Streamers with the inscription “The country meets its heroes” sway over Moscow. Three heroic faces sway over Moscow: Chilingarov, Sagalevich and Gruzdev. Record breakers! They dived to a depth of four thousand three hundred and one meters. Russia was glorified.
What is heroic here, however, is not clear if any State Duma deputy or ordinary millionaire is capable of this. Our columnist Yuri Rost once also descended on a deep-sea vehicle to a decent depth - he doesn’t paste his portraits all over Moscow and doesn’t call himself a hero.
And in general, any “bathyscaphe” could set the flag - a word that is mistakenly used to call the deep-sea manned vehicles “Mir-1” and “Mir-2”.
And here chief designer and the creator of “Worlds” - Igor Evgenievich Mikhaltsev, Doctor of Technical Sciences, holder of the Order of Merit for the Fatherland, III degree, Hero of Socialist Labor - truly a hero. Not even because he invented them, but because he managed (in our country! for civilian, not military needs!) to bring his plans to fruition - launching them into the water.
I don’t know who meets the record-breaking deputies, but a country called Russia should know its hero Mikhaltsev.
— Did you use the word “bathyscaphe” in your article? - asked Rost, who not only photographed Mikhaltsev, but is also friends with him (although for Rost these two things are inseparable).
- Just one time.
“Then Mikhaltsev may not give you an interview.”
- But this word was in the quote from Minister Lavrov!
“Then maybe he will.”
Well, I gave it anyway...
— Igor Evgenievich, why do you get so annoyed when “Worlds” are called bathyscaphes?
“It’s like calling a helicopter a hot air balloon.”
—Where did this error come from?
— From the ignorance of people using accepted terms. Swiss engineer Auguste Pekar flew into the stratosphere in a stratospheric balloon, which was filled with a light gas, helium. Returning to earth, he decided: why not do the same in the ocean. And did. And he called this engineering structure a bathyscaphe. Here the vessel is filled with something lighter than water, for example gasoline, a habitable cabin is attached to it, which has batteries, on-board life support equipment, electric motors and other small things, and a load is suspended. And this entire structure is designed so that it sinks with a load, and floats up when it reaches the bottom and uncouples the load. That's what a bathyscaphe is. This has nothing to do with manned deep-sea vehicles. This heavy system - the bathyscaphe - has no maneuverability: neither vertical nor horizontal.
- So, just go down once and that’s it?
- Exactly. That is, the system is designed to break records. Auguste Pekar could no longer do this, but his son Jacques Pekar, who is still alive today and with whom I have a good relationship, and US Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh dived to a depth of 10,916 meters on January 23, 1960, having previously found the deepest place in the World Ocean - in the Mariana Trench on Pacific Ocean. They dived in, looked out the window, saw something funny (there were practically no photographs) and surfaced, later talking about their emotions and observations. This is how the world record was set. Jacques Pekar is a highly respected man in Switzerland, and Walsh became an admiral in the United States.
Deep-sea manned vehicles are a completely different technology. They have maneuverability, move horizontally and vertically, can turn, bend, take samples from the bottom, load them into small containers, and explore the surrounding space in the full sense of the word. And the Mirs can move at a speed of 4.5 knots.
— When did you come up with the idea for “Worlds”?
— In 1970, I formulated the concept of indispensability in a new unfamiliar environment of a human researcher, an observer - in comparison with the operator of any programmable robotic devices.
- Under the water?
- Wherever! In a new environment. But the ocean is a special element. Everything around it is always new! Therefore, devices for exploring the ocean need habitable ones.
In oceanology, two critical figures are accepted - 2000 and 6000 meters. And for deep-sea manned vehicles, these figures are usually used. 2000 meters is the depth that limits 16% of the ocean floor. And 6000 meters is already 98.5% of the bottom of the World Ocean.
— Who did they leave 1.5% to?
- To those who will do deep-sea vehicle extreme depths. There is nothing like this in the world yet. There were bathyscaphes and remote-controlled uninhabited vehicles. The French built the bathyscaphe "Archimedes" - for (approximately) 9500 meters of immersion. Up and down - nothing special. There were only two or three dozen dives deeper than 6000 (by all means). The Japanese made an uninhabited device at 11,000 m. And lost it. But there is nothing to find. But this is not a cheap toy.
— How much do the devices cost?
