WEBVTT - What is the Deep Flight Challenger? 0:00:00.320 --> 0:00:03.000 Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray. 0:00:03.200 --> 0:00:08.920 It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with 0:00:09.080 --> 0:00:18.040 tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi again everyone, 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:20.560 and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette 0:00:20.600 --> 0:00:23.480 and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com. 0:00:23.480 --> 0:00:27.040 Sitting across from me and certainly not out of his depth, 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:31.320 is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I'd like to be under 0:00:31.360 --> 0:00:36.720 the sea, in an octopus's garden in the shade. Hey, nice, 0:00:36.840 --> 0:00:40.960 thank you. We actually have a first for tech Stuff 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.879 to introduce. This is our very first audio request. We 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.839 had a fan send this in, so let's play the 0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:51.240 audio request from Nate. Hey guys, this is Nate calling 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:53.680 in from London. I just thought you'd like to know 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:55.560 that one night a couple of weeks ago, I spent 0:00:55.600 --> 0:00:58.000 two hours less sleeping because I was too busy reading 0:00:58.040 --> 0:01:01.280 about submarines. Um. It was the day that Richard Branson 0:01:01.280 --> 0:01:04.960 announced Virgin Oceanic, which is the mission to send a 0:01:05.240 --> 0:01:09.040 special one man submarine to the deepest parts of Earth's 0:01:09.040 --> 0:01:11.800 oceans and see what's down there and have a play. 0:01:11.840 --> 0:01:14.760 I guess, but the submarine just fascinated me. It's an 0:01:14.800 --> 0:01:17.000 amazing piece of tech from what I've read, and really 0:01:17.040 --> 0:01:19.759 the idea of sending a person to those depths hasn't 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:22.399 been done for decades and certainly hasn't been done with 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:25.399 any kind of modern technology involved. And I thought that 0:01:25.400 --> 0:01:27.960 would make a pretty awesome topic for a show. So 0:01:28.360 --> 0:01:30.399 here's hoping you might do that one day. Love the show, 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:32.679 speech to you later. All right, guys, that was Nate. 0:01:33.160 --> 0:01:36.399 Actually we have to tell everyone who that who Nate is. 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:41.720 Typically we we don't use last names with celebrity, not 0:01:41.840 --> 0:01:44.640 just an audio request, but a celebrity audio request. This 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.240 guy is phenomenal? Is Nate links? Yes, he has a 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.520 he has a tech journalist hero Yeah. Formerly I've seen 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.240 at current editor of Wired dot co dot uk. Uh, 0:01:55.280 --> 0:02:00.800 snazzy dresser, perfectly quafft fan of death metal. Nate is 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.560 a man of many facets. I'm not even joking. You 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:07.440 should follow his Twitter feed sometime you'll find listings of 0:02:07.480 --> 0:02:10.160 bands that I never knew existed. I'm a punk rocker. 0:02:10.240 --> 0:02:13.840 He's a thrasher, right, super cool guy, Nate, Thank you 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:15.880 so much for sending that in. And this is our 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:19.240 three first episode, so it's a new era. With tech stuff, 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.440 we thought we would tackle this topic. So we're talking 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.239 about deep sea exploration, and we're going to talk about 0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:31.000 the deep Flight Challenger particularly, but before we do, let's 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:35.800 talk about kind of the history of deep sea exploration. Alright, yeah, 0:02:35.800 --> 0:02:38.880 I mean it's it's not been h This is certainly 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.280 not a technology that's been around for hundreds and hundreds 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:44.040 and hundreds of Oh wait, you mean it has been 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.360 around for a few hundred years. Basic, Well, if we 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:49.920 talk about the very basic technology, yeah, it's been around 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.840 for a few centuries. But even then we're talking about 0:02:52.919 --> 0:02:55.840 some pretty limited explorations. So back in the day, which 0:02:55.919 --> 0:02:59.600 was a Thursday, it's just weird, right, But back in 0:02:59.639 --> 0:03:04.040 that Thursday, Um, back in the ancient times, essentially people thought, 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:07.120 all right, oceans have life in them. That's clear. We 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:09.720 could see the life. We we fish, we get fish. 0:03:10.000 --> 0:03:12.600 But in general people