Re: support vessels

[David Buchner <buchner@wcta.net>]

At 1003 -0600 11/08/99, Dan J. Rice wrote:

>....Also for those large diver platforms feeding air and power down the lines,  you
>need the surface ship....

Really? How come? Why couldn't a gigantic nuclear-powered boat just hang there off the bottom, "in much the same way bricks don't," supporting divers for days and days regardless of surface conditions? Illuminating the area with huge floodlights to boot? The divers and sub-drivers can return to the sub to eat and sleep, and it can just stay there till the operation is complete. Wait for better weather, and then use balloons to send up the recovered bits they've located, or have divers from the sub attach cables from the big surface ships which have returned to the site.

It just seems like a lot of the danger and inconvenience must be that underwater-surface interface, and the process of going down and going up. Eliminate all of that by having a big staging platform down near the worksite...

>to spend our tax dollars on maintaining a fully operational sub just to go down
>rarely to recover a couple of "black boxes",....

I can imagine lots of other uses for a big sub converted to research/salvage work. I can further imagine that much of the work would be done by private concerns, corporate or nonprofit, who would pay for the service. (Or own the ship outright, but I s'pose there's nuclear concerns, there, and the Navy would want to maintain control of it.)

-- 
David
buchner@wcta.net 
Osage MN USA
http://customer.wcta.net/buchner