on vacation between Titanic and Avatar, but he has 5 directing credits during that period and advanced the state of the art for 3D, not to mention underwater exploration and filming. In between writing & directing the 2 highest grossing
Passengers? (Score:2)
He should invite Clive Cussler to come along for a ride. Maybe Clive will bring Dirk Pitt along too.
They should collect the old pellets (Score:2)
They should collect the old iron ballast pellets left behind by the last visitor to the Challenger Deep, Bathyscaphe Trieste.
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You idiot. If he dies, we'll never get to see Terminator III.