Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi again everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I am an editor at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me and certainly not out of his depth,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. I'd like to be under
Speaker 1: the sea, in an octopus's garden in the shade. Hey, nice,
Speaker 1: thank you. We actually have a first for tech Stuff
Speaker 1: to introduce. This is our very first audio request. We
Speaker 1: had a fan send this in, so let's play the
Speaker 1: audio request from Nate. Hey guys, this is Nate calling
Speaker 1: in from London. I just thought you'd like to know
Speaker 1: that one night a couple of weeks ago, I spent
Speaker 1: two hours less sleeping because I was too busy reading
Speaker 1: about submarines. Um. It was the day that Richard Branson
Speaker 1: announced Virgin Oceanic, which is the mission to send a
Speaker 1: special one man submarine to the deepest parts of Earth's
Speaker 1: oceans and see what's down there and have a play.
Speaker 1: I guess, but the submarine just fascinated me. It's an
Speaker 1: amazing piece of tech from what I've read, and really
Speaker 1: the idea of sending a person to those depths hasn't
Speaker 1: been done for decades and certainly hasn't been done with
Speaker 1: any kind of modern technology involved. And I thought that
Speaker 1: would make a pretty awesome topic for a show. So
Speaker 1: here's hoping you might do that one day. Love the show,
Speaker 1: speech to you later. All right, guys, that was Nate.
Speaker 1: Actually we have to tell everyone who that who Nate is.
Speaker 1: Typically we we don't use last names with celebrity, not
Speaker 1: just an audio request, but a celebrity audio request. This
Speaker 1: guy is phenomenal? Is Nate links? Yes, he has a
Speaker 1: he has a tech journalist hero Yeah. Formerly I've seen
Speaker 1: at current editor of Wired dot co dot uk. Uh,
Speaker 1: snazzy dresser, perfectly quafft fan of death metal. Nate is
Speaker 1: a man of many facets. I'm not even joking. You
Speaker 1: should follow his Twitter feed sometime you'll find listings of
Speaker 1: bands that I never knew existed. I'm a punk rocker.
Speaker 1: He's a thrasher, right, super cool guy, Nate, Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for sending that in. And this is our
Speaker 1: three first episode, so it's a new era. With tech stuff,
Speaker 1: we thought we would tackle this topic. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about deep sea exploration, and we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the deep Flight Challenger particularly, but before we do, let's
Speaker 1: talk about kind of the history of deep sea exploration. Alright, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's not been h This is certainly
Speaker 1: not a technology that's been around for hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of Oh wait, you mean it has been
Speaker 1: around for a few hundred years. Basic, Well, if we
Speaker 1: talk about the very basic technology, yeah, it's been around
Speaker 1: for a few centuries. But even then we're talking about
Speaker 1: some pretty limited explorations. So back in the day, which
Speaker 1: was a Thursday, it's just weird, right, But back in
Speaker 1: that Thursday, Um, back in the ancient times, essentially people thought,
Speaker 1: all right, oceans have life in them. That's clear. We
Speaker 1: could see the life. We we fish, we get fish.
Speaker 1: But in general people thought, well, the deeper you go,
Speaker 1: the less life you were bound to encounter, until you
Speaker 1: reached a point where there's just no life. Right. You
Speaker 1: get to a certain depth and nothing is living down there,
Speaker 1: and by the time you hit the ocean floor, it's
Speaker 1: just essentially a desert, a lifeless desert. That was the
Speaker 1: thinking until probably about the seventeenth century UM. But the
Speaker 1: one of the earliest forms of technology to test to
Speaker 1: kind of figure out how deep the ocean was came
Speaker 1: out of the days of the vikings, and that was
Speaker 1: a sounding weight. Sounding weight, yeah, which is pretty much
Speaker 1: what sounds like. It was a weight tied to a
Speaker 1: line and you would lower the line over the side
Speaker 1: of a boat until you hit the bottom and then
Speaker 1: you would draw the weight back up to the surface
Speaker 1: and you would measure how long the line was and
Speaker 1: that would tell you how deep the ocean was. And
Speaker 1: back in the earliest days, the way that you would
Speaker 1: measure this is a sailor would hold the line out
Speaker 1: between his arms, so he stretches arms out and one
Speaker 1: length of that would be a fathom. That's hard for
Speaker 1: me to fathom, and you know why because it seems
Speaker 1: like that would be different for every sailor. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: averages around uh six, it's like a six ft length total.
Speaker 1: That was the That was essentially what a fathom was,
Speaker 1: so not truly a standardized measure, right because it was
Speaker 1: based upon whoever happened to be holding the line, and
Speaker 1: if you had Stubby McGhee doing it, well, then you're
Speaker 1: gonna have a lot more fathoms than if stretch over.
