Vance,
I sense the "gap" too, for the reasons stated. It would have to be a "fun" sideline business, set up by someone with enough interest and cash not to be bothered by a twee bid of red.
I'm sensing that academia doesn't really have a whole lot available to them out there, and would be interested if available at the right cost. Basically as you said, a certified Idabel type of operation.
With piles of "fictional" cash, it's a fun mental exercise to design an operation like this, I see the attraction!
Joe
To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Idabel and HY-100
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 12:27:01 -0500
From:
vbra676539@aol.com
Considering that HBOI has virtually suspended submersible operations, and that not one but two small sub crews managed to eke a living from submersibles for the last 20 years in California, I believe that it is possible to extrapolate enough work for a three-man team. Especially if, to augment the grocery money, they were willing to untangle the occasional prop, paint the occasional bottom or jet in and/or repair a few sea wall bulkheads behind a rich guy's house. Full time might be a problem, but there are definitely contracts out there--maybe not big enough to pay $16K/day for ship and crew, but probably big enough to pay $3500/day and supply their own boat.
Jago stays fairly busy out of Germany (mostly with internal money, I think), and Phil Nuyton keeps the electric bill paid with first one thing and then another, so there is definitely some work for the little guy. The major players are falling by the wayside in manned operations, but as Phil says: "ROVs are like phone sex. It just ain't the same when you aren't there." Scientists especially love to be there, and right now there's maybe a vacuum of opportunity.
Given that, I think a small sub with a SOO (ship of opportunity) and light enough not to require ABS certified cranes could conceivably make a living, especially one run by someone with a lifetime in the biz and lots of contacts. Just look at Delta. Besides, as I said, it's fiction, so let me assure you, these guys DO make a living, more or less.
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: Joseph Perkel <
joeperkel@hotmail.com>
To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Sent: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 11:09 am
Subject: RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Idabel and HY-100
"....fictionalized but realistic sub equivelant to Delta or Aquarius that would triple their depth numbers..."
"....but they aren't oil field tough...."
Vance,
I've seen your references to the oil industry on a number of occasions. Given a hypothetical certification of something like your recipe there, is it safe to say that both oil and academia, would provide enough work to keep the boat, "afloat",..so to speak?
Joe
To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Idabel and HY-100
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 09:52:59 -0500
From:
vbra676539@aol.com
Szbowski (If that's you, then who is Brent?),
I guess my question is still: Why not build the whole thing in HY-100, rather than deal with the change in strengths? I've been talking to Karl, developing a lightweight, fictionalized but realistic sub equivelant to Delta or Aquarius that would triple their depth numbers. Karl has proven that it can be done reasonably (or as reasonable as these things ever get). However, the fictional version would need certification, and there are some things about Idabel they probably wouldn't pass. So, I'm thinking a witch's brew: take a little Perry, add a pinch of Nuyton, salt with some Delta and bring to a boil with a little Idabel.
The Tritons are pretty and the Seamagines are...well, imaginative, but they aren't oil field tough, and so I'm sticking with steel and guard rails. Besides, even an HY-100 hull would be cheaper than a 5 1/2 foot acrylic ball with hatch and penetrator plate built and tested. I'm guessing this little book sub could be built for about what a Triton 1000 meter pressure hull costs--a quarter million, say, or a little better. And a completed 2-passenger 1000 meter Triton goes for over $2 million, according to the web page.
Phil says an HY-100 Aquarius hull could conceivably do 1km, give or take. That gives me a 7000# sub able to do a LOT! And remember, it's fiction, so I can do what I want. The problem is that the psubs community and the professionals out there will tear strips off me if I take any liberties with what they know to be true, or even nearly true. They don't suffer fools lightly. And besides, my mind doesn't work that way. I want the thing to be accurate, however fanciful it might seem to an outsider.