— In addition to our six-thousanders, Mira-1 and Mira-2, there are two more devices in the world (three were built). The American Sea Cliff apparatus, which is now being refurbished, cost something like 100 million dollars (of which 25 were spent on research and development work, which were used not only for Sea Cliff, so the actual cost of the apparatus is considered to be 75 million). The French did not give official figures known to me, but it seems that their “Nautile” cost about 65 million dollars. The Japanese announced that the Shinkai 6500 cost $92 million, and the carrier ship cost $41 million.
I prefer not to talk about the cost of ours, believing that this is confidential information, I will only say: they cost our country much less than all the others created in the world.
But let's get back to history. So, the first two-thousander research apparatus in the USSR, Pisces IV, was built according to my technical specifications - precisely as a research apparatus, commissioned by the Institute of Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences at the small Canadian company Heiko in 1973.
He was ready for sea trials, but the US detained him. The father of the US nuclear fleet, Admiral Rickaver, was not too lazy to fly from Washington to Trudeau (then Prime Minister of Canada) and offered to buy it to the Canadian government and leave it in Canada.
There was only one two-thousander in the world at that time - the American Alvin apparatus - ordered by the American Navy as a reconnaissance vessel and built in 1964. He did a lot to understand the ocean. Here is an example related to the Alvin apparatus, which, by the way, proves the validity of my concept of the importance of manned vehicles.
With its help, mankind's largest discovery of the 20th century was made, about which little is known - the discovery of anaerobic life on our planet - life without oxygen. The talented oceanographer and geophysicist Robert Ballard, looking through about 40 thousand photographs taken by an uninhabited vehicle in the Galapagos Trench, saw some strange tubes that changed their position at the bottom from image to image. He called the Alvin machine. The device submerged and research fellows brought to the surface vestimentifera - a new form of life. They have everything: and nervous system, and the equivalent of digestive, and respiratory, and the formation of proteins - only they have a sulfur cycle, not an oxygen one.
When the director of the Institute of Space Research found out about this, he called the director of the Institute of Oceanology and said: why do we need to fly to Mars if we have a completely different form of life at home?
So, if not for Alvin, 40 thousand pictures taken by the robot would not have helped to make this greatest discovery of the 20th century.
Returning to the fate of my "Pysis-IV", we must once again recall that it was left in Canada. Admiral Rickaver considered that such a device should not be given to the USSR. All this became known much later.
- And who used it?
— The Canadian government bought it and gave it to the Pacific Ocean Research Institute of Canada in the port of Victoria.
But in those days I had strong nerves. I waited for a while and, realizing that two devices are a completely different quality, I suggested that the same company make two devices. They became interested. And in Moscow they understood: if Rickaver flew to Canada specifically because of the device, then this means that this is something important. And Mikhaltsev received money for two devices.
We figured out how to circumvent the agreement between the US and European countries on the ban on supplying new technology equipment to the USSR and socialist countries. But this concerned products. And no one forbade the purchase and export of components.
In general, the company rented premises in Zurich. One durable body of manned vehicles was ordered from Japan, the other from America. And they took it away - it’s not a device, that is, not a product, but parts. The first one was assembled in Zurich, transported like Suvorov through the Alps - on a trailer to Genoa, tested in the Mediterranean Sea (they tested not up to two thousand, I was afraid that the Americans would do something bad), then loaded it onto the waiting motor ship Fryazino ", 4 hours later he filmed in Novorossiysk. This is how we got Paisis-VII. And when they made the second one, the Americans had already given up (at that time they were building their six-thousander Sea Cliff). "Pysis-XI" was assembled in Vancouver, tested nearby, in the Pacific Ocean, and on our ship they took it to Vladivostok, from where "Pysis-XI" was transported to Novorossiysk on an Il-76. So in 1975-1976, we had two inhabited research vessels of two thousand meters, which worked for 10 years before the “Worlds” and did a lot in different oceans and seas to understand our planet.
- What about them now?
— One stands as an exhibit in Kaliningrad on our ship (the old Vityaz), turned into a museum. And some things were removed from the second Pysis as spare parts for the Worlds. But it can be restored and used.
- And we don’t have more than two thousand meters?
- No. But Jacques Pekar is now selling his Trout. He asked to find him a buyer. The porthole is a meter in diameter. Working depth - 500 meters. An indispensable thing for those who are going to build and operate an underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic (there is just such a shallow depth). Uninhabited vehicles are of little use there. Or not suitable at all.
— Why did you build the Pysis in Canada? Was it impossible to make such devices on the territory of the USSR?