Speaker 1: There was measuring out the line, but so not in
Speaker 1: exact signs, but it was getting there right, It was
Speaker 1: it was at least an attempt to measure how deep
Speaker 1: the ocean and was. And of course we've heard the
Speaker 1: term fathom before and things like or that's leagues. What
Speaker 1: am I doing? I don't even know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Christ you gotta stop me before I do that. Actually,
Speaker 1: when I think of fathom, I think it's really really
Speaker 1: uh the game for the gonna say really really bad.
Speaker 1: But no, actually a lot of people like it. It
Speaker 1: was just very simple in which you're a dolphin. Anyway, Well,
Speaker 1: I was thinking of the thing that was messing me up.
Speaker 1: Was I think of a different Disney film than twenty
Speaker 1: thousand Leagues under the Sea about the fathoms below. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: that's the problem is that I'm thinking about I've got
Speaker 1: a vacation planned where I'm going on a Disney vacation,
Speaker 1: and Disney has taken over my entire world right now, Well,
Speaker 1: are you going under the ocean? Though, No, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna go under the ocean, but we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: going under the ocean. So you know, let's skip ahead
Speaker 1: from the Viking days to that seventeenth century I was
Speaker 1: talking about before that was the debatably that was around
Speaker 1: the time of the first submarine. Um and I say
Speaker 1: debatedly because it all depends upon whom you ask about
Speaker 1: when the first submarine was created and how viable it was.
Speaker 1: But there was a Dutch inventor, Cornelius van Drebble. Okay,
Speaker 1: he created one that was a wooden frame sheathed in leather.
Speaker 1: It had oars sticking out the side. It had very
Speaker 1: close fitting leather flaps ceiling the holes that the oars
Speaker 1: went through, and was designed to go underwater. And he
Speaker 1: tested it in the Thames. Supposedly, King James the First
Speaker 1: himself did a test ride on it. I can't imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be like this very well, maybe an apocryphal story,
Speaker 1: because you think would the King of England and Scotland
Speaker 1: put himself at such risk as to be in an
Speaker 1: underwater a submersible vehicle in the first of all the Thames.
Speaker 1: Have you seen the Thames? Oh? I have a few times.
Speaker 1: It's a lovely place. Anyway, you wouldn't want to be
Speaker 1: underwater there. So you know, I know, if if the
Speaker 1: king did go in the submarine, I know why he
Speaker 1: would want to Is that so he could see whales? Uh? Nice? Nice?
Speaker 1: You know what we should also point out, of course,
Speaker 1: if you didn't hear from Nate's accent, he is of
Speaker 1: course British, so he's getting all these Anglo file jokes
Speaker 1: that were going. So but no, I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of people know of the UH Revolutionary War story here
Speaker 1: in the United States, and this is not going to
Speaker 1: make the UH people from the UK very happy. Maybe
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess that's all water under the bridge,
Speaker 1: but I would be rid of us now. Yeah. Really,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people probably remember that there was
Speaker 1: a very rudimentary submarine used in the Revolutionary War between
Speaker 1: England and the and what would be later the United
Speaker 1: States the English colonies. Um, and uh, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going from memory, but I'm pretty sure it was. You know,
Speaker 1: it's very simple and I think it only used a spear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially it was designed to ram into enemy shops. Yes,
Speaker 1: it did not do very well, but it does get
Speaker 1: a page in the history well, a paragraph in the
Speaker 1: history books for you also hear about about attempts during
Speaker 1: the Civil War as well, and right around that same time,
Speaker 1: so you know, we're talking about wartime applications of submersible
Speaker 1: vehicles made to disrupt either trade or or wartime ship movements.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, or roughly around the same time,
Speaker 1: just a few years after the Civil War, you had
Speaker 1: a ship that was specifically trying to to plumb the
Speaker 1: depths of the ocean and learn more about what is
Speaker 1: going on deep in the ocean floor. That's around eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two to eighteen seventy six. Do you know what
Speaker 1: ship I'm talking about? No, I don't, Jonathan, Why don't
Speaker 1: you tell me? So we're going to talk about the
Speaker 1: Deep Flight Challenger. Well, the Deep Flight Challenger is named
Speaker 1: after two things. It's named after the Challenger Deep Trench,
Speaker 1: which is a very deep trench in the ocean off
Speaker 1: in the Pacific Ocean. And it's named after the h M. S. Challenger,
Speaker 1: her Majesty's ship during the reign of Queen Victoria who
Speaker 1: sat on the Thorn for sixty years throne. Sorry, now
Speaker 1: it's an englished English Have you ever read the book? Now?
