From: "Peter Madsen" <peter@submarines.dk>
Reply-To: personal_submersibles@psubs.org
To: <personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Comparing subs...
Date: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 23:42:14 +0200
Hi psubbers,
Sometimes people ask me how many psubs exist in the world and if they are
like ours, bigger or smaller - if others dive as deep as we do - (answer: -
yes others go much deeper ! )
I my opinion - what matters when answering questions is to give people a
frank - simple explanation - just seeing a psub is quite a chock to
most...so I dont go into safety factors in peacetime vs wartime ect...or
any other nonsense.
On diving depth I tell two data - how deep we actually do dive, and how
deep we have calculated that we expect catastrophic failure to occur. I
typically add that most fun is at less than ten meter to sort of excuse the
fact that our canoes are shallow diving ships - less than spacecrafts for
the abyss...
At our convention in Copenhagen during 2006 some told people visiting us
how deep they did indeed dive, and some how deep they had calculated that
they could dive...giving a sort of misleading picture...
Sometimes in have been thinking of an A B C D and so on classification
system for Psubs. In this -
an "A" boat would be something like Sgt. Peppers - one person - electric
only. A "B" boat would be like Nemo or K250 / K350 - a two seat with
electric only propulsion. A "C" boat would be a small diesel-electric boat
for two or more people like NR-1 ( Joe´s model ) or like Kraka. Finely a
"D" class boat would be Euronaut, Platypus, or UC3 - big diesel boats with
multi person crews and open sea capacity. Of cause - there is lots of fun
in subdividing this into "DAIP" - for AIP propelled D boats or AH for human
propelled A boats.
All of cause most for fun - and when somebody is telling you that he is
building a ultra light submarine at just 400 kg with sixty cubic meters
volume...and fuel cell propulsion - you can say that that´s fine - its a
DAIP class - that has never been build before...
Its interesting to see that most - almost all psubs are B class - most
likely this is the best for a private individual - and the very few A,C and
D boats exist outside the mind or PC of its owner. In fact - the only
operational D boat ever deployed was a Dutch gastank named "Spurdog" that
with the aid of a bulk of ballast and some tanks could be dived at shallow
water - with a number of people inside. It did not have any means of
underwater propulsion to my knowledge. However - it furfills the difinition
- with is 60 ton hull and dieselmotor is must have been seagoing...more or
less...
Just some thoughts...
Have a nice day,
Peter
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