Re: To anyone designing or building a sub

[Ben Trumble <trumble@well.com>]

I'd be very curious as to what operational depth was intended to be on the
hull that imploded?  2000ft is pretty bleeping deep for any boat that
doesn't come out of a commercial shop.  Although my building experience has
been with semi-dry boats, rather than 1 atmosphere subs, I have given some
thought to building a dry sub in the near future, and it would never occurr
to me to test the hull at any depth greater than 66% of the projected crush
for the simple reason that I see the maximum operational depth as 33% of
the crush.  My own rule of thumb for semi-dry boats, and I think it should
apply to homebuild dry subs as well is, don't venture into water deeper
that you can bottom within your safety range.  If my projected crush was
400 fathoms, I'd probably weight the hull and test to 1500 feet -- but I'd
never take a man boat into water deeper than 800'.  I too would interested
to know more about hull?  Particularly it's length, diameter, viewports,
and support structure.  Was the hull recovered?  They'd didn't just attach
the cable to the con, did they?

Ben

"I never met a rattlesnake I didn't like."