Speaker 1: Queen Victoria sat on a thorn for sixty years. She
Speaker 1: uh so so her Majesty's ship, the Challenger. Now, the
Speaker 1: Challenger started off as a warship. It was a corvette
Speaker 1: class ship, and it was a It was used in
Speaker 1: in various UH conflicts UH in various parts of the world,
Speaker 1: but eventually was converted into a laboratory. It was a
Speaker 1: floating laboratory. It's English, so I can say it like that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying. And anyway, they were They covered around
Speaker 1: a hundred and twenty seven thousand kilometers, so around sixty
Speaker 1: eight thousand, almost sixty nine thousand nautical miles and was
Speaker 1: we we think of the HMS Challenger as being the
Speaker 1: first real serious study of deep sea exploration. And they
Speaker 1: took samples for on the sea floor, and they did
Speaker 1: essentially the same way. They would lower a weight down
Speaker 1: into the ocean until it hit and it would actually
Speaker 1: scoop up some of the betting on the sea floor.
Speaker 1: When they brought it back up, they collected specimens of
Speaker 1: deep sea life that no one had ever seen before
Speaker 1: at that point. UM. It was the first real serious
Speaker 1: study of that of that UH environment, and since then
Speaker 1: various scientists and explorers and adventurers have been interested in
Speaker 1: really diving down and finding out more about that environment. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I was going to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: a couple of other predecessors to the deep flight challenge.
Speaker 1: For example, the bathosphere. I remember the bath sphere. I
Speaker 1: can't say the bathosphere, but I remember it. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: was developed in the in the thirties by William Beebe
Speaker 1: and Otis Barton, and they were both from the New
Speaker 1: York Zoological Society. And it was it was four and
Speaker 1: a half thousand pound hollow steel ball. Well it's about
Speaker 1: five ft in diameter, and the idea was that you
Speaker 1: would carry this on a ship. You would use a
Speaker 1: crane to move it over the ocean and then lower
Speaker 1: it into the ocean. It was not uh, it was
Speaker 1: not powered in any way for for mobility. You would
Speaker 1: actually lower it on a cable. Electricity would create the
Speaker 1: necessary power for the oxygen system within the bathosphere. But
Speaker 1: in order to circulate the air, whoever was in the
Speaker 1: bathosphere actually used a handheld palm front fan to circulate
Speaker 1: the air. They used chemicals to absorb carbon dioxide and
Speaker 1: moisture so that that way it wouldn't that you know,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't just have a coating of water all over
Speaker 1: everything inside the bathosphere, and it wouldn't the air wouldn't
Speaker 1: get stale, because you do have to find a way
Speaker 1: to scrub the carbon dioxide out of a submersible. That's
Speaker 1: one of the challenges. Yeah, I remember the you know,
Speaker 1: things like diving bells and the diving suits that you
Speaker 1: always see it the in the older movies where they
Speaker 1: have the helmet and the hose and somebody's up on
Speaker 1: the ship cranking the hand crank piston driven air pump,
Speaker 1: so they were pumping bellows down into Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: very similar. And yeah, so you have to you still
Speaker 1: have to deal with that because you've got to have
Speaker 1: a source of air. The first thing dropped down to
Speaker 1: around three thousand feet down into the ocean, which was
Speaker 1: pretty deep for the time being. And uh, and it
Speaker 1: was they saw a lot of animals that had never
Speaker 1: been observed before. They essentially wrote down everything they saw.
Speaker 1: But again, they couldn't move around. It was just dropping
Speaker 1: down and then cranked back up and that's it. Uh.
Speaker 1: Later on I read that there was there were some
Speaker 1: sub scientists in the sixties who actually used essentially the
Speaker 1: bathosphere to descend into the Mariana Trench, which is the
Speaker 1: deepest point in the ocean. They didn't go all the
Speaker 1: way down, but they went I think around thirty five
Speaker 1: thousand feet down, which is lower than anyone else has
Speaker 1: ever been before. Uh, at least until we see if
Speaker 1: the Deep Light Challenger project as a success. Um. There
Speaker 1: were some other early attempts. There was the the Bathist Gaffe,
Speaker 1: which was designed by a Belgian scientist, m August Picard,
Speaker 1: possibly an ancestor of John Luke. And uh, this one
Speaker 1: was attached to a tank, a free floating tank as
Speaker 1: opposed to attached to a vessel, but same the same
Speaker 1: sort of thing. It was lowered down into the ocean
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, it had a little bit more freedom
Speaker 1: of movement than the bathmosphere. You had the Alvin you
Speaker 1: may have heard of the Alvin that was that was
Speaker 1: an early submersible as well that was used for exploration,
Speaker 1: the the Johnson Sea Link. Uh. These are pretty funky
Speaker 1: looking things that there. If you've ever seen The Abyss,
Speaker 1: the film The Abyss, you know they're in those kind
Speaker 1: of spherical saw it in the theater. Yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 1: those things, that's that's kind of based on that that
Speaker 1: design there's uh. They're also sometimes called deep rover submersibles
Speaker 1: the UM there that are operated by the Deep Ocean
Speaker 1: Expeditions Company, So the deep rovers. They also look like
Speaker 1: the ones that were used in The Abyss, and James
Speaker 1: Cameron has used those for other projects, UM not not
Speaker 1: the Abyss specifically, although again the vehicles in that movie
Speaker 1: were based off of this UM. He used it an
Speaker 1: Aliens of the Deep his his Uh, you know that
Speaker 1: that Nature film of deep sea creatures being under the ocean. Yes,
Speaker 1: he does. Apparently he's a big fan of that UM
Speaker 1: and he's a customer of, or at least a potential
Speaker 1: customer of, the same company that makes the Challenger UM.
