Bathyscaphe Trieste - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Trieste is a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

-designed, Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

-built deep-diving research bathyscaphe

Bathyscaphe

A bathyscaphe is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design....

("deep boat") with a crew of two, which reached a record maximum depth of about 10911 metres (35,797 ft), in the deepest known part of the Earth

Earth

Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...

's oceans, the Challenger Deep

Challenger Deep

The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point in the oceans, with a depth of to by direct measurement from submersibles, and slightly more by sonar bathymetry . It is located at the southern end of the Mariana Trench near the Mariana Islands group...

, in the Mariana Trench

Mariana Trench

The Mariana Trench or Marianas Trench is the deepest part of the world's oceans. It is located in the western Pacific Ocean, to the east of the Mariana Islands. The trench is about long but has a mean width of only...

near Guam

Guam

Guam is an organized, unincorporated territory of the United States located in the western Pacific Ocean. It is one of five U.S. territories with an established civilian government. Guam is listed as one of 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories by the Special Committee on Decolonization of the United...

, on January 23, 1960, crewed by Jacques Piccard

Jacques Piccard

Jacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He was one of only two people, along with Lt...

(son of the boat's designer Auguste Piccard

Auguste Piccard

Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer.-Biography:Piccard and his twin brother Jean Felix were born in Basel, Switzerland...

) and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh

Don Walsh

Don Walsh is an American oceanographer, explorer and marine policy specialist. He and Jacques Piccard were aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste when it made a record maximum descent into the Mariana Trench on 23 January 1960, the deepest point of the world's ocean...

achieving the goal of Project Nekton

Project Nekton

Project Nekton was the codename for a series of shallow test dives and deep-submergence operations in the Pacific Ocean near Guam that saw the United States Navy-owned research bathyscaphe Trieste enter the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the world's oceans.The series of dives began...

.

Trieste remains the only manned vessel to have reached the bottom of Challenger Deep. The vessel is currently on display at the U.S. Navy Museum

U.S. Navy Museum

The National Museum of the United States Navy, or U.S. Navy Museum for short, is the flagship museum of the United States Navy and is located in the former Breech Mechanism Shop of the old Naval Gun Factory on the grounds of the Washington Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., USA.The U.S...

Design

The Trieste was designed by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard

Auguste Piccard

Auguste Antoine Piccard was a Swiss physicist, inventor and explorer.-Biography:Piccard and his twin brother Jean Felix were born in Basel, Switzerland...

and built originally in Italy

Italy

. His pressure sphere, composed of two sections, was built by the company Acciaierie Terni

Terni

Terni is a city in southern Umbria, central Italy, capital of the province of Terni, located in the plain of the Nera river. It is 104 km N of Rome, 36 km NW of Rieti, and 29 km S of Spoleto.-History:...

, and the upper part was manufactured by the company Cantieri Riuniti dell'Adriatico, in the Free Territory of Trieste

Free Territory of Trieste

The Free Territory of Trieste was to be a city-state situated in Central Europe between northern Italy and Yugoslavia, created by the United Nations Security Council in the aftermath of World War II and provisionally administered by an appointed military governor commanding the peacekeeping United...

(on the border between Italy and Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....

); hence that name was chosen for the bathyscaphe. The installation of the pressure sphere was done in the Cantiere navale di Castellammare di Stabia

Castellammare di Stabia

Castellammare di Stabia is a comune in the province of Naples, Campania region, southern Italy. It is situated on the Bay of Naples about 30 kilometers southeast of Naples, on the route to Sorrento.-History:...

, near Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...

. The Trieste was launched on 26 August 1953 into the Mediterranean Sea

Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Anatolia and Europe, on the south by North Africa, and on the east by the Levant...

near the Isle of Capri

Capri

Capri is an Italian island in the Tyrrhenian Sea off the Sorrentine Peninsula, on the south side of the Gulf of Naples, in the Campania region of Southern Italy...