thought, well, the deeper you go, 0:03:12.720 --> 0:03:15.120 the less life you were bound to encounter, until you 0:03:15.160 --> 0:03:18.040 reached a point where there's just no life. Right. You 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:21.240 get to a certain depth and nothing is living down there, 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:24.320 and by the time you hit the ocean floor, it's 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:28.000 just essentially a desert, a lifeless desert. That was the 0:03:28.440 --> 0:03:34.840 thinking until probably about the seventeenth century UM. But the 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:39.280 one of the earliest forms of technology to test to 0:03:39.680 --> 0:03:42.680 kind of figure out how deep the ocean was came 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:45.800 out of the days of the vikings, and that was 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.560 a sounding weight. Sounding weight, yeah, which is pretty much 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:52.920 what sounds like. It was a weight tied to a 0:03:53.040 --> 0:03:55.720 line and you would lower the line over the side 0:03:55.720 --> 0:03:58.640 of a boat until you hit the bottom and then 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:02.760 you would draw the weight back up to the surface 0:04:03.120 --> 0:04:05.960 and you would measure how long the line was and 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:08.560 that would tell you how deep the ocean was. And 0:04:09.000 --> 0:04:12.080 back in the earliest days, the way that you would 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.480 measure this is a sailor would hold the line out 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:19.680 between his arms, so he stretches arms out and one 0:04:19.839 --> 0:04:24.560 length of that would be a fathom. That's hard for 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:27.880 me to fathom, and you know why because it seems 0:04:27.920 --> 0:04:31.320 like that would be different for every sailor. Yeah, the 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:37.720 averages around uh six, it's like a six ft length total. 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:40.320 That was the That was essentially what a fathom was, 0:04:40.400 --> 0:04:43.400 so not truly a standardized measure, right because it was 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:46.279 based upon whoever happened to be holding the line, and 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:49.360 if you had Stubby McGhee doing it, well, then you're 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.200 gonna have a lot more fathoms than if stretch over. 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:54.920 There was measuring out the line, but so not in 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:56.760 exact signs, but it was getting there right, It was 0:04:56.800 --> 0:04:59.640 it was at least an attempt to measure how deep 0:04:59.680 --> 0:05:01.919 the ocean and was. And of course we've heard the 0:05:02.040 --> 0:05:05.520 term fathom before and things like or that's leagues. What 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:07.680 am I doing? I don't even know what I'm talking about. 0:05:08.040 --> 0:05:10.279 Christ you gotta stop me before I do that. Actually, 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:12.200 when I think of fathom, I think it's really really 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.200 uh the game for the gonna say really really bad. 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:18.400 But no, actually a lot of people like it. It 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:22.240 was just very simple in which you're a dolphin. Anyway, Well, 0:05:22.279 --> 0:05:24.920 I was thinking of the thing that was messing me up. 0:05:24.960 --> 0:05:26.680 Was I think of a different Disney film than twenty 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:33.039 thousand Leagues under the Sea about the fathoms below. Yeah. See, 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:34.720 that's the problem is that I'm thinking about I've got 0:05:34.720 --> 0:05:37.279 a vacation planned where I'm going on a Disney vacation, 0:05:37.400 --> 0:05:40.880 and Disney has taken over my entire world right now, Well, 0:05:40.920 --> 0:05:43.360 are you going under the ocean? Though, No, I'm not 0:05:43.360 --> 0:05:45.200 gonna go under the ocean, but we're gonna talk about 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:48.320 going under the ocean. So you know, let's skip ahead 0:05:48.440 --> 0:05:50.719 from the Viking days to that seventeenth century I was 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:55.360 talking about before that was the debatably that was around 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:59.400 the time of the first submarine. Um and I say 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:02.479 debatedly because it all depends upon whom you ask about 0:06:02.520 --> 0:06:05.480 when the first submarine was created and how viable it was. 0:06:05.880 --> 0:06:10.520 But there was a Dutch inventor, Cornelius van Drebble. Okay, 0:06:10.560 --> 0:06:15.080 he created one that was a wooden frame sheathed in leather. 