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Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Repeating History
Wow
Got a bit more response than I was expecting from this topic.
Lots of very good points brought up and it's obvious I'm not the only one who has considered this idea.
Carsten is of course right that one cannot maneuver a sub in the same way as a space craft, but then the "space analog" part of being in a drift sub is not the maneuvering. It is the long period of isolation, the cramped living quarters with machinery all around, the long periods of tedium interspersed with a few moments of excitement, and the fact that in the back your mind you know there is only a few fractions of an inch of steel between you and an environment that is not friendly to our frail biological forms.
As for some questions about specifics ... I don't know anything. This was just an idea floating around in my head since I saw the documentary about them finding the good old Ben Franklin in a scrap yard and turning
her into the center piece for a museum.
The idea has taken many forms actually;
1) Building a new Ben Franklin and repeating the mission (for those wondering why, the grunt work of science is an endless repetition of experiments to make sure the results didn't change while you weren't looking)
2) Building a newer better boat to perform newer and better missions, dive deeper, better sensors, longer duration, etc (technology has come quite a ways since then after all)
3) Trying to get a group of people to build a group of drift type boats ... have our own underwater version of the Americas Cup sailing race. (Being a sailor myself I understand how subtle changes in how you catch a wind/current can drastically effect your speed and maneuvering)
4) The real doozy of a idea ... as far as I know the only subs that have gone around the world are the military nuclear boats, anybody think doing it in a drift sub would be easy?
Again,
these are just ideas floating around in my head. Paul mentioned the X-Prize model, which is derived from the early days of aviation pioneers. That's exactly the kind of thing I was thinking of ... trying new ideas and methods to try them, see if they work, and just because the things we challenge ourselves with are just plan fun to do.
Gene
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