. The design was based on previous experience with the bathyscaphe FNRS-2

FNRS-2

The FNRS-2 was the first bathyscaphe. It was created by Auguste Piccard. Work started in 1937 but was interrupted by World War II. The deep-diving submarine was finished in 1948. The bathyscaphe was named after the Belgian Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique , the funding organization for...

, also designed by the Piccards.
(It was built in Belgium). Trieste was operated by the French Navy

French Navy

The French Navy, officially the Marine nationale and often called La Royale is the maritime arm of the French military. It includes a full range of fighting vessels, from patrol boats to a nuclear powered aircraft carrier and 10 nuclear-powered submarines, four of which are capable of launching...

. After several years of operation in the Mediterranean Sea, the Trieste was purchased by the United States Navy

United States Navy

The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

in 1958 for $250,000.

The Trieste consisted of a float chamber filled with gasoline

Gasoline

Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...

for buoyancy

Buoyancy

In physics, buoyancy is a force exerted by a fluid that opposes an object's weight. In a column of fluid, pressure increases with depth as a result of the weight of the overlying fluid. Thus a column of fluid, or an object submerged in the fluid, experiences greater pressure at the bottom of the...

, with a separate pressure sphere. This configuration (dubbed a bathyscaphe
Bathyscaphe
A bathyscaphe is a free-diving self-propelled deep-sea submersible, consisting of a crew cabin similar to a bathysphere, but suspended below a float rather than from a surface cable, as in the classic bathysphere design....

by the Piccards) allowed for a free dive, rather than the previous bathysphere designs in which a sphere was lowered to depth and raised from a ship by cable.

At the time of Project Nekton
Project Nekton
Project Nekton was the codename for a series of shallow test dives and deep-submergence operations in the Pacific Ocean near Guam that saw the United States Navy-owned research bathyscaphe Trieste enter the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the world's oceans.The series of dives began...

, the Trieste was more than 15 m (50 ft) long. The majority of this was a series of floats filled with 85000 litres (22,454.6 US gal) of gasoline, and water ballast tanks were included at either end of the vessel, as well as releasable iron ballast in two conical hoppers along the bottom, fore and aft of the crew sphere. The crew occupied the 2.16 m (7.09 ft) pressure sphere, attached to the underside of the float and accessed from the deck of the vessel by a vertical shaft that penetrated the float and continued down to the sphere hatch.

In the Trieste the pressure sphere provided just enough room for two people. It provided completely independent life support, with a closed-circuit rebreather

Rebreather

A rebreather is a type of breathing set that provides a breathing gas containing oxygen and recycled exhaled gas. This recycling reduces the volume of breathing gas used, making a rebreather lighter and more compact than an open-circuit breathing set for the same duration in environments where...

system similar to that used in modern spacecraft and spacesuits: oxygen was provided from pressure cylinders, and carbon dioxide was scrubbed from breathing air by being passed through canisters of soda-lime

Soda lime

Soda lime is a mixture of chemicals, used in granular form in closed breathing environments, such as general anaesthesia, submarines, rebreathers and recompression chambers, to remove carbon dioxide from breathing gases to prevent CO2 retention and carbon dioxide poisoning.It is made by treating...

. Power was provided by batteries.

The Trieste was later fitted with a new pressure sphere, manufactured by the Krupp

Krupp

The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...

Steel Works of Essen, Germany (a company that had produced well over 100 U-boat

U-boat

U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...

s during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

) in three finely-machined sections (an equatorial ring and two caps).
To withstand the great pressure of 1.25 metric tons

Tonne

The tonne, known as the metric ton in the US , often put pleonastically as "metric tonne" to avoid confusion with ton, is a metric system unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. The tonne is not an International System of Units unit, but is accepted for use with the SI...

per cm² (110 MPa

MPA

-Academic degrees:* Master of Professional Accountancy* Master of Public Administration* Master of Public Affairs* Master of Physician's Assistant-Chemicals:* Medroxyprogesterone acetate, also known by the brand name Depo-Provera* Morpholide of pelargonic acid...

