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Re: Cousteau's movie etc. (was: ?)
Hi all,
OK, I had a look at the video we've been talking about:
Cousteau's serial about scient. subs meeting:
I missed the beginning and end (ooops!) but the title
is "Those incredible diving machines" and is posterior to 1987
as they mention this date in the movie.
It starts with a very short introduction of manned exploration of the ocean
(scuba gears), then pictures the beginning of exploration subs (Auguste
Piccard and the FNRS II, first Diving-Saucer, Aluminaute that goes to -4500m
NB: this one seems to have wheels and can roll on the sea bottom?! )
Then Cousteau present shortly it's new P500 diving-saucer (stands for "Puce" :
"flea", 500 meters) before testing his idea of having two subs aboard Calypso:
one for rescuing the other: one of the two P500 is driven (piloted? how do you
say for a sub?) down to -430m in a canyon off California and then in a cave.
There it simulates a motor failure. No way to blow ballasts of dropp weight.
Communications off. Only location device is a pinger that keeps on emmitting.
Second sub is launched after surface small boats turned in the area with
hydrophones trying to locate the zone where to search. Second P500 also direct
towards best emission direction. And "directly" finds the first sub.
Then it captures it with its very simple claw-arm take it out of the cave.
Hooorra!! etc... well you know how Cousteau's movies are.
One thing I noticed is that the two subs went down quick and released a weight
when close to the bottom. I would expect they go directly up to the surface:
No they were then neutrally buoyant! They seem to have a extra weight to make
them very negatively buoyant, that is released later... or was it just for the
test?
Then comes the 7 mini-subs meeting. It included:
2 P-500 diving-saucers
Deep-quest
Beaver IV
Nekton
Dobe (spelling?) (NB: just to connect to another thread: this one has NO
VIEWPORTS, just cameras)
All these played a bit together: not very interesting, but pictures of the
P500 exploring the big Kelp-forest are really nice.
End of the Show.
BTW, I have another video that concerns the reconstruction of the accident in
which a russian sub was involved in Nov. 1985 in the Black Sea.
Comment is really not technical so I'll tell you just what they say, but I
don't consider it very reliable in term of how the things really evloved and
why.
At the end of its mission on the sea floor (-210m) the Argos couldn't rise
from the bottom. Reason was unknow. Emergency message sent to surface ship.
Life support time: only 8hours for the 3 crew members.
2 hours later a 25m long research sub, the Benthos, is on site: it can't do
anything else than telling that Argos is stucked into its own cable (is Argos
a tethered sub?...). The cable is more or less all around the sub's motors.
(NB: here I don't know why they couldn't simply blow their ballast or drop
weight). Then at 7h56min (!) after the accident comes a small diver-lock-out
sub
the "Searcher", divers remove cables, sub is free. End.
Cheers.
Axel