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I’m sorry if this sounds like a stupid question but
here it is. Virtually all submarines and submersibles have some metal ballast
and one or more ballast tanks that are filled with water to submerge and
cleared with compressed air to surface. Why not just add metal ballast
until the vessel has slightly positive buoyancy and use dive planes to “fly”
down to whatever depth you want? This eliminates the complexity of tanks,
lines, valves, and compressed air. I realize that the submarine would not be able to hover at a
specific depth and could not descend vertically. Is this important? I can see that a military submarine would need to dive
quickly but that doesn’t apply to a personal submersible. A submersible with slightly positive buoyancy would not have
much freeboard. Is that the problem? If the load was changed, the ballast would have to be
changed. That doesn’t seem to be a problem with a personal
submersible. Thanks for your help. Alan |