) at the bottom of Challenger Deep, the sphere's walls were 12.7 centimetres (5 in) thick (it was overdesigned

Factor of safety

Factor of safety , also known as safety factor , is a term describing the structural capacity of a system beyond the expected loads or actual loads. Essentially, how much stronger the system is than it usually needs to be for an intended load...

to withstand considerably more than the rated pressure). The sphere weighed 13 metric tons in air and eight metric tons in water (giving it an average specific gravity of 13/(13-8) = 2.6 times that of sea water). The float was necessary because of the sphere's density: it was not possible to design a sphere large enough to hold a person that would withstand the necessary pressures, yet also have metal walls thin enough for the sphere to be neutrally-buoyant. Gasoline

Gasoline

(petrol) was chosen as the float fluid because it is less dense than water, yet relatively incompressible even at extreme pressure, thus retaining its buoyant properties and negating the need for thick, heavy walls for the float chamber.

Observation of the sea outside the craft was conducted directly by eye, via a single, very tapered, cone-shaped block of acrylic glass

Acrylic glass

Poly is a transparent thermoplastic, often used as a light or shatter-resistant alternative to glass. It is sometimes called acrylic glass. Chemically, it is the synthetic polymer of methyl methacrylate...

(Plexiglas), the only transparent substance identified which would withstand the pressures needed, at the design hull thickness. Outside illumination for the craft was provided by quartz arc-light

Arc lamp

"Arc lamp" or "arc light" is the general term for a class of lamps that produce light by an electric arc . The lamp consists of two electrodes, first made from carbon but typically made today of tungsten, which are separated by a gas...

bulbs, which proved to be able to withstand the over 1000 atmospheres of pressure without any modification.

Nine tons of magnetic iron pellets were placed on the craft as ballast, both to speed the descent and allow ascent, since the extreme water pressures would not have permitted compressed air ballast-expulsion tanks to be utilized at great depths. This additional weight was held in place actively at the throats of two hopper-like ballast silos by electromagnets, so that in case of an electrical failure the bathyscaphe would rise automatically to the surface.

Transported to the Naval Electronics Laboratory

Naval Electronics Laboratory

The U.S. Navy Electronics Laboratory was created in 1945, with the consolidation of the Navy Radio and Sound Lab and its wartime partner, the University of California Division of War Research...

's facility in San Diego

San Diego, California

San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...

, the Trieste was modified extensively by the Americans, and then used in a series of deep-submergence tests in the Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

during the next few years, culminating in the dive to the bottom of the Challenger Deep

Challenger Deep

in the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean, during January 1960.

The Mariana Trench dives

Trieste departed San Diego on October 5, 1959 for Guam

Guam

aboard the freighter Santa Maria to participate in Project Nekton
Project Nekton
Project Nekton was the codename for a series of shallow test dives and deep-submergence operations in the Pacific Ocean near Guam that saw the United States Navy-owned research bathyscaphe Trieste enter the Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the world's oceans.The series of dives began...

, a series of very deep dives in the Mariana Trench.
On January 23, 1960, Triestehttp://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/t8/trieste.htm reached the ocean floor in the Challenger Deep (the deepest southern part of the Mariana Trench), carrying Jacques Piccard

Jacques Piccard

Jacques Piccard was a Swiss oceanographer and engineer, known for having developed underwater vehicles for studying ocean currents. He was one of only two people, along with Lt...

(son of Auguste) and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh

Don Walsh

. This was the first time a vessel, manned or unmanned, had reached the deepest known point of the Earth's oceans. The onboard systems indicated a depth of 11521 metres (37,799 ft), although this was revised later to 10916 metres (35,814 ft) and more accurate measurements made during 1995 have found the Challenger Deep to be slightly shallower, at 10911 metres (35,797 ft).

