Diesel/Electrics

["Marsee Skidmore" <heyred@email.msn.com>]

AIP is wonderful Tom Swift stuff, but I consider it a Poor Man's Nuke. It's
nice if you're trying to hide from ASW aircraft, and it's nice if you want
to go as fast submerged as on the surface. Psubbers aren't running or hiding
from anybody. Yes, diesels are heavy, but we're not building airplanes here.
Diesel/Electric propulsion isn't trick, but it falls under the Engineering
umbrella of "Good Enough." As for girls, they generally use less oxygen. :-o
Joe


>    A while back I looked up some sub stuff on the internet regarding subs
>with AIP (air independent propulsion), and found some references to
>somebody's Navy using stirlings.  They used some kind of closed
>oxygen/ethanol boiler<?> to generate heat to run the stirlings.  Building
>a homebuilt closed boiler using oxygen as an oxidizer seems a bit
>daunting.  However, barring that I think using stirlings would be efficient
>because they could operate on the surface or underwater.  [That's also why
>I'm attracted to using fuel cells.  With diesel-electric propulsion, as
soon
>as you submerge your diesels become humungous paper weights. <g>
>Fuel cells can work in either environment... just use atmospheric air
>on the surface, and compressed (or liquid) oxygen below the surface.]]
>
>    All girl crew?  I don't know... let me think about that one for awhile.
>
>    OKAY! <G>
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