Concrete Submarine

I was reading about the submarine HMS Astute the other day, and somewhere I came across a line that said that in order to be able to withstand the pressure during deep dives, the cross section of the hull needs to be a perfect circle. Well, perfect is something you only get in theory, in practice you can come close, but you are never going to be perfect. So, just how perfect does it need to be? Pretty darn close: a flat spot that deviates from a perfect circle by one inch will cause a 30% loss in strength. We are talking about a seven inch thick steel plate bent in a circle 37 feet in diameter.  That's going to be a bit of a trick. No wonder submarines are so expensive.

Pont du Gard Roman aqueduct near Nimes in France

Then I got to thinking about this and I realized steel was exactly the wrong material for this. We use steel to build things because it has high tensile strength. When you are building a tank to hold compressed air, steel is a good choice. But a submarine is not dealing with internal pressure, it is dealing with external pressure, and for that you need a material has strong compression strength, like rock, or concrete. Look at the Roman arches or tunnels, or sewer pipes. All require good compression strength and all use stone or concrete.

Concrete Submarine

Then I remembered reading a few years ago about a possible new submarine threat in the form of concrete submarines, so I went a-Googling. I found a couple of references to this, but nothing current. I also found one site that specializes in private/commercial submarines. Near as I can make out, one German engineer built himself a working concrete submarine, and then tried to promote the idea. A few years ago he moved to Columbia where he has been working on a larger luxury yacht style version.

Why does the Navy persist in building submarines out of the wrong material? Possibly because they resist explosives, as in depth charges, better. Or maybe just no one has ever built a big submarine out of concrete and no one wants to try it. You know the first reaction some people have when they hear the words "concrete" and "submarine" together is that's a really great idea, it will go straight to the bottom and stay there, and then they laugh. But steel by itself doesn't float any better. Maybe it's just that that's what the Mafia uses. I mean, who ever heard of steel overshoes?

Update October 2016 replaced missing picture, fixed by HTML, which meant replacing more pictures.

Quote of the Day

Talking about Columbian drug smuggling semi-submersibles:

Vice Admiral Edgar Cely said that specialized personnel and knowledge are needed to design and build the craft.

Specialized knowledge? Are you kidding me? No, he's probably not kidding. Compared to your average reporter, or your average turnip, turning a wrench or wielding a spatula is specialized knowledge.I mean they are just boats for Pete's sake. People all over the world have been building boats since the dawn of time.

Whoops. Just Googled "Vice Admiral Edgar Cely" and discovered he is in the Columbian Navy. I'm not saying Columbia is a third world country, but maybe it is. Finding someone who knows what a wrench is might be a little difficult.

Does this make me a firstist?

Via a three year old post by Michelle Malkin.

HMS Astute

You may have heard about the shooting death on board the British submarine HMS Astute recently. I heard about it and decided to see just what kind of submarine it was. It's a relatively new sub. I found a bunch of pictures including some of it under construction and prior to launch.

HMS Astute

In the third photo you can see the openings in the pressure hull for the torpedoes. Interestingly, this sub does not have separate inner and outer hulls. It weighs (displaces) a thousand tons more when submerged when surfaced. A cubic foot of seawater weighs about 64 pounds, (1.02500 (g / ml) = 63.9886596 pounds per (cubic foot)) so a ton of water occupies about 30 cubic feet. A thousand tons of water will occupy 30,000 cubic feet. The submarine displaces around 7,000 tons, or something over 200,000 cubic feet. What I am wondering is whether the tanks used to submerge the submarine are inside the pressure hull, or whether they are inside the nose and tail sections. The nose looks like it might have some room, but the tail section looks a little small. I'm thinking the tanks used to submerge the submarine must be inside the pressure hull. I suppose it doesn't really matter. You are going to have doors to the outside, and you will need to be able to seal those doors against extreme pressures, so against that a few valves to allow flooding the tanks is probably not a big