- Remember, it was 1970... Gagarin had already flown into space, 100 megatons nuclear bomb on Novaya Zemlya have already been blown up. Naturally, we could easily make such a device. But industry Soviet Union was designed for large series, if it is a defense product, and if it is a civilian product, then for mass production. It was difficult to create unique things in the USSR using research institutes and developers.
- So it was cheaper in Canada than here?
- Much! This is the specificity of experimental samples. Making an experimental model in our Union, if it is not a defense product, is a difficult task.
I can speak from experience about this. I have worked with the military-industrial complex all my life. “Worlds” is the fourth most important thing I have ever done in my life. That's what I think myself. I had much more important things to do.
I happened to make a discovery. Everything was classified. In 1963, I received a diploma, it says: “Mikhaltsev made a discovery.” That's all. No name, nothing. Only the number is 61st.
“You still can’t talk about this?”
“It’s quite possible, because I got tired of it, and I declassified this case in 1994.” And now it’s called this: “The phenomenon of sound field continuity in the ocean has been discovered—the Mikhaltsev effect.” This is perhaps the first in importance, because all long-range detection sonars of submarines (today - all navies of the world!) have an architecture that uses this discovery. Second. Just like the “Worlds”, according to my technical specifications and under my leadership, two special research hydroacoustic vessels “Sergei Vavilov” and “Petr Lebedev” were built - 1956-1960. And two sciences were born: ocean acoustics (there was no such science, there was only hydroacoustics) and acoustic methods for studying the ocean. This, I think, is the second most important thing. But, excuse me, I’m not inclined to engage in self-promotion, let’s return to “Worlds”.
For eight years I got money for them. But the main thing is that I wrote the technical specifications for them. This is what I think is necessary. There are two types of TK. One in terms of “I need.” And this is given to the manufacturer, but how to do it is his problem. And the second is in terms like: “It is necessary - and I know how it can be done, and I take responsibility for the possibility of implementation, and you do it under my leadership.”
- Is this your type?
- Yes. I have worked according to this principle all my life. Starting with the acoustic steamships “Sergei Vavilov” and “Peter Lebedev” (83 pages of technical specification text).
In the terms of reference for “Worlds” I wrote eight points that had not been done before. Everyone moves the mercury from the stern to the bow so that the apparatus descends either nose down or nose up. Instead, I made containers that hold the water moved by pumps to pump seawater. With pressure drops of more than 600 bar, this was realized for the first time in the world.
The Finns, whom I found because of the steel, fulfilled all my points. The fact is that all devices are made of titanium, and “Worlds” are made of martensitic, highly alloyed steel with 18% nickel. I was lucky that I found the Finnish company Lokomo.
What is the value of this steel? Titanium, the best alloy, has a yield strength of about 70 kg per square centimeter, and this steel has 150. This was a find, and I began to prepare the Finns to fulfill all the specifications. Lokomo is a company that has never done anything like this. Lokomo is part of the Rauma Repola concern, which produces paper and, in addition, equipment for making paper and sawmills. Good engineers who are interested in something new. For two years I prepared them. I took them to Novorossiysk. At that time, there was “Keldysh” with “Paysis” parked there. For more than a day they measured them and photographed them. Then a year and a half passed. They counted, and I took out the money. This was the last year and a half out of eight.
But I only got money for one device.
— How did you manage to make the second one?
— The contract was signed for one device. Three days later I asked the Finns: what if I don’t make a single drawing, but just make an exact copy of the device, how much will I have to pay extra? Thanks to good relations, they quoted a ridiculous figure, they realized that I had no money, and they only charged me for the production of four extra spheres: one habitable and three ballast.
And then I prepared two devices without telling anyone about it. According to the technical specifications, 2 sets of equipment were provided. They read all the technical specifications (both in the State Planning Committee and in other departments) and thought: well, imported equipment, of course, you need to have a spare one. And below in small print - spare parts and accessories (spare tools and equipment) - 6% of the contract cost. As is customary in shipbuilding.
At the same time, it took me 7 months to obtain the signatures of deputy ministers confirming that the two apparatuses were a government decision.
Next came the tests. Crew: delivery pilot Finn Pekka Laakso, receiver pilot Anatoly Sagalevich and dive director Mikhaltsev. Sank on November 7, 1987 in the Gulf of Bothnia. They broke bottles of champagne on Mira. I was entrusted with breaking a bottle of champagne on Mir-1, and the president of Raoma Repola - on Mir-2. Then on December 13 and 15, 1987, the crew dived during a successful acceptance test in the Atlantic to 6170 meters on Mir-1 and to 6120 meters on Mir-2.