Speaker 1: So I guess we can now sort of talk about
Speaker 1: what the Challenger is. Yes, you had an other thing
Speaker 1: to add, well, I mean, I think our listeners probably
Speaker 1: will recognize that we're leaving out a pretty big step
Speaker 1: in between, which is, you know, the development from going
Speaker 1: from like a device like the bathosphere where you really
Speaker 1: don't have a whole lot of control to modern you know,
Speaker 1: well older and mid modern submarines development between and century,
Speaker 1: and we really don't We probably should do a separate
Speaker 1: podcast on that. But I mean, you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: talking about machines that you know, can store air and
Speaker 1: have powered to stay underwater for long periods of time,
Speaker 1: some of which you know, can hold many many people. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should probably talk about the difference between a submarine
Speaker 1: and a submersible. I think that would be Yeah. So
Speaker 1: a submarine is essentially it's a boat that goes underwater,
Speaker 1: is really what you're talking about. And it's and it's
Speaker 1: a sustain it's a self sustaining kind of thing in
Speaker 1: the sense that it doesn't depend upon a larger vehicle
Speaker 1: to get around, uh more than a few kilometers, right,
Speaker 1: Like most submarines can go incredible distances, especially the nuclear
Speaker 1: submarines because you have that nuclear power going. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: these these submarines are capable of traveling vast distances either
Speaker 1: submerged or you know, they can you know, various forms
Speaker 1: of travel. They could go either under the water, over
Speaker 1: the water, not not on top of but you know, anyway,
Speaker 1: the point being that they don't depend on a larger
Speaker 1: boat to uh to travel around, right, They're not dropped off, right,
Speaker 1: and some of them can stay underwater for weeks at
Speaker 1: a time. Um, some of them use a caterpillar drive. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that'd be the Red October. Yeah. So what we're talking
Speaker 1: about is sort of a step in between when I
Speaker 1: when I and again in my head I'm thinking when
Speaker 1: I think submarines, I'm thinking, you know, like the warships, um,
Speaker 1: you know, large large submarines. This, this submarine, the weird
Speaker 1: that that Nate specifically wants to ask about or did
Speaker 1: ask us about, um, is a much much smaller machine.
Speaker 1: In fact, it only holds one person. And this is
Speaker 1: where we get into sort of the submersible realm submersibles
Speaker 1: are are. It's kind of like the turns between a
Speaker 1: boat and a ship, right, YEA. Arguably you could say
Speaker 1: a ship is any vessel that's large enough to hold
Speaker 1: a boat, and a boat is any vessel small enough
Speaker 1: to fit on a ship. Square is the rectangle, but
Speaker 1: not every rectangle is quare. So submersible tends to be
Speaker 1: part of a you know, it depends on a mother ship,
Speaker 1: you know, or some other vehicle where it is deployed
Speaker 1: from that mother ship and then can go and explore.
Speaker 1: But it can't travel vast different distances on its own.
Speaker 1: It's not meant for that and uh. And that's the
Speaker 1: case with the Challenger. It's also the case of other
Speaker 1: big famous submersibles like the Mirror one and the Mere two.
