
"Flip", the vertical ship, marks 50 years at sea - ColinWright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-18684075
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jeroen
A bit of background info:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP>

[http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/flip-boat-
hires-080...](http://media.popularmechanics.com/images/flip-boat-
hires-0807.jpg)

~~~
Loic
Directly from the research center:

<http://www.mpl.ucsd.edu/resources/flip.intro.html>

and image gallery:

<http://www.mpl.ucsd.edu/resources/flip.image.gallery.html>

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mark_l_watson
My Dad was director of the Marine Physics Lab at Scripts for a while. In
addition to Flip, their 'Golden Orb' was interesting: like a donut that was
open to the ocean in the middle to provide a flat calm patch of ocean. A funny
coincidence was that I consulted there for a short while as a weekend gig in
the late 1970s (many years before my Dad was there).

~~~
anateus
Do you remember the official name of the "Golden Orb" or have links related to
it? I'm very curious to find out more, but a bit of googling around hasn't
turned anything up.

~~~
mark_l_watson
I will try to find some pictures. I owned a sailboat in San Diego Bay for 20
years, and I must have lots of pictures with the ORB. I'll ask my Dad what the
official name was.

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sudonim
Awesome stuff. This 4 minute video gives a little more information than the
BBC news one. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQxQfQU_hsk>

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barrynolan
So many of the great innovations and experiments happened in the sixties.
Feels like we have lost ambition

~~~
bandy
We haven't lost the ambition, it's just that the funding processes have become
highly politicized, and once we beat the Godless Communists to the Moon, the
politicians felt that we didn't need to do any more research.

~~~
thetabyte
That second one has a huge effect. We need to find a way to motivate
scientific progress that doesn't involve war.

~~~
javert
We've already found it, it's call capitalism.

~~~
thetabyte
Yes, but that assumes intelligent investors willing and capable of analyzing
for long term profits. Research science often incurs short (or even long) term
loss for an eventual extreme gain. There will be many failures and lots of
money spent before that point. It's like a startup, but less clear of a plan
for monetization and even longer time to product. Capitalism tends not to
support this.

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Swizec
Is there a specific reason why this ship is vertical? Or just _because we
can_?

~~~
s_henry_paulson
The farther down you go, the more calm the water is.

The boat basically becomes it's own anchor, anchoring itself in the calm water
under the surface.

~~~
D_Alex
No... the reason it is stable is because a) the waterplane area is small
compared to the overall mass of the vessel; and b) the natural frequency of
the vessel is far removed from the forcing frequency (wave frequency).

Think of it this way: The vessel in perfectly calm water will sit at a
particular level. Now a wave comes, and briefly the force acting on the ship
is "proportional" to the buoyancy volume, ie height of the wave and the area
of water that the hull intersects. Nothing can be done about the wave height,
but the waterplane area can be reduced, minimising the force. The price you
pay for that is a low payload.

Now if the vessel had a natural frequency of bobbing up and down close to the
frequency of the waves, a resonance could occur which would amplify the
motions. But the natural frequency of such a structure is by design very low,
many times lower than the wave frequency, so resonance does not occur.

Other structures which operate on the same principle are semi-submersible
drilling/production vessels (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semi-
submersible>) and "spar" type oil production platforms
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_(platform)>). The need to support a heavy
payload on these structures makes the design quite challenging, as a good
compromise must be found between hull cost, payload and low motions.

Interestingly, another type of oil platform, the tension-leg platform, takes
the opposite approach of having a very stiff anchoring system and a high
natural frequency to achieve the same effect of low vertical motion in heavy
seas.

(I am an engineer in the oil and gas industry with many years of deepwater
development experience).

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zeruch
I remember being a kid and seeing this ship on one of the quadrillion PBS
shows I watched religiously. It struck me as both totally insane and
completely awesome (regardless of its purpose, the idea of what it did was
just cool to an 7-10 year old, on principle). Oddly, its still cool.

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asmithmd1
I would bet it was built to listen for passing Soviet subs more than any
scientific research

~~~
ceejayoz
There are much, much better ways of doing that than a surface ship that makes
creaks, engine noises, crew sounds, waves hitting the hull, etc.

~~~
vecinu
"FLIP has no engines or other means of propulsion. It must be towed to open
water, where it drifts freely or is anchored.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP>

~~~
ceejayoz
It likely has a diesel generator for electrical power, though. Either way, it
has nothing on the alternatives for detecting subs.

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swah
Had to check the date (April 1st??) before believing in this. Cool stuff.

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simonas
Some more info:
[http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4148153/itll_never_work_flip_s...](http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4148153/itll_never_work_flip_ship/)