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:18.360 It had oars sticking out the side. It had very 0:06:18.360 --> 0:06:22.239 close fitting leather flaps ceiling the holes that the oars 0:06:22.279 --> 0:06:25.760 went through, and was designed to go underwater. And he 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:29.560 tested it in the Thames. Supposedly, King James the First 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:34.280 himself did a test ride on it. I can't imagine. Yeah, 0:06:34.320 --> 0:06:38.440 that's gonna be like this very well, maybe an apocryphal story, 0:06:38.560 --> 0:06:41.839 because you think would the King of England and Scotland 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:44.800 put himself at such risk as to be in an 0:06:45.440 --> 0:06:49.680 underwater a submersible vehicle in the first of all the Thames. 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:54.120 Have you seen the Thames? Oh? I have a few times. 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:56.480 It's a lovely place. Anyway, you wouldn't want to be 0:06:56.560 --> 0:06:59.479 underwater there. So you know, I know, if if the 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.680 king did go in the submarine, I know why he 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:10.320 would want to Is that so he could see whales? Uh? Nice? Nice? 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:12.120 You know what we should also point out, of course, 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:14.640 if you didn't hear from Nate's accent, he is of 0:07:14.640 --> 0:07:18.000 course British, so he's getting all these Anglo file jokes 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.200 that were going. So but no, I'm sure a lot 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:25.160 of people know of the UH Revolutionary War story here 0:07:25.160 --> 0:07:27.440 in the United States, and this is not going to 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:31.720 make the UH people from the UK very happy. Maybe 0:07:31.800 --> 0:07:34.040 I don't know. I guess that's all water under the bridge, 0:07:34.080 --> 0:07:36.280 but I would be rid of us now. Yeah. Really, 0:07:36.760 --> 0:07:39.080 so a lot of people probably remember that there was 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:43.600 a very rudimentary submarine used in the Revolutionary War between 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:46.960 England and the and what would be later the United 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:50.160 States the English colonies. Um, and uh, you know, I'm 0:07:50.200 --> 0:07:53.000 going from memory, but I'm pretty sure it was. You know, 0:07:53.000 --> 0:07:56.080 it's very simple and I think it only used a spear. Yeah, 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:59.560 essentially it was designed to ram into enemy shops. Yes, 0:07:59.640 --> 0:08:03.480 it did not do very well, but it does get 0:08:03.560 --> 0:08:05.760 a page in the history well, a paragraph in the 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:08.720 history books for you also hear about about attempts during 0:08:08.720 --> 0:08:11.680 the Civil War as well, and right around that same time, 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.520 so you know, we're talking about wartime applications of submersible 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:21.000 vehicles made to disrupt either trade or or wartime ship movements. 0:08:21.320 --> 0:08:23.960 But at the same time, or roughly around the same time, 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.280 just a few years after the Civil War, you had 0:08:27.400 --> 0:08:33.280 a ship that was specifically trying to to plumb the 0:08:33.360 --> 0:08:36.320 depths of the ocean and learn more about what is 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.400 going on deep in the ocean floor. That's around eighteen 0:08:39.440 --> 0:08:41.160 seventy two to eighteen seventy six. Do you know what 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:43.320 ship I'm talking about? No, I don't, Jonathan, Why don't 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:45.280 you tell me? So we're going to talk about the 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.640 Deep Flight Challenger. Well, the Deep Flight Challenger is named 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:51.840 after two things. It's named after the Challenger Deep Trench, 0:08:51.920 --> 0:08:54.480 which is a very deep trench in the ocean off 0:08:54.520 --> 0:08:59.439 in the Pacific Ocean. And it's named after the h M. S. Challenger, 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:04.440 her Majesty's ship during the reign of Queen Victoria who 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:09.199 sat on the Thorn for sixty years throne. Sorry, now 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:11.640 it's an englished English Have you ever read the book? Now? 