And here is the American World Technology Evaluation Center (a center that reflects Newest technologies) in 1994 called “Worlds” “...the best deep-sea manned vehicles ever built in the world.”
They differ from the others in what is said above, and, in addition, in the supply of electricity. Everyone has 50, and I have 100 kilowatt-hours.
Another major difference is in the emergency rescue system. The device has a syntactic buoy inside. So, if anything happens, a button is pressed in the device and the buoy floats to the surface to the support vessel. Half of the coupling (the same as a railway automatic coupler) is run along the kovlar cable, as if along a guide. It reaches the device, automatic coupling occurs, and the device is lifted on a long power cable. No one has such a system.
If the device gets tangled in something at the bottom, then a second device is needed. The fact that there are two of them is another unique solution. Only in Russia there are two of them. Everyone else has one.
— Are you satisfied with how your “Worlds” are being used?
- I can say that not very much. But I don’t engage in exploitation and I don’t intend to criticize other people’s work. Many important discoveries of world significance have been made.
Was at the North Pole good job"Mirov" and, I suppose, the not very good work of the icebreaker, which did not clear a place for ascent. "Mir-2" broke the light hull there, breaking through the ice, "Fedorov" and "Russia" had to chip away at the ice.
Now pilots Chernyaev and Sagalevich with the “Mirs” are loaded onto the vessel “Akademik Mstislav Keldysh” and go to work normally in the Norwegian Sea - to the “Komsomolets”. At one time I was the initiator and leader of the work on the detection and first measurements of radioactivity around Komsomolets, I understood that if a sea Chernobyl happened, it would be very bad. Now there are radioactivity sensors in the water and on nuclear submarines.
- This means that “Worlds” can be used in the following cases: a plane crashes, falls into the ocean - you can look at it, a ship or boat sank - you can also look at it, and if it’s sinking, you can save it. You can plant a flag on the ocean floor...
- You tell it well. And what else?
— “Titanic” can be filmed underwater with their help. Tubes can be found...
- It's already closer. And then you can start exploring the World Ocean. The ocean occupies 72% of the planet's area. It's a shame to live on a planet whose surface we know worse than reverse side Moons.
P.S. It’s a pity that Chilingarov, who used “Worlds” for his own political purposes (after all, elections are coming soon, and he probably wants to get his fifth Duma term) and casually ruined Russia’s diplomatic relations with the Arctic countries with his record, never once remembered the name of the creator of these “ Mirov”, on which he rode himself and his fellow party member and rich foreign guests.
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| Manned underwater vehicles |
|
Immersion of the MIR apparatus The fleet of the Institute of Oceanology currently includes five inhabited underwater vehicles- two types of "Mir" with a diving depth of up to 6 km, two types of "Pysis" capable of descending to 2 km, and an "Argus" apparatus for work at depths of up to 600 m. Deep-sea manned vehicles (GOV) "MIR-1" and "MIR-2" were built in Finland by the company "Rauma-Repola" in 1987. The devices were created under the scientific and technical guidance of scientists and engineers from the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The creation of the devices began in May 1985 and was completed in November 1987. In December 1987, deep-sea tests of the devices were carried out in the Atlantic at depths of 6170 m (MIR-1) and 6120 m (MIR-2). The devices are installed on the support vessel "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh", built in 1981 in Finland and converted in 1987 to carry out work with the MIR GOA. 35 expeditions were carried out in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans using GOA "Mir-1" and "Mir-2" (1987-2005), as well as 16 expeditions using GOA "Pysis VII" and "Pysis XI" (1977-1991).
An extensive complex was carried out scientific research in various areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, characterized by hydrothermal activity at the bottom. These are areas of 26 degrees north latitude. Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR), Brocken Spur (24 degrees N MAR), 14 deg. 45 min. MAR, Lao and Manus regions - southwestern part of the Pacific Ocean, Piipa volcanoes in the Bering Sea and Loihi in the Hawaiian Islands, Monterey Bay, Guaymas region in the Gulf of California, 21°N. East Pacific Rise (EPR). In these areas, large areas of the ocean floor composed of polymetallic ores were examined. “Black smokers” carrying hot mass from the depths of the Ocanian crust are surrounded by giant geological structures composed of metal sulfides containing a high percentage of iron, manganese, nickel, copper, zinc, cobalt and other metals. During the dives of the GOA "MIR" an unusual animal world hydrotherm, the birth and life of which are associated with bacterial chemosynthesis during complete absence sunlight. This phenomenon is called chemobios in contrast to photobios - the process of the origin of life in which solar radiation is the source of energy. With the help of MIR devices, work was carried out on the sunken nuclear submarine Komsomolets. Long-term radiation and oceanological monitoring was carried out in the area of the sinking of the boat and on the hull of the boat itself, and a set of unique underwater technical work was carried out to seal the bow of the boat in order to reduce the release of radionuclides from the hull in the event of radiation leaks. Over the course of 8 expeditions, more than 80 dives of the MIR GOA were made onto the Komsomolets submersible, which lies at the bottom at a depth of 1700 meters.