The descent to the ocean floor took 4 hours and 48 minutes at a descent rate of 0.9 m/s. After passing 9,000 meters one of the outer Plexiglas window panes cracked, shaking the entire vessel. The two men spent barely twenty minutes at the ocean floor, eating chocolate bars for sustenance. The temperature in the cabin was a mere 7°C (45°F) at the time. While on the bottom at maximum depth, Piccard and Walsh unexpectedly regained the ability to communicate with the surface ship, USS Wandank (ATA-204), using a sonar

Sonar

Sonar is a technique that uses sound propagation to navigate, communicate with or detect other vessels...

/hydrophone

Hydrophone

A hydrophone is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates electricity when subjected to a pressure change...

voice communications system. At a speed of almost a mile per second (about five times the speed of sound in air), it took about seven seconds for a voice message to travel from the craft to the surface ship and another seven seconds for answers to return.

While on the bottom, Piccard and Walsh observed a number of small sole

Sole (fish)

Sole is a group of flatfish belonging to several families. Generally speaking, they are members of the family Soleidae, but, outside Europe, the name sole is also applied to various other similar flatfish, especially other members of the sole suborder Soleoidei as well as members of the flounder...

and flounder

Flounder

The flounder is an ocean-dwelling flatfish species that is found in coastal lagoons and estuaries of the Northern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.-Taxonomy:There are a number of geographical and taxonomical species to which flounder belong.*Western Atlantic...

swimming away , proving that at least some vertebrate life can withstand the extremes of pressure in the Earth's oceans. They noted that the floor of the Challenger Deep consisted of "diatom

Diatom

Diatoms are a major group of algae, and are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons , fans , zigzags , or stellate colonies . Diatoms are producers within the food chain...

aceous ooze". The ascent to surface took 3 hours, 15 minutes.

Since then, no manned craft has ever returned to the Challenger Deep. A Japanese robotic craft Kaikō
Kaiko
was a remotely operated underwater vehicle built by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology for exploration of the deep sea. Kaikō was the second of only three vessels ever to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, as of 2010...

reached the bottom of the Challenger Deep in 1995. The Nereus
Nereus (underwater vehicle)
Nereus is a hybrid autonomous underwater vehicle built by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution . Constructed as a research vehicle to operate at depths of up to , it was designed to explore Challenger Deep, the deepest surveyed point in the global ocean...

hybrid remotely operated vehicle (HROV) reached the bottom on May 31, 2009.

Other deep dives by Trieste

Beginning April 1963, Trieste was modified and used in the Atlantic Ocean

Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...

to search for the missing submarine . In August 1963, Trieste found the wreck off the coast of New England

New England

New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...

, 8,400 feet (2.56 km) below the surface. Trieste was changed, improved and redesigned so many times that almost no original parts remain. The Trieste was transported to the Washington Navy Yard where it was exhibited along with the Krupp pressure sphere in the National Museum of the U.S. Navy

U.S. Navy Museum

at the Washington Navy Yard

Washington Navy Yard

The Washington Navy Yard is the former shipyard and ordnance plant of the United States Navy in Southeast Washington, D.C. It is the oldest shore establishment of the U.S. Navy...

in 1980. Her original Terni pressure sphere was incorporated into the Trieste II
Bathyscaphe Trieste II
Trieste II ' was the successor to Trieste — the United States Navy's first bathyscaphe purchased from its Swiss designers. The original Trieste design was heavily modified by the Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, California and built at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard...

.

Tribute

The song 'The Trench' by Danish composer Ste van Holm

Ste van Holm

Ste van Holm is a Danish musician and video artist living in North Zealand, Denmark....

is a tribute to the Mariana Trench dives.

External links

US Navy - Trieste
Animation of Trieste
HNSA Ship Page: RV Trieste
History of the Bathyscaphe Trieste
50th anniversary recollection by retired Navy Captain Don Walsh.
2008 obituary of diver Jaques Piccard
Seven Miles Down the story of the Bathyscaphe Trieste

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Design

The Mariana Trench dives

Other deep dives by Trieste

See also

Tribute

External links