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:14.840 Queen Victoria sat on a thorn for sixty years. She 0:09:15.120 --> 0:09:18.080 uh so so her Majesty's ship, the Challenger. Now, the 0:09:18.160 --> 0:09:21.679 Challenger started off as a warship. It was a corvette 0:09:21.920 --> 0:09:25.080 class ship, and it was a It was used in 0:09:25.320 --> 0:09:29.920 in various UH conflicts UH in various parts of the world, 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:35.000 but eventually was converted into a laboratory. It was a 0:09:35.040 --> 0:09:37.880 floating laboratory. It's English, so I can say it like that. 0:09:38.000 --> 0:09:42.160 I'm not saying. And anyway, they were They covered around 0:09:42.160 --> 0:09:46.600 a hundred and twenty seven thousand kilometers, so around sixty 0:09:46.679 --> 0:09:51.280 eight thousand, almost sixty nine thousand nautical miles and was 0:09:51.920 --> 0:09:54.280 we we think of the HMS Challenger as being the 0:09:54.320 --> 0:09:58.880 first real serious study of deep sea exploration. And they 0:09:58.920 --> 0:10:01.199 took samples for on the sea floor, and they did 0:10:01.559 --> 0:10:04.040 essentially the same way. They would lower a weight down 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:07.200 into the ocean until it hit and it would actually 0:10:07.240 --> 0:10:10.600 scoop up some of the betting on the sea floor. 0:10:10.640 --> 0:10:12.880 When they brought it back up, they collected specimens of 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:15.120 deep sea life that no one had ever seen before 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.720 at that point. UM. It was the first real serious 0:10:18.760 --> 0:10:23.720 study of that of that UH environment, and since then 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.480 various scientists and explorers and adventurers have been interested in 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:33.440 really diving down and finding out more about that environment. Uh. 0:10:34.000 --> 0:10:35.400 And I was going to talk a little bit about 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:39.079 a couple of other predecessors to the deep flight challenge. 0:10:39.360 --> 0:10:43.400 For example, the bathosphere. I remember the bath sphere. I 0:10:43.440 --> 0:10:45.960 can't say the bathosphere, but I remember it. Yeah. It 0:10:45.960 --> 0:10:49.760 was developed in the in the thirties by William Beebe 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.160 and Otis Barton, and they were both from the New 0:10:53.200 --> 0:10:56.520 York Zoological Society. And it was it was four and 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:02.360 a half thousand pound hollow steel ball. Well it's about 0:11:02.400 --> 0:11:05.840 five ft in diameter, and the idea was that you 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:08.600 would carry this on a ship. You would use a 0:11:08.600 --> 0:11:12.400 crane to move it over the ocean and then lower 0:11:12.480 --> 0:11:15.960 it into the ocean. It was not uh, it was 0:11:15.960 --> 0:11:19.000 not powered in any way for for mobility. You would 0:11:19.000 --> 0:11:22.760 actually lower it on a cable. Electricity would create the 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.920 necessary power for the oxygen system within the bathosphere. But 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:31.000 in order to circulate the air, whoever was in the 0:11:31.000 --> 0:11:36.800 bathosphere actually used a handheld palm front fan to circulate 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.400 the air. They used chemicals to absorb carbon dioxide and 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:42.960 moisture so that that way it wouldn't that you know, 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.280 you wouldn't just have a coating of water all over 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:48.840 everything inside the bathosphere, and it wouldn't the air wouldn't 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.040 get stale, because you do have to find a way 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:53.640 to scrub the carbon dioxide out of a submersible. That's 0:11:53.679 --> 0:11:56.520 one of the challenges. Yeah, I remember the you know, 0:11:56.559 --> 0:11:59.840 things like diving bells and the diving suits that you 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:02.800 always see it the in the older movies where they 0:12:02.880 --> 0:12:05.040 have the helmet and the hose and somebody's up on 0:12:05.080 --> 0:12:09.080 the ship cranking the hand crank piston driven air pump, 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:13.880 so they were pumping bellows down into Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:12:14.160 --> 0:12:16.360 very similar. And yeah, so you have to you still 0:12:16.400 --> 0:12:17.719 have to deal with that because you've got to have 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:20.920 a source of air. The first thing dropped down to 0:12:21.000 --> 0:12:25.000 around three thousand feet down into the ocean, which was 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:27.320 pretty deep for the time being. And uh, and it 0:12:27.440 --> 0:12:30.800 was they saw a lot of animals that had never 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.920 been observed before. They essentially wrote down everything they saw. 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:37.720 But again, they couldn't move around. It was just dropping 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.679 down and then cranked back up and that's it. Uh. 