On December 24, 2003, at a meeting of the Scientific Council of the P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the “Underwater Oscar” prize was awarded to the head of the Laboratory for the Scientific Operation of Deep-Sea Manned Vehicles of the Institute, Doctor of Technical SciencesAnatoly Mikhailovich Sagalevich by the US Academy of Underwater Sciences and Arts in the Science category. This is the most prestigious prize in the world awarded for underwater work. This is the first "Underwater Oscar" in Russia. IN different years The winners of this prize were outstanding submarine scientists - Jacques Cousteau, Jacques Picard, Don Walsh, Edwin Link, Robert Ballard and others. With the award of this prize, the name of A.M. Sagalevich is immortalized in the Underwater Hall of Fame in Miami. The Laboratory of Deep-Sea Manned Vehicles, headed by A.M. Sagalevich, was awarded the International Compass prize, awarded to the Laboratory team by the Marine Technology Society of the United States. |
Technical characteristics of manned deep-sea vehicles MIR
- Working diving depth 6000 meters
- Energy supply reserve 100 kWh
- Life support capacity 246 man-hours
- Maximum speed 5 knots
- Buoyancy reserve (from surface) 290 kg
- Dry weight 18.6 tons
- Length 7.8 m
- Width (with side motors) 3.8 m
- Height 3 m
- Crew 3 people
Manned deep-sea vehicles of the Institute of Oceanology RAS
| Name |
Quantity |
Crew, people |
Immersion depth (m) |
|
WORLD |
6000 |
||
|
PYSIS |
2000 |
||
|
ARGUS |
|||
|
INSPECTION |
Northeast of New Zealand.
The device managed to dive to a depth of 9977 meters before communication with it was interrupted. A camera operator from the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson was monitoring the collection of sea cucumbers when suddenly the camera image disappeared.
Then communication with the positioning system, which tracks the vehicle's location in relation to the ship, was lost. Under such circumstances, the craft is programmed to wait at the bottom for half an hour to allow the vessel to move a safe distance from its last known location before surfacing.
The next day, researchers discovered the wreckage of the submarine on the surface of the ocean. The disaster occurred on the 30th day of a 40-day expedition, the purpose of which was to explore the second deepest ocean trench in the world. It was planned that the Nereus spacecraft would make 5 or 6 more expeditions by the end of 2014, but now all these projects will have to be returned to the design stage.
(photo by Advanced Imaging and Visualization Lab, WHOI).
Most likely, the cause of the explosion of the device was the enormous deep-sea pressure - about 6895 pascals. Expert Steve Etchemendy, for example, is confident that some parts of underwater vehicles (including sensitive electronics) should always be stored at the same pressure that affects them in the depths of the sea, even on a research vessel. A sudden change in conditions will sooner or later lead to an uncontrollable breakdown, the engineer is sure.
The deep-sea explorer Nereus, named after the ancient Greek god of the sea, Nereus, was owned by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and was the only American research vessel capable of operating at such impressive depths. Therefore, this is, of course, a significant loss for scientists.
The cost of Nereus, built in 2008, was $8 million (282 million rubles). In 2009, he managed to reach the bottom of the deepest part of the ocean - the Mariana Trench. During the dive, the apparatus was subjected to pressure 1000 times greater than atmospheric pressure. Then the device was controlled by a group of American engineers and scientists on board the research vessel Kilo Moana.
That dive lasted about 10 hours, and all this time Nereus used sensors to collect scientific data, take water samples and transmit video to the surface. Having reached the bottom Mariana Trench, the device took samples of soil and rock using a special manipulator.
The loss of the apparatus was a huge loss for the US scientific community, because the apparatus was the only one of its kind. For comparison, the DeepSea Challenger submersible owned by film director James Cameron, but it cannot dive as often as required for research.
By order of the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Russia, the design of a bathyscaphe began, capable of diving to a depth of eleven thousand meters, which has not yet been conquered by mankind.
Not a single deep-sea vehicle existing today is capable of swimming so deep - the maximum depth for them (the Russian “Mir” too) is considered to be 6.5 thousand meters.
