Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Discovery channel last night...

[VBra676539@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/29/2002 1:07:15 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
jrf@prismnet.com writes:

<< 
 There were some *excellent* shows on the Discovery Channel last
 night.  Anyone else see them?
 
 Tremendous underwater photography of some very bizarre deep-sea
 creatures, and a good amount of submarine activity in there too.
 The footage shown of some of the creatures was the first time that
 those creatures had ever been seen.
 
 They said that less then 1% of the Marianas Trench has been explored,
 and that the surface of the Moon is mapped better than the bottom of
 the ocean.  Sounds like we need to get to work!  :-)
 
 
 -John
  >>
Carsten is correct in that cabin structure requirements are different. What 
he fails to mention however is the fuel and support costs. The estimate for 
the space shuttle with a full payload at liftof is ten inches vertical motion 
per gallon of fuel burned, averaged over the entire launch to orbit burn. I'm 
going to hazard a guess here that Krupp could mill me out a Ni Cr Mo hull 
about 5" thick, maybe 8' inside diameter, for something less than that. Add a 
few tons on syntactic, a few lights, couple of thrusters and some batteries 
stuck in the back somewhere, and we can go to the Challenger Deep, not just 
once, but over and over.

Comes to that, the Challenger hull from the 60s Trieste mission is still 
around somewhere (Smithsonian?). How about we pool our lunch money and buy 
that? The Navy only paid $90,000 to have it built, so maybe we could get a 
deal. Then instead of all these inidvidual little psubs, we could have us a 
joint collaboration of truly historical capabilities (ie., the deepest diving 
psub on planet Earth).

Then all we got to do is figure how to do our annual meeting out in the 
middle left of the Pacific Ocean. (Honey, you'll love my new vacation idea. 
We're going to the Marshall Islands to meet this bunch of guys and we're 
gonna ... ).
Best Regards,
Vance