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:43.720 Later on I read that there was there were some 0:12:43.920 --> 0:12:47.600 sub scientists in the sixties who actually used essentially the 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:51.320 bathosphere to descend into the Mariana Trench, which is the 0:12:51.360 --> 0:12:54.840 deepest point in the ocean. They didn't go all the 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.319 way down, but they went I think around thirty five 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.199 thousand feet down, which is lower than anyone else has 0:13:00.200 --> 0:13:03.400 ever been before. Uh, at least until we see if 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:08.040 the Deep Light Challenger project as a success. Um. There 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:11.560 were some other early attempts. There was the the Bathist Gaffe, 0:13:12.559 --> 0:13:16.480 which was designed by a Belgian scientist, m August Picard, 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:23.880 possibly an ancestor of John Luke. And uh, this one 0:13:23.920 --> 0:13:26.920 was attached to a tank, a free floating tank as 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:29.680 opposed to attached to a vessel, but same the same 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:31.520 sort of thing. It was lowered down into the ocean 0:13:31.520 --> 0:13:35.560 and um, yeah, it had a little bit more freedom 0:13:35.559 --> 0:13:38.880 of movement than the bathmosphere. You had the Alvin you 0:13:38.880 --> 0:13:41.440 may have heard of the Alvin that was that was 0:13:41.679 --> 0:13:45.079 an early submersible as well that was used for exploration, 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:50.680 the the Johnson Sea Link. Uh. These are pretty funky 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:53.120 looking things that there. If you've ever seen The Abyss, 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:55.480 the film The Abyss, you know they're in those kind 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.280 of spherical saw it in the theater. Yeah, yeah, so 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.400 those things, that's that's kind of based on that that 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:05.960 design there's uh. They're also sometimes called deep rover submersibles 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:10.000 the UM there that are operated by the Deep Ocean 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.480 Expeditions Company, So the deep rovers. They also look like 0:14:13.559 --> 0:14:15.160 the ones that were used in The Abyss, and James 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:19.560 Cameron has used those for other projects, UM not not 0:14:19.680 --> 0:14:22.960 the Abyss specifically, although again the vehicles in that movie 0:14:22.960 --> 0:14:25.360 were based off of this UM. He used it an 0:14:25.400 --> 0:14:28.400 Aliens of the Deep his his Uh, you know that 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:35.120 that Nature film of deep sea creatures being under the ocean. Yes, 0:14:35.160 --> 0:14:38.280 he does. Apparently he's a big fan of that UM 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:41.200 and he's a customer of, or at least a potential 0:14:41.200 --> 0:14:45.320 customer of, the same company that makes the Challenger UM. 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.880 So I guess we can now sort of talk about 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:51.320 what the Challenger is. Yes, you had an other thing 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.720 to add, well, I mean, I think our listeners probably 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:57.840 will recognize that we're leaving out a pretty big step 0:14:58.040 --> 0:15:01.680 in between, which is, you know, the development from going 0:15:01.760 --> 0:15:05.200 from like a device like the bathosphere where you really 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:09.040 don't have a whole lot of control to modern you know, 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:14.240 well older and mid modern submarines development between and century, 0:15:14.240 --> 0:15:16.760 and we really don't We probably should do a separate 0:15:16.760 --> 0:15:19.720 podcast on that. But I mean, you know, we're we're 0:15:19.760 --> 0:15:23.600 talking about machines that you know, can store air and 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:26.480 have powered to stay underwater for long periods of time, 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:30.640 some of which you know, can hold many many people. Yeah, 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:32.880 we should probably talk about the difference between a submarine 0:15:32.920 --> 0:15:35.720 and a submersible. I think that would be Yeah. So 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:38.840 a submarine is essentially it's a boat that goes underwater, 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.040 is really what you're talking about. And it's and it's 0:15:41.040 --> 0:15:43.440 a sustain it's a self sustaining kind of thing in 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:46.280 the sense that it doesn't depend upon a larger vehicle 0:15:46.840 --> 0:15:52.560 to get around, uh more than a few kilometers, right, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:57.480 Like most submarines can go incredible distances, especially the nuclear 0:15:57.520 --> 0:16:01.120 submarines because you have that nuclear power going. Um. But yeah, 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:05.440 these these submarines are capable of traveling vast distances either 0:16:05.920 --> 0:16:09.720 submerged or you know, they can you know, various forms 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:11.480 of travel. They could go either under the water, over 