This project should be implemented during 2009-2016 within the framework of the target program “Development of maritime civil engineering”. According to the customer’s calculations, the cost of the project, including the design and development of a habitable bathyscaphe, is 63 million rubles. The location of this deep-sea vehicle will be a research vessel, the creation of which is also currently being developed.
The crew of the bathyscaphe will be 2-3 scientists, the maximum diving depth is planned to be 11 thousand meters, the maximum displacement is 33 tons. The device will be able to remain under water for three days.
Simultaneously with the order for the deepest-sea vehicle, the Ministry of Trade and Industry of the Russian Federation placed an order for the design of a research vessel that will carry a manned deep-sea vehicle. The crew of the research vessel is 80 people; in the hold of the vessel there will be a supply of fuel and food for one hundred daily autonomous trips.
In the order, representatives of the Russian Ministry of Industry noted that the creation of such a complex should “establish Russia’s authority as a great maritime power and at the same time a leader in deep-sea shipbuilding.”
The ministry is convinced that this device can be built at shipyards owned by the United Shipbuilding Corporation. But USC itself does not comment on this statement, explaining that it is not aware of what is happening. The project specifications require that the bathyscaphe be equipped with the latest navigation and radio equipment, a reliable and modern security system. Among other things, this complex will provide the opportunity to significantly increase the number of domestic scientific research programs, allowing the most complex operations to be carried out at extremely great depths.
— Manned deep-sea vehicles have a very wide range of applications - from collecting information and conducting various scientific measurements, to work related to eliminating the consequences of accidents under water and laying underwater communication or technological systems. Creating a bathyscaphe that can dive six kilometers today costs an average of $50 million, and in this case we're talking about about 11 kilometers - said Anatoly Sagalevich, head of the laboratory of deep-sea vehicles at the Institute of Oceanology Russian Academy Sci. He believes that before starting to create new deep-sea vehicles, it is necessary to fully use those that are available.
“Our Mirs are recognized as the best devices all over the world, and yet there is not a long queue for their use,” says the scientist. — The maintenance of the Akademik Keldysh vessel, which is the base for two Mir spacecraft, costs 40 thousand dollars a day, which is 15 million dollars a year. Perhaps, on a national scale, this is not so much, but if we take into account the fact that our laboratory has been looking for work on its own for twenty years, then the numbers do not look so small.
The Ministry of Trade and Industry notes that, in addition to scientific use, the World Ocean is now actively used for laying oil and gas pipelines, cable routes and various platforms, so the new deepest-sea vehicle will definitely not be left without work.
Today, only a few states have deep-sea vehicles:
Russia has Mir-1 and Mir-2 (diving depth up to 6.5 thousand meters), France has Nautile (6 thousand meters), Japan has Shinkai-6500 (with a record depth of 6527 meters), China - a copy of the "Mir", which has already been tested at a depth of 5 thousand meters.
There is already a device that can dive to 6.5 thousand meters, which will allow exploring 98% of the bottom of the World Ocean. Therefore, creating devices that can descend to 11 thousand meters is an impractical idea,” Sagalevich complains. - People have already been to such depths - for example, the French sank to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in 1960, and they did not find anything worthy of attention except sedimentary rocks there.
Neither Soviet nor Russian industry has ever produced such devices. Even the "Worlds" were built in Finland - by the Rauma-Repola Oceanics company.
“Russian shipbuilding is not able to build such a device today,” says Alexey Bezborodov, general director of the InfraNews agency. - This body is not just a blank with a porthole made of titanium - it is a body that can withstand enormous pressure, and building such a device is not a very big problem. The main problem lies in the vessel that must support the operation of this apparatus. But our industry has never built such ships. Even during the Soviet era, almost the entire domestic deep-sea fleet was foreign: from the Yuri Gagarin to the Mstislav Keldysh.
One of the most ancient devices for lowering a person under water is a diving bell. They say that Alexander the Great went underwater in such a device. At first, the bell looked very much like a large wooden barrel, suspended upside down on a rope and lowered in this position into the water. The air in the barrel made it possible for the diver sitting in it to breathe. Over time, the diving bell was improved and equipped with various devices that made it easier for a person to work under water. It is still used today to deliver divers to their place of work.
