
Commercial submarine trips to the bottom of the Marianas Trench - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-27/eyos-submarine-dive-to-challenger-deep-bottom-mariana-trench
======
dmurray
> a place so deep that its exterior pressure would feel like having five jumbo
> jets parked on your chest

I had to check the maths on this, but it looks good:

\- My chest (upper torso, diaphragm to shoulder blades) is about 30cm * 40 cm,
or one eighth of a square meter

\- The sub goes down 35,000 feet, or 11,000 metres. So that's 1,400 cubic
metres of water above my chest. Water is virtually incompressible even at that
depth, so that weighs 1,400,000 kg.

\- An empty 747 weighs 373,000 pounds or 170,000 kg [0]. At maximum takeoff
weight, up to 400,000 kg [1].

That means the equivalent of between 3 and 8 jumbo jets above my chest.

[0]
[http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0051b.shtml](http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/planes/q0051b.shtml)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747-400](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747-400)

~~~
subpixel
Odd unit of measurement, as I assume jumbo jets are manufactured to be as
light as possible.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
The correct unit is the Whales. 3 to 8 times the size of Whales.

~~~
markdown
I only understand weight in olympic swimming pools.

~~~
willvarfar
An El Reg unit of measurement, no?

Oh the nostalgia!

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
El Reg? No... Pretty much an ISO standard by now...

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xwdv
God this is so dangerous. Any weakness in the sub and you get crushed to death
by pressure so fast that death would travel backward in time and kill you
before you even get a chance to start dying.

I don’t understand how bored a high net worth individual must be that they
would choose to risk their life and its potential like this.

~~~
superqd
I really laughed at this comment.

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schoen
There was an HN submission about [https://neal.fun/deep-
sea/](https://neal.fun/deep-sea/) at some point, which is a great
visualization of just how far this is, and how amazingly deep some forms of
life can get.

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LargeWu
What exactly would be the appeal of this, besides pure novelty?

Commercial space travel? Of course. You're weightless, you get to see the
Earth from an entirely new, potentially life-changing perspective.

Commercial ocean-trench travel? It's too dark to see anything but what's right
in front of you. I don't understand the appeal beyond bragging that you were
rich enough to afford it.

~~~
205guy
It's all about the "ends of the earth." There are people who hike all 7
summits (continental high points) and the poles. This adds one more that was
previously unachievable, so I'm sure there will be customers. You need money
and good physical condition (strength & stamina) for the others, mostly just
money for this one--though a sense of adventure and risk help too.

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codebeaker
Novel naming of the submersible vessel too, it's named after one of the hero-
characters from an Iain Banks novel (one of The Culture series).

Nice juxtaposition using a name of a space faring craft for a deep ocean sub.

~~~
mannykannot
SpaceX has been doing something similar...

[https://www.space.com/28445-spacex-elon-musk-drone-ships-
nam...](https://www.space.com/28445-spacex-elon-musk-drone-ships-names.html)

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salimmadjd
I worked with Victor Vescovo( sign name V^2 as he was also a Navy reserve
intelligence officer)for about a year in the early dot.com days.

Those days he was into climbing. A nice guy, however he would use “I” too much
even when others contributed to something and only “we” when he jumped on
someone else’s idea. I assumed (rightly or wrongly) being a mountain climber
it had to do with not playing team sports.

That experience made me add an interview question later asking the candidate
if they played any team sports in high school or college.

~~~
dependsontheq
Since you will never have any way to seriously lern if that question works you
can just as well ask in an interview if the candidate ever wanted to be a
panda. I think people who wanted to be pandas are lazy and shouldn‘t be
trusted.

~~~
qchris
I'd never actively considered whether or not I wanted to be a panda before
reading this, but my initial reaction was "of course, who wouldn't?" and I
thought you were going to express a distrust of anyone without that reaction.
Obviously, that's not the case, and I'm a little shocked.

Just a clear case of different approachs, but I'm guess I'm glad nobody's
asked me this in an interview yet.

~~~
ggm
I would certainly employ somebody who could answer "have you ever wanted to be
a panda" cogently. A single word answer invites questions. This is not the
same question as "what is your spirit animal" which may be a reason to
terminate the interview as a candidate.

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yellow_lead
This is great for science. Commercial trips like this and those to outerspace
will no doubt lower cost over time which will benefit both tourists and
scientists.

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mc32
This vehicle has acrylic viewports: do they “need” them, if since they have
high def cameras? Or is it a kind of necessary real object rather than a
digitized version of what you can see though the portholes?

I mean, adding porthole probably adds challenges to the design, no?

Guess it’s the “saw it with my own eyes” thing.

~~~
netsharc
Probably to help against claustrophobia. I wouldn't want to be in a closed
metal object thousands of meters in the water. I know it's only psychological,
but it's probably enough.

~~~
jbattle
Then they should just paint black circles on the wall, as that's all you'd see
after the first few minutes ;)

~~~
pvaldes
That, lots of marine snow, and some bioluminiscent creatures here and there.

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jc01480
It’s hard to imagine the level of peace one may experience at that depth.

~~~
dopeboy
No need to go that deep to experience it. Dive 20+ meters and you'll feel it.

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xondono
As someone who knows some of the challenges of this project closely, it’s
amazing to see it coming to fruition

~~~
audiometry
What are the wildest challenges you’re aware of here?

~~~
pvaldes
Huge pressure forces pushing the materials to its limits would be one

And assurance covering bills.

~~~
kitteh
Curious if aircraft have cycle limits due to pressurization, how many cycles
do these subs support ?

~~~
pvaldes
The exact number of cycles would depend on the specifications and materials
quality. An engineer could calculate a value, but would not be unlimited, and
would be lower than standard vehicles of course.

In any case, we have air compressors and hydraulic machines that run for many
years with high pressures inside.

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jedanbik
Keep in mind that these vessels do not have bathrooms.

~~~
superqd
No, no, it said they have bottles and bags for such needs. So completely
covered.

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Iwan-Zotow
Bet they will find tons of plastic garbage

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captaincrowbar
Now that's taking social distancing seriously.

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wedn3sday
We've reached the point where some people have so much money we need to invent
new places no one has been to so they can pay to go somewhere other people
cant, while simultaneously half the country dies because the have COVID-19 and
no health care.

~~~
pensatoio
Your latter two statements are just false though, so it isn’t a fair
criticism.

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dhosek
Sounds cool, I'd love to do it. I just need to lose 25 pounds. And save
$750,000. Anyone want to pay me 30 grand for every pound I lose?

~~~
randycupertino
There actually is a program you can do for this, it's called weight loss bet.
I've done it before and "won" $180 against the people I was competing against.
It's very motivational imo, you can choose either to compete against randoms
or people you know. We did a pool from work.