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.040 the water, not not on top of but you know, anyway, 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:17.840 the point being that they don't depend on a larger 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:22.680 boat to uh to travel around, right, They're not dropped off, right, 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:24.960 and some of them can stay underwater for weeks at 0:16:24.960 --> 0:16:29.240 a time. Um, some of them use a caterpillar drive. Yeah. Yeah, 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:33.600 that'd be the Red October. Yeah. So what we're talking 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:36.560 about is sort of a step in between when I 0:16:36.640 --> 0:16:38.880 when I and again in my head I'm thinking when 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:43.080 I think submarines, I'm thinking, you know, like the warships, um, 0:16:43.120 --> 0:16:46.320 you know, large large submarines. This, this submarine, the weird 0:16:46.560 --> 0:16:50.320 that that Nate specifically wants to ask about or did 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:55.000 ask us about, um, is a much much smaller machine. 0:16:55.040 --> 0:16:57.680 In fact, it only holds one person. And this is 0:16:57.720 --> 0:17:01.360 where we get into sort of the submersible realm submersibles 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:03.600 are are. It's kind of like the turns between a 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.280 boat and a ship, right, YEA. Arguably you could say 0:17:07.280 --> 0:17:09.760 a ship is any vessel that's large enough to hold 0:17:09.800 --> 0:17:11.840 a boat, and a boat is any vessel small enough 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:14.720 to fit on a ship. Square is the rectangle, but 0:17:14.760 --> 0:17:17.720 not every rectangle is quare. So submersible tends to be 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.600 part of a you know, it depends on a mother ship, 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:24.720 you know, or some other vehicle where it is deployed 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:27.800 from that mother ship and then can go and explore. 0:17:27.880 --> 0:17:30.760 But it can't travel vast different distances on its own. 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:33.520 It's not meant for that and uh. And that's the 0:17:33.520 --> 0:17:35.600 case with the Challenger. It's also the case of other 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:39.000 big famous submersibles like the Mirror one and the Mere two. 0:17:39.560 --> 0:17:42.320 These were developed by at one time the Soviet Union. 0:17:43.040 --> 0:17:48.080 It's built by a company in Finland, and then when 0:17:48.080 --> 0:17:51.320 they were finally produced, actually they were purchased by the 0:17:51.400 --> 0:17:56.919 same exploration company that uses the deep rovers same the 0:17:56.920 --> 0:17:59.639 same one uses the Mirror one and mir two for 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:04.119 x opration. Uh So, like I said, it's not the 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:07.919 only submersible out there. There's a one built in Japan 0:18:08.000 --> 0:18:12.439 that was called the Shinkai. That one currently holds the 0:18:12.480 --> 0:18:17.520 record for the deepest submersible exploration, and that one went 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:22.879 down to six thousand Thus in the name, so they 0:18:22.960 --> 0:18:26.119 name it after they dove. Yeah. Yeah, if they had 0:18:26.160 --> 0:18:30.120 gone just a little further than the one. Uh but yeah, 0:18:30.160 --> 0:18:34.320 that's those are famous. We can't not mention them because 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.480 they are out there. But it's child's play compared to 0:18:37.600 --> 0:18:40.360 what the Challenger is supposed to do. You know, when 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:42.359 I think of a submersible too, I'm I'm thinking of 0:18:42.400 --> 0:18:47.359 something that can't go very deep, just because you know, 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:49.960 it's a smaller ship. It's it's sort of limited in 0:18:49.960 --> 0:18:54.639 its capacity, but this is a very unique, uh unique vessel. 0:18:55.240 --> 0:18:57.840 So the ship was actually commissioned by somebody who is 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:01.080 a famous adventurer on his own, who sadly is no 0:19:01.160 --> 0:19:03.879 longer with us, in an attempt to uh set a 0:19:03.880 --> 0:19:07.720 world record, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about Fawcett, 0:19:08.160 --> 0:19:12.960 Steve Fawcett. Steve Fawcett, billionaire adventurer he uh he had 0:19:13.440 --> 0:19:18.040 back in two thousand five, was thinking about investing in this, 0:19:18.040 --> 0:19:22.920 this potential vehicle that would be able to break all 0:19:23.040 --> 0:19:27.159 records of deep sea exploration, manned deep sea exploration and 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.399 in fact unmanned as well. No unmanned vehicle would go 0:19:30.480 --> 0:19:32.640 as deep as what he was looking for. He wanted 0:19:32.680 --> 0:19:34.720 to have something that could go along the bottom of 0:19:34.720 --> 0:19:38.400 the Mariana Trench and and take a look firsthand at 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.200 this alien world that no one else has ever seen 0:19:41.240 --> 0:19:44.760 in person, and most of us have only seen, you know, 0:19:44.920 --> 0:19:48.640 bits and pieces of it through unmanned vehicle footage. There 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:53.159 were there was one bathosphere uh journey that did go 0:19:53.240 --> 0:19:55.840 down that low, so technically a couple of people saw 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:58.520 at one level, but they were not able to go 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.000 all the way down like like Fawcett wanted to. And 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:06.800 so Fawcett talked to a guy, um uh Graham Hawks. 