I'd like to quickly respond to this issue of
submarine-cum-flowerpots.
I strongly feel that there is too much
engineer and not enough artist in the process of building a sub.
Unfortunately, artists don't (usually) make good
builders - they're too busy dreaming, designing and discussing. One of the
most notable exceptions here, of course, is Phil Nuytten ( http://www.nuytco.com/ ). I've been to
his shop in Vancouver a couple of times and physically run my sweating palms
over Deep Worker and the mockup for the Exosuit. They are truly things of
beauty. Phil's also an artist. He's one of the few people I know
that has successfully combined a business mentality, an artist's mentality and a
doer's mentality.
As for my sub, I'm more concerned with the
EXPERIENCE of being underwater, watching the bow wave sneak up to the forward
window and slip around the sides of my canopy - when it gets built. What
do I care whether it can dive to 300 feet? I want to SEE, BE PART OF,
IMMERSE MYSELF INTO, ABSORB, BE SURROUNDED BY the first hundred feet,
so a dry, ambient pressure boat suits my needs perfectly. I LOVE
wrap-around dive masks for that very reason. I'm an aesthetic. I
admit it (I'm a photographer). The engineering mentalities will get their
boats built. The rest of us with much prettier ideas . . . well, we'll see
you at the dock.
Why am I bringing this up? Well, if you're
looking out of a tiny (engineer) porthole, even the most
enthusiastic among us will eventually get bored. What a porthole does
is truncate the EXPERIENCE of being underwater. It robs you of the
SENSE of being underwater, of being absolutely in the middle of
it. You are now at 600 feet and bored stupid. A porthole
is to a PC speaker as a canopy is to a THX Surround Sound
experience.
A deep diving sub does, however, provide great
conversation in the cocktail circuit.
So, IMHO, enrich the experience, especially for the
engineers, and I have a sense that you'll feel about your sub the
way some of us feel about wooden boats: We can't get enough of
them.
My two cents (CDN).
Rick Lucertini
Vancouver, Canada
p.s.: Oh, BTW, that problem of a surface support
boat and paying crew? There is a fundamental flaw in the design of
some subs that needs to be addressed. If you want distance (no dock
lurking), you need two things: More batteries and a more efficient hull
design (more hydrodynamic). This is the equivalent of a diver taking
an 80 cubic foot tank for one dive, compared to a diver taking four sets of twin
90's. Same mileage, gas costs, motel costs, tire wear, restaurant costs,
etc. But a LOT more diving.
What are YOUR needs as a designer? Submarine
or flowerpot?
----- Original Message -----From: Fly DeepSent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 8:16 AMSubject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Weeds growing up around Dreams (was submersible speedboat)
I had a long letter written for this topic but I decided to stick to the main reasons. I think that most subs end up as flower pots because of the design. Designing a sub has to be one of the most difficult things a person can do. There is no perfect design and the purpose for each design does not fit well with other purposes. Like helicopters, trucks, and boats. The requirements change as the job evolves. And the personal sub actually needs a support vessel. Lets face it, dropping it in the water of the back of a trailer will work a few times. But you'll get tired of checking out the dock pilings in a short time. The real stuff is out there off the cost by a few miles and down there past the second or third atmosphere. The sub I'm building has a flange in the middle so that a 16 inch center section can be removed for 1 person operations and then be put back when 2 person operations are ! required. I feel that many miss the importance of the out of water wight. Lighter is much , much better. When it comes time to pull the thing out of the water and you only have a 2 or 3 ton crane, things can get very complicated. The motion of the vessel and the sub can get out of hand very quickly, not to mention that wave motions can instill up to 5 G's of force during this operation. It's 4 times harder to keep a 2000 pound sub under control as a 4000 pound sub. This is as many things in physics a Quanitive thing. ( Quanitive spelling wrong, oh well ) Plus the personal on deck need to be good at what they do. Sure you can get a few guys for a Saturday after noon and if your lucky no one will have a finger or a hand removed. But once that sub starts to come out of the water every one needs to know what they are doing. Now we can look at communication while its in the water. Another expense that ! should not be over looked. So for a nice day out on the water we'll need a support vessel, say 50 foot. A crew, 20 bucks an hour for 4 people, it goes on and on. After you get back to the dock you just dropped 4 or 5 hundred dollars in the water. My point is that to just start a design for a submarine and build it for fun turns out to be much more expensive than most understand. And if any one is going to build a sub you should find a niche that that can make money. The same thing happens with home built helicopters, and air planes. They seem like a good idea at the start but once you fly it around for a while, (if you don't die in the proses) the good idea begins to be a money pit and it stops being fun. And then oncethefunisgonethatpersonthatbuiltthethingfindsoutthatnoonewantstobuyit. Particularly in the toy helicopter scenario. The poor guy sees this cool toy at the county fair and pays 40 bucks ! for a ride. The guy beside him tells him he's one of the best natural pilots he's ever seen and that he should build one. But by time he's done with construction he'll have 40 thousand dollars in the toy and then he finds out he could have bought an old certified Hughes 300 for about the same money. All in all, I think Dug has the best and in my eyes the only sound reason for building a submarine. He's sharing the experience with his son. And maybe after all is done, the only reason any of us build these submarines is so that we can stand back and say. Wow, is that ever cool, it's done. But,,Maybe if I change this and I think I'll move this over here, and I think that should be bigger and I don't need that and maybe if I take this and turn it around, then it will be......or is it the treasure we know we'll find next season? Keep it light...DJB South Florida http://www.globalspec.com oh boy,,look at all these PARTS!!!!
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