Speaker 1: These were developed by at one time the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: It's built by a company in Finland, and then when
Speaker 1: they were finally produced, actually they were purchased by the
Speaker 1: same exploration company that uses the deep rovers same the
Speaker 1: same one uses the Mirror one and mir two for
Speaker 1: x opration. Uh So, like I said, it's not the
Speaker 1: only submersible out there. There's a one built in Japan
Speaker 1: that was called the Shinkai. That one currently holds the
Speaker 1: record for the deepest submersible exploration, and that one went
Speaker 1: down to six thousand Thus in the name, so they
Speaker 1: name it after they dove. Yeah. Yeah, if they had
Speaker 1: gone just a little further than the one. Uh but yeah,
Speaker 1: that's those are famous. We can't not mention them because
Speaker 1: they are out there. But it's child's play compared to
Speaker 1: what the Challenger is supposed to do. You know, when
Speaker 1: I think of a submersible too, I'm I'm thinking of
Speaker 1: something that can't go very deep, just because you know,
Speaker 1: it's a smaller ship. It's it's sort of limited in
Speaker 1: its capacity, but this is a very unique, uh unique vessel.
Speaker 1: So the ship was actually commissioned by somebody who is
Speaker 1: a famous adventurer on his own, who sadly is no
Speaker 1: longer with us, in an attempt to uh set a
Speaker 1: world record, I believe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're talking about Fawcett,
Speaker 1: Steve Fawcett. Steve Fawcett, billionaire adventurer he uh he had
Speaker 1: back in two thousand five, was thinking about investing in this,
Speaker 1: this potential vehicle that would be able to break all
Speaker 1: records of deep sea exploration, manned deep sea exploration and
Speaker 1: in fact unmanned as well. No unmanned vehicle would go
Speaker 1: as deep as what he was looking for. He wanted
Speaker 1: to have something that could go along the bottom of
Speaker 1: the Mariana Trench and and take a look firsthand at
Speaker 1: this alien world that no one else has ever seen
Speaker 1: in person, and most of us have only seen, you know,
Speaker 1: bits and pieces of it through unmanned vehicle footage. There
Speaker 1: were there was one bathosphere uh journey that did go
Speaker 1: down that low, so technically a couple of people saw
Speaker 1: at one level, but they were not able to go
Speaker 1: all the way down like like Fawcett wanted to. And
Speaker 1: so Fawcett talked to a guy, um uh Graham Hawks.
Speaker 1: Graham Hawks is a UH kind of an engineer inventor
Speaker 1: UH marines specialist. Talked to Graham Hawks about the possibility
Speaker 1: of creating this this vehicle, and Um Graham Hawks is
Speaker 1: the head of Hawks Ocean Technologies, and he started to
Speaker 1: work on the deep Flight submersibles and specifically the Deep
Speaker 1: Flight Challenger. The sad store part of this story is
Speaker 1: that Fawcett died in two thousand seven in an airplane crash.
Speaker 1: And he died apparently just a couple of weeks before
Speaker 1: they had planned to announce the Deep Flight Challenger and
Speaker 1: the purpose for this vehicle to explore the Mariana Trench.
Speaker 1: With his death, the whole project took a massive setback.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was clearly a terrible tragedy. And also
Speaker 1: it just it meant that the driving force was behind
Speaker 1: this development was suddenly gone all right, And and Fawcett
Speaker 1: was a champion of adventure and exploration and pushing human
Speaker 1: achievement to the limits in every venue, and so to
Speaker 1: lose that that evangelist was a big blow. Well in
Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, a fellow named Chris Welsh pilot
Speaker 1: here who had uh was really interested in this project
Speaker 1: kind of took up the torch. So in twos ten,
Speaker 1: three years after Faston's death, Chris Welch picks up the
Speaker 1: the the the the torch and runs with it. He
Speaker 1: starts to push for the project to start again and
Speaker 1: gets the interest of Virgin Oceanic, which is a brand
Speaker 1: new company formed by another incredibly wealthy adventurer thrill seeker,
Speaker 1: who also happened to be a friend of Steve Fawcett. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this was who Nate mentioned, Richard Branson. So Branson
Speaker 1: now has picked up where his friend left off and says,
Speaker 1: all right, we want to use the Deep Flight Challenger
Speaker 1: to go on a series of five dives. And why
Speaker 1: five Because he wants to visit the five deepest points
Speaker 1: of each of the well, the the deepest point of
Speaker 1: each of the five oceans, so that means the Mariana
Speaker 1: Trench in the Pacific. And then he wants to go
Speaker 1: to all the other deep points and all the other
Speaker 1: oceans and uh and do an exploration run. And so
Speaker 1: the Deep Flight Challenger is his um, his vehicle of choice.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about this vehicle and
Speaker 1: what makes it so special yet is fascinating. I have
Speaker 1: to admit, um, it's about seventeen ft eight inches long,
Speaker 1: twelve ft eleven inches wide and five ft seven inches high.