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.240 Graham Hawks is a UH kind of an engineer inventor 0:20:12.840 --> 0:20:17.480 UH marines specialist. Talked to Graham Hawks about the possibility 0:20:17.600 --> 0:20:22.479 of creating this this vehicle, and Um Graham Hawks is 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:26.679 the head of Hawks Ocean Technologies, and he started to 0:20:26.680 --> 0:20:31.040 work on the deep Flight submersibles and specifically the Deep 0:20:31.040 --> 0:20:35.240 Flight Challenger. The sad store part of this story is 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:38.960 that Fawcett died in two thousand seven in an airplane crash. 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.080 And he died apparently just a couple of weeks before 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.480 they had planned to announce the Deep Flight Challenger and 0:20:45.560 --> 0:20:48.840 the purpose for this vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench. 0:20:50.320 --> 0:20:54.760 With his death, the whole project took a massive setback. 0:20:54.920 --> 0:20:57.480 I mean, it was clearly a terrible tragedy. And also 0:20:57.600 --> 0:21:00.480 it just it meant that the driving force was behind 0:21:00.520 --> 0:21:04.480 this development was suddenly gone all right, And and Fawcett 0:21:04.600 --> 0:21:09.480 was a champion of adventure and exploration and pushing human 0:21:09.520 --> 0:21:13.080 achievement to the limits in every venue, and so to 0:21:13.160 --> 0:21:17.199 lose that that evangelist was a big blow. Well in 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:22.280 two thousand and ten, a fellow named Chris Welsh pilot 0:21:22.320 --> 0:21:26.000 here who had uh was really interested in this project 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:28.719 kind of took up the torch. So in twos ten, 0:21:29.160 --> 0:21:32.359 three years after Faston's death, Chris Welch picks up the 0:21:32.359 --> 0:21:37.320 the the the the torch and runs with it. He 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:41.560 starts to push for the project to start again and 0:21:41.600 --> 0:21:45.040 gets the interest of Virgin Oceanic, which is a brand 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:51.800 new company formed by another incredibly wealthy adventurer thrill seeker, 0:21:52.280 --> 0:21:55.360 who also happened to be a friend of Steve Fawcett. Yeah, 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:59.200 and this was who Nate mentioned, Richard Branson. So Branson 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:03.679 now has picked up where his friend left off and says, 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:06.960 all right, we want to use the Deep Flight Challenger 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:10.440 to go on a series of five dives. And why 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:15.000 five Because he wants to visit the five deepest points 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:17.240 of each of the well, the the deepest point of 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:20.680 each of the five oceans, so that means the Mariana 0:22:20.720 --> 0:22:23.040 Trench in the Pacific. And then he wants to go 0:22:23.160 --> 0:22:25.280 to all the other deep points and all the other 0:22:25.280 --> 0:22:28.720 oceans and uh and do an exploration run. And so 0:22:28.920 --> 0:22:32.479 the Deep Flight Challenger is his um, his vehicle of choice. 0:22:32.800 --> 0:22:34.959 So let's talk a little bit about this vehicle and 0:22:35.000 --> 0:22:37.879 what makes it so special yet is fascinating. I have 0:22:38.000 --> 0:22:42.040 to admit, um, it's about seventeen ft eight inches long, 0:22:42.400 --> 0:22:47.080 twelve ft eleven inches wide and five ft seven inches high. 0:22:48.000 --> 0:22:51.720 Um weighs about eight thousand pounds, and it's it's actually 0:22:51.760 --> 0:22:56.119 made of carbon fiber and titanium. Uh, and you know 0:22:56.480 --> 0:22:59.280 probably some other stuff. Well, if you duct tape maybe 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:01.560 according to Ram Hawks, if you had made it just 0:23:01.720 --> 0:23:05.719 from titanium, it wouldn't survive the pressures at three six 0:23:06.040 --> 0:23:09.880 feet because you're talking about massive amounts of pressure up 0:23:09.960 --> 0:23:12.680 to around say, oh, I don't know, twenty thousand pounds 0:23:12.720 --> 0:23:17.879 per square inch. That's intense pressure. So you have to 0:23:17.880 --> 0:23:22.040 be able to create a structure that's going to withstand that. 0:23:22.200 --> 0:23:26.280 And the carbon fibers are extremely resilient. According to Graham 0:23:26.359 --> 0:23:27.879 Hawks in one interview I read I think it was 0:23:27.880 --> 0:23:31.880