The disadvantage of the bell is obvious - it greatly limits the ability to move underwater. But created in late XIX centuries, a diving suit allowed a person to work freely under water. Currently, two types of spacesuits are used - soft and hard. The first ones consist of a rubber suit and a metal helmet with a viewing window - a porthole. Breathing air is supplied from the surface through a rubber hose attached to the helmet, and exhaust air is released through a special valve into the water. In such a spacesuit, a person can work at a depth of up to 100 meters. The hard suit consists of a steel cylinder for the torso and a system of smaller cylinders for the arms and legs, mounted on hinges. It allows you to dive to twice the depth.
In the early 1940s, famous French scientists J.I. Cousteau and E. Gagnan invented scuba gear. It was he who allowed the widest range of people to become familiar with the depths of the sea: submariners, archaeologists, researchers marine flora and fauna, geologists and oceanologists. However, you cannot dive to great depths while wearing scuba gear.
The bathysphere (from the Greek words “bathiz” - “deep” and “sphere” “ball”), a durable steel chamber of a spherical shape with a sealed entrance hatch and several portholes made of durable glass, helped to begin the exploration of great depths. It is lowered from a surface vessel on a strong steel cable. The air supply is stored in cylinders, and carbon dioxide and water vapor are absorbed by special chemicals. On one of these devices called “Century of Progress” in 1934, Americans W. Beebe and O. Barton descended to a record depth for that time - 923 meters.
But the greatest success in exploring the depths of the sea was achieved by the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard. Back in 1937, he began constructing his first bathyscaphe. However, work was interrupted by the war. Therefore, he built the first apparatus only in 1948. It was made in the form of a metal float filled with gasoline, because gasoline is lighter than water, practically incompressible, and the shell of the float does not deform under the influence of enormous pressures. A spherical gondola made of the strongest steel and ballast are suspended from below the float.
In 1953, Auguste and his son Jacques descended in the Trieste bathyscaphe to a depth of 3160 meters. And in January 1960, J. Piccard and the American D. Walsh, in the same, only improved, bathyscaphe reached the deepest mark of the World Ocean - the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean at a depth of 10912 meters.
However, there are few such super-deep depressions. The main riches are hidden at medium depths - from several tens of meters to 2-3 kilometers. And here, instead of sedentary bathyspheres and bathyscaphes, we need maneuverable vehicles equipped with modern complexes of instruments and mechanisms. The Soviet “Mir” became such an apparatus.
The deep-sea manned underwater vehicle "Mir" is designed for research at depths of up to 6000 meters. It can stay underwater for as long as 80 hours. The length of the device is 6.8 meters, width - 3.6 meters, and height - 3 meters. The diameter of the Mir's spherical body is 2.1 meters. The entrance is located at the top. Three people can work simultaneously on board the Mir. The crew maintains constant communication with the ship via a hydroacoustic channel.
When the Mir dives, the ballast tanks are filled with water, and when it rises to the surface, the pumps are turned on and pump out the water. The running electric motor, which is powered by batteries, allows you to move at speeds of up to 9 kilometers per hour. Two side engines allow complex maneuvers.
“Mir” is equipped with a television video camera, a photo installation and powerful lamps. Two manipulators take samples of soil, animals and vegetation. Water samples are taken by bathometers. The device is equipped with a small drilling rig, which allows you to take samples of rocky soil. There are portholes for observation. The diameter of the central one is 210 millimeters, and the side ones are 120 millimeters each.
Two Mir devices are based on board the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh. With their help, the Komsomolets submarine, resting at the bottom of the Norwegian Sea, was examined. Mir also took part in the survey of the Kursk submarine that sank in 2000.
Despite the fact that “Mir” contributed to many scientific discoveries, his real fame came from his participation in the filming of James Cameron’s famous film “Titanic.” The legendary steamship Titanic sank at a depth of 4000 meters.
The choice of Russian Mir devices for filming by IMAX has become global recognition of our deep-sea technologies and ability to conduct underwater operations on great depths. The choice of the Mir devices was influenced by two circumstances. There were two devices available at once. This provided ample opportunities for underwater filming both in terms of lighting individual objects and in terms of interaction on the object, filming one device with another against the background of the object. In addition, the Mir devices have a large central porthole with a diameter of 210 millimeters, which is very important for the wide-angle lens of the IMAX film camera.
Summer of 1991. after solving the main technical problems, the research vessel Akademik Mstislav Keldysh set off to explore the Titanic, which sank in 1912 at a depth of four thousand meters. On board the Keldysh was a group of geologists and biologists from the Institute of Oceanology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as a group of scientists from the Bedford Oceanographic Institute from Canada.