Speaker 1: Um weighs about eight thousand pounds, and it's it's actually
Speaker 1: made of carbon fiber and titanium. Uh, and you know
Speaker 1: probably some other stuff. Well, if you duct tape maybe
Speaker 1: according to Ram Hawks, if you had made it just
Speaker 1: from titanium, it wouldn't survive the pressures at three six
Speaker 1: feet because you're talking about massive amounts of pressure up
Speaker 1: to around say, oh, I don't know, twenty thousand pounds
Speaker 1: per square inch. That's intense pressure. So you have to
Speaker 1: be able to create a structure that's going to withstand that.
Speaker 1: And the carbon fibers are extremely resilient. According to Graham
Speaker 1: Hawks in one interview I read I think it was
Speaker 1: with Popular Mechanics. He talked about how a computer laid
Speaker 1: that down fiber by fiber to build this this structure
Speaker 1: and uh, and it's meant to withstand that intense pressure.
Speaker 1: The the vehicle can hold up to twenty four hours
Speaker 1: of oxygen, so you could go down for a full
Speaker 1: day and night underwater, and you can go from the
Speaker 1: very bottom of the ocean to the surface in right
Speaker 1: around five hours. And it will can travel up to
Speaker 1: a forty five degree angle when it's going up or down,
Speaker 1: so you should be able to make about per minute,
Speaker 1: yeah at that angle right right, And that's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1: And then one of the one of the key features
Speaker 1: of this vehicle is that it has wings. It's not
Speaker 1: like if you look at a lot of submersibles, they
Speaker 1: tend to look like tubes right with with a propeller
Speaker 1: at one end or some other form of thruster at
Speaker 1: one end, and then there might be a rudder there
Speaker 1: that helps you guide which direction. But essentially the way
Speaker 1: that it works is that it uh it has some
Speaker 1: uh as variable buoyancy where it will allow some water
Speaker 1: in and then once it gets to wherever it's going,
Speaker 1: you know, it's bottom depth, in order to go back up,
Speaker 1: it has to drop some weights and then it will
Speaker 1: come back up. So, I mean, it's not it's not
Speaker 1: terribly sophisticated. You've got something that provides some thrust and
Speaker 1: then you control the vector of the thrust through either
Speaker 1: a couple of different ways, Like you can have sutiple
Speaker 1: propellers and then you just you know, power on the
Speaker 1: ones that will allow you to turn in the direction
Speaker 1: you want to go, or you have a rudder, but
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot of control there. Hawks idea
Speaker 1: was to add wings to his submersible and make it
Speaker 1: more like a plane. So it quote unquote flies underwater
Speaker 1: with one major major difference from an airplane swings. Oh
Speaker 1: they're upside down, lack right, So I guess we need
Speaker 1: to describe what lift is here. Yeah. Well, and in
Speaker 1: the case of an airplane wing, if you were to
Speaker 1: look at it from a cross cut, Yeah, a cross
Speaker 1: cut of the wing, you would notice that, um, the
Speaker 1: bottom of the wing is essentially a flat it's it
Speaker 1: doesn't have any curve um. But the top of the
Speaker 1: wing is more convex. Uh. It it's sort of a
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a half tear drop in the way,
Speaker 1: because the top of it bulges out towards the leading
Speaker 1: edge of the wing and then tapers off towards the
Speaker 1: back edge. And what happens in an airplane is the
Speaker 1: air moving. As the air moves over the wing on
Speaker 1: the bottom, it moves roughly straight across and on the top.
Speaker 1: Because it has to go around that bulge, it has
Speaker 1: further to go in the same amount of time. So
Speaker 1: if you if you have the same amount of time
Speaker 1: to go a further distance, that means you're going faster
Speaker 1: than someone who's you know, like if you're running a
Speaker 1: straight line from A to B and I'm running a
Speaker 1: circuitous line from A to B, and we both have
Speaker 1: to leave A and arrive at B at the same time,
Speaker 1: I have to run faster than you to get there. Yes,
Speaker 1: so same sort of thing. The air going over the
Speaker 1: top is going to be moving faster than the air
Speaker 1: going underneath. This also creates a difference in air pressure.
Speaker 1: It's what creates lift. We're oversimplifying, so please don't write
Speaker 1: in and talk to me about how I'm wrong about this.
Speaker 1: I've read X K C D, I understand. But the
Speaker 1: that's the basic principle. So with the the UH the challenger,
Speaker 1: what they've done is the curve part is not at
Speaker 1: the tops on the bottom, and the reason for that
Speaker 1: is they don't want lift. They want to counteract buoyancy.
