Hi Russ!
In my much much younger years of Middle School and early High School I had a notebook of “ideas” that I scribbled in of projects that I’d think oot on paper as there wasn’t an ice cubes chance on a hot summers day of ever building. But paper and pencils were cheap so I doodled, and sketched up ideas that I’d then read up on potential problems and modify the doodles. One of those doodles was a one person wet/dry submarine. After figuring out how much pressure built up and how quickly that pressure increased with depth the technical challenges and costs of a dry sub became quite evident. I even got around to figuring out the estimated “crush” depth of a coffee can and tested it out on a deep lake one summer by lowering it on the end of a string. It took a couple tries but seeing that collapsed can really impressed me! Ouch!
I repeated the experiment with another can but with a deliberate dent and found out that even a small flaw dramatically reduced the depth at which the can imploded. Kind of an eye opener as to the risks involved in a dry sub.
Not entertaining the concept of becoming ‘squished’ I changed tactics and looked into something slightly less lethal in the form of a wet/dry submarine…basically an upside-down bucket. While the trapped airspace would become increasingly pressurized with depth it’s structure was virtually impossible to collapse even with increasingly egregious precondition damages to it. So it basically was limited to the same limitations as a scuba diver would contend with. Much simpler and safer from a structural perspective.
I further evolved the designs to make it into what we now call a cabled ROV skipping the human risk factor entirely by incorporating multi axis sonar and cameras. The technology of the time back then was crude by today’s standards but the concepts and progression of designs along with the design notes annotating the logic were validated by my namesake adopted uncle who was a technical engineering professor when he came across my notebook back in the day. He spent several days going over it making notes in the margins of various aspects and potentially improved means to analyze my designs. He was really happy about it all and a real encouragement. (I still miss him….).
But all that was just the musings of a kid… an adult with a purported science background should have done his homework first and recognized the enormity of what would be entailed in even the concept of a nearly 100 ft long underwater vessel before buying anything.
Just a long term waste of time and resources otherwise.
Best Regards,
Over Easy