But the main goal of the expedition was to conduct deep-sea filming on the Titanic from the Mir devices in accordance with the script written by the outstanding director Stephen Lowe. Over the course of three weeks, seventeen Mir dives took place on the Titanic. Filming was carried out on the bow and stern of the sunken ship, as well as in a huge area around it. There was a lot here various items that fell from the Titanic during the sinking. Lowe himself took part in five Mir-2 dives as a director and cameraman and did most of the deep-sea filming.
“The operation to film the left propeller of the Titanic was unusual,” writes Anatoly Sagalevich in the magazine “Knowledge is Power.” - Two Mir spacecraft crawled under the stern canopy of the sunken ship and took completely unique photographs. On the screen we see a huge Titanic propeller, and on the right - the Mir-1 apparatus. Excellent footage taken by Stephen Lowe from Mira-2. On the screen, the entire scene lasts thirty to forty seconds, and the filming operation took several hours: you need to approach, position the devices relative to each other accordingly, select the lighting, etc. And on board the ship at that time it was restless - communication with both devices was lost , which were screened on top by the Titanic's hull. The commanders got carried away and forgot about the communication sessions. Communication resumed when the devices “crawled” out from under surveillance and went “free.” Of course, we don’t see all this on the screen, there is only a propeller and one of the devices nearby, but such a scene, as they say, is worth a lot...
An hour and a half of this unusually exciting spectacle flies by in an instant. This film is not only about the tragedy of the Titanic. This is a film about the expedition of the Institute of Oceanology on the research vessel "Akademik Mstislav Keldysh", about people who do unusual work associated with great risk, about the relationships between people living on different continents, but working on the expedition as one family."
:: Bathyscaphe
A bathyscaphe is a small underwater vessel designed to dive to extreme depths. Main difference underwater bathyscaphe from a submarine lies in its design: the bathyscaphe is equipped with a lighter spherical hull and a float, the walls of which are filled with liquid, the mass of which less water, as a rule, this is gasoline. The movement of the underwater bathyscaphe is carried out due to the rotation of mushroom propellers driven by electric motors.
History of the creation of the bathyscaphe
The idea to build an underwater bathyscaphe first came from the Swiss scientist Auguste Piccard before World War II. He was the first to propose replacing cylinders with compressed oxygen with a float with a liquid whose mass is less than the mass of water. Pikaru's engineering idea was a success, and already in 1948, the first prototype of the bathyscaphe was launched.
The creation of a device of this class was influenced by the need to study the bottom of seas and oceans at great depths. Classic submarines are only capable of descending to a certain limited depth. What is noteworthy is that the designers are able to build a fairly strong body, even for large submarine, which could withstand pressure at extreme depths. However, it is still impossible to solve another problem that prevents submarines from descending to a significant depth.
To float to the surface of the water, traditional submarines use compressed oxygen, which displaces water from the compartments. However, during a dive of more than one and a half thousand meters, under the influence of the gravity of the water, the oxygen in the cylinders loses its properties, in other words, it ceases to be “compressed”.
There are submarines capable of descending to a depth of 2000 meters. Nevertheless, The submersion depth of the bathyscaphe is much greater.
Bathyscaphe dive
A float filled with gasoline or other liquid allows the underwater bathyscaphe to float on the surface of the water and float up. After the tanks are filled with water, the process of immersing the bathyscaphe to depth begins.
In cases where the underwater bathyscaphe freezes due to excessive water density, a buoyancy fluid is released from the float to lower the vessel to the bottom. After this, the submersion process of the bathyscaphe resumes.
Lowering the submersible to the bottom is not so difficult, but how to lift it back up? For this Underwater bathyscaphes have special compartments filled with steel shot. When the ship needs to float, the shot is dropped, and the float pulls the bathyscaphe to the surface. There are also compressed oxygen cylinders on board to speed up the submersible's ascent to the surface of the water.
Bathyscaphe immersion depth
As mentioned above, the diving depth of the bathyscaphe is much greater than that of other underwater vehicles. Back in 1960, modified The bathyscaphe "Trieste" managed to dive to a record depth of 10919 meters. To the surprise of the ship's crew, even at such a depth they saw fish.
Another interesting fact, regarding the submersion of the bathyscaphe: the first person to sink to the very bottom of the world's oceans is the well-known director James Cameron.
Our shipbuilders also have something to brag about. The Mir underwater bathyscaphe, designed by Russian engineers, sank to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. The submersion depth of the bathyscaphe was 4261 m. After this, the ship and its crew spent about an hour at the bottom of the coldest and most dangerous ocean on the ground.