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Hartwig <
brenthartwig@hotmail.com>
To: PSUBSorg <
personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Sent: Thu, 8 Jan 2009 6:53 pm
Subject: RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Jurassic Shark will air soon on National Geographic
Hi Vance,
They are 3/4" thick, with some thickness changes in some areas do to hot stamping them. I'm looking for that data now so I can run some additional FEA work on Idabel for Karl when I get a couple other projects finished. Steel plate grain direction may also be a factor. The previous FEA work done for Karl some time back, had used a perfect 3/4" thickness through out, and a pretty large element size. Depending on the size of the assembly, and the number of different materials in the assembly, I can pars a pretty small element size with my current CAD computer, which in turn will produce more accurate results. I'm getting ready to switch over to Windows 64 Bit XP, so I can increase my CAD computers RAM to 8 Gigs. Then I can run much larger assemblies with out having to leave it to pars all night, then just crash near the end of it.
"They were built using HY-100 steel rather than HY-80 steel which is what previous classes had used."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seawolf_class_submarine
"HY-80 is a high yield strength (minimum of 80 ksi) , low carbon, low alloy steel with nickel, molybdenum and chromium. It has excellent weldability and notch toughness along with good ductility even in welded sections. "
http://www.suppliersonline.com/propertypages/HY80.asp
Regards,
Szybowski
To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Jurassic Shark will air soon on National Geographic
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 07:24:10 -0500
From:
vbra676539@aol.com
HY-80? Any idea how thick? Thanks for the update.
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Hartwig <
brenthartwig@hotmail.com>
To: PSUBSorg <
personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Sent: Tue, 6 Jan 2009 8:31 pm
Subject: RE: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Jurassic Shark will air soon on National Geographic
Hey Vance,
Karl likes an adventure so he might let you drive. You'll just have to ask him. I know there are a couple areas where he dives that have some serious entanglement issues, but he would be able to tell you were those are, so you can stay clear. I only know of one veiwport failure on Idabel. The lower flat window had at first a bad design and it caused the window to flex unevenly. That was changed in the last refit. There were a couple other viewports that failed in the C-BUG. One reason for those Karl said the conning tower bases needed more reinforcement, so there wouldn't be as much flex as there was. The conning towers will be upgraded in the C-BUG 102 model.
The main large dome window has another thinner dome over it the serves as a front MBT and dome protector. So the scratches to the dome the guy talks about are on the outer MBT dome. I'll have to double check my data when I get on my other computer, but I pretty sure all three spheres are made from hot stamped HY-80. I don't know about the connecting rings. All the weldments were stress relieved twice.
Regards,
Szybowski
To:
personal_submersibles@psubs.org
Subject: Re: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Jurassic Shark will air soon on National Geographic
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 21:16:17 -0500
From:
vbra676539@aol.com
The narrator is right (eventually!) about the shark's sensitivity to a sub's electrical field. They just don't act like that normally. I've spent thousands of hours underwater in subs and can count on my hands the number of sharks that I have seen close up through a viewport. If they had hair, I'd suspect it would be standing up like a static charge will do to a mammal. The light blinds them, and the bait saturates their smell-o-vision, so I'd suspect the behavior filmed is a result of that land critter that Karl talks about baiting with. Otherwise, the sharks would be getting the heck out of Dodge, and pronto.
They baited 6-gills off Bermuda for a couple of years, using a Pisces to do direct observation, but they kept the sub back a bit. Then HBOI ran into one, or rather it ran into them, a couple of years back, and had kind of the same experience with the animal blundering around and hitting stuff. Those folks were some rattled at the time, and maybe still are. Still, it would be seriously cool to see those big dummies down there. And mostly you ain't going to do it any other way except in the Stanleymobile.
What worries me is that the web page says Idabel has had four port failures, fractures large enough to spurt water onto the paying customers. I'd be renting me some strain gauges and a test tank, if it was me. Something is moving too much in there. It seems like I read that the forward sphere is HY100 and the other two are something else. The only thing I know about that is that the Navy refused to classify the old Deep Diver because of disparate metals in the aft DLO compartment, and the sub never worked again in anything deeper than about 300'.
Still, I'd love to see those sharks... Wonder if Karl would let me drive?
Vance
-----Original Message-----
From: Brent Hartwig <
brenthartwig@hotmail.com>
To: PSUBSorg <
personal_submersibles@psubs.org>
Sent: Sun, 4 Jan 2009 7:00 pm
Subject: [PSUBS-MAILIST] Jurassic Shark will air soon on National Geographic
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