Speaker 1: So it's basically instead of of you know, the air
Speaker 1: pressure difference sucking the plane up. It's pushing it's pushing
Speaker 1: submersible down. Yes, except it's and it's water pressure, not
Speaker 1: your pressure, right exactly, So it's someone, yeah, exactly, it's
Speaker 1: it's hydrodynamic, not aerodynamic indeed, And so all you have
Speaker 1: to do, this is all you have to do. I'm
Speaker 1: really oversimplifying. You provide thrust. If you provide thrust and
Speaker 1: you're moving forward, then the wings do the work of
Speaker 1: working against the buoyancy and allow you to maintain or
Speaker 1: dive deeper, dive deeper. And then the idea being that
Speaker 1: if you just stop, then your buoyancy is going to
Speaker 1: start pulling you up. You don't even have to you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have to have as much of power thing
Speaker 1: to go back up. You still might will probably have
Speaker 1: to drop weights in order to surface, but that's what
Speaker 1: allows it to to travel at these depths, and it
Speaker 1: kind of apparently controls like uh an aircraft. Um well,
Speaker 1: it makes sense that in this case, because of its
Speaker 1: design um, the ship would have to continue, it would
Speaker 1: have to stay mobile, it would have to keep moving
Speaker 1: in order to essentially stay to what we used to
Speaker 1: say about sharks. Yes, and of course that's not always true.
Speaker 1: Not all sharks have to move all the time where
Speaker 1: they drown, but you know, same basic principle, but they
Speaker 1: do swim constantly, so they it's I think this is
Speaker 1: a super cool idea. I also think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: there's a patent on this device, by the way, and
Speaker 1: if you want to look it up, you can, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can do a free patent search Google patent searches
Speaker 1: free and uh it's patent number seven million, one thirty
Speaker 1: one thousand, three hundred eighty nine B one. Okay, And
Speaker 1: that number again is seven million, one thirty one thousand,
Speaker 1: three hundred eighty nine B one. And that is the
Speaker 1: that that will show you the pattern that talks about
Speaker 1: this submersible. Now, now the pattern is actually for a
Speaker 1: series of submersibles, not just the Challenger, because deep deep
Speaker 1: flight has UH not. They don't just make the Challenger.
Speaker 1: In fact, they make all these crazy submersibles for really
Speaker 1: wealthy private adventurer types like like Branson and fawcett Um.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the Challenger, but a lot of
Speaker 1: the basic UH technologies are explained in that pattern, including
Speaker 1: they had to design a very comfortable chair because if
Speaker 1: you're gonna be uh going underwater for that long. You
Speaker 1: want to have a comfortable seat. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is designed for the non pilot, the non you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's essentially a civilian adventurer. It's not meant for
Speaker 1: uh military use or anything like that, So it has
Speaker 1: to be comfortable because most of us don't put up
Speaker 1: with that kind of stuff, right, But it is designed
Speaker 1: for what While it isn't a military uh, it is however,
Speaker 1: designed to do some scientific work. And it's not just
Speaker 1: about adventuring. Although they've partnered with some pretty cool people
Speaker 1: like Scripts Ocean Institute, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a lot
Speaker 1: of other scientific organizations, and uh, the hope is that
Speaker 1: the Challenger will be able to get a real good
Speaker 1: look at this underwater world that we we hardly know
Speaker 1: anything about, and and provide some information for scientific purposes. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm really excited to see exactly how
Speaker 1: much comes out of this, this uh, this project, and
Speaker 1: and you know, they'll be interesting to see how challenging
Speaker 1: the Challenger really finds going down to that depth. It's
Speaker 1: a little it would be a little frightening for me,
Speaker 1: I think to try to go down to that that
Speaker 1: depth because um that intense pressure, I mean, the smallest
Speaker 1: weakness and that thing is crumples. Yeah, right exactly. And
Speaker 1: you know, the controls here are mechanical controls, like you know,
Speaker 1: you move the the stick to the left and it
Speaker 1: it mechanically moves the wings so that you roll. It's
Speaker 1: almost like flying a plane. You there's pitch and roll
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, you're not just heading down
Speaker 1: or heading up or or you know, doing a vector turn,
Speaker 1: vector based turn like you would with a regular submersible. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's it's a fascinating approach and I'm really hoping that
Speaker 1: it's a successful one will hopefully be able to find
Speaker 1: out before too much longer. Again, this project was originally
Speaker 1: supposed to launch both figuratively and literally in two thousand seven, right,
Speaker 1: and they're anticipating the possibility of going ahead with it
Speaker 1: inven so it may not be but a few months off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's I'll be excited to see if it breaks
Speaker 1: those records. Those records pretty much stay broken because if
Speaker 1: it can get to the bottom of the Maria on
Speaker 1: a trench, there ain't no deeper. Yeah, you know, well
Speaker 1: there will, so you go, well, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: information about it on Virgin Oceanic's website. UM, and it's
Speaker 1: you you can learn more about the people on the
Speaker 1: science crew, the people on the surface who are going
Speaker 1: to be with them at the time. UM. It is
Speaker 1: interesting to note that while uh Sir Richard isn't going
Speaker 1: down to the Mariana Trench, he is going to be
Speaker 1: piloting uh one mission himself the second mission. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going I hear they're actually gonna alternate? Are they
Speaker 1: going to alternate? Here? That he's going to alternate? So
Speaker 1: he does every other one. There's there's five of them
Speaker 1: he'll do. So that means if he's doing even once,
Speaker 1: he does two and four. Yeah, and so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: these guys are brave, crazy people. But you need like,
Speaker 1: if we didn't have these brave crazy people, think of
Speaker 1: all the the projects that never would have happened. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: the Space Race never would have happened. You know, all
Speaker 1: the test pilots who have gone before, all of the
Speaker 1: pilots who who are out there now, I mean without
Speaker 1: the test ailets who actually were willing to put their
Speaker 1: lives at risk to see if this stuff would work
Speaker 1: the way that everyone thought it was gonna work. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist. We'd still be getting around on horse and
Speaker 1: buggy are dirigible? Oh that, by the way, that is interesting.
Speaker 1: That's the way Hawks describes the difference between um, the
Speaker 1: the Challenger based wing based submersible and the old submersibles
Speaker 1: is like he says, you know, one, the old based
Speaker 1: submersibles are essentially dirigibles. There's not a whole lot of control,
Speaker 1: and they're slow and sluggish and thing, you know, And
Speaker 1: this is more elegant, like a like an airplane. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that patent, by the way, if you do read it,
Speaker 1: it's funny. It's it. It comes across to me as
Speaker 1: one of the snoodiest patents I've ever read, because it's
Speaker 1: like it's like they're little subtle digs at other submersibles
Speaker 1: all the way through, which I think is is hilarious.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, but so, Nate, thank you very much for
Speaker 1: listening to our show. We really appreciate it. Thank you
Speaker 1: for the audio request. That was awesome. I hope that
Speaker 1: this was an interesting discussion. We're really looking forward to
Speaker 1: seeing more about this and the kind of technology that
Speaker 1: comes out of this, because you know that we don't
Speaker 1: just get bio biological information. From these sort of procedures,
Speaker 1: we find out new ways to do things better. So
Speaker 1: it may be that this is just the first of
Speaker 1: many deep sea explorations that build on the foundation that's
Speaker 1: set by the Challenger. And you know, with whe it
Speaker 1: being one of the virgin properties, it's only a matter
Speaker 1: of time for Sir Richard is trying to figure out
Speaker 1: some way to take tourists down there. Well, I've already
Speaker 1: read that he's looking at he's already invested in other
Speaker 1: forms of submarine travel that well, you know, you can
Speaker 1: buy a ticket to go on these submarine or submersible
Speaker 1: UH journeys, although they are not designed to go as
Speaker 1: deep as the Challenger goes. And in fact, we should
Speaker 1: also add that while the Challenger sounds really really advanced,
Speaker 1: deep Flight has not rested. UH. Deep Flight has continued
Speaker 1: to develop submersibles, including the I think there's one called
Speaker 1: the super Falcon. The super Falcon is very similar in
Speaker 1: design to the Challenger, but I think if it can
Speaker 1: actually fit two people, not just one, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: go as deep as the the the Challenger does, but
Speaker 1: it's it's it's like a faster, sleeker version of the Challenger,
Speaker 1: but again not built to withstand the intense pressure that
Speaker 1: you would find in a place like the Mariana Trench. Personally,
Speaker 1: I do want to say one thing to whomever does
Speaker 1: eventually pilot this first trip, because you never know things
Speaker 1: can change between now and when it launches. Be careful
Speaker 1: because I read a book and in that book, the
Speaker 1: megalodon still exists in the Mariana Trench, and I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: those sharks are enormous, So you've gotta be careful when
Speaker 1: you're down there because you never know when you run
Speaker 1: into a megalodon. Okay, all right, there's a whole look
Speaker 1: about it. It's called meg I've considered it a documentary,
Speaker 1: just like Jaws. Yeah, yeah, the documentary job. So guys,
Speaker 1: thank you for listening. Uh. If you have any requests,
Speaker 1: you can email them to us. That address is tech
Speaker 1: stuff at how stuff works dot com, or you can
Speaker 1: let us know on Twitter and Facebook are handled there
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff h s W. We thank you again
Speaker 1: Nate for your wonderful suggestion. Hope everything is going well
Speaker 1: across the pond, and we will talk to all of
Speaker 1: you again really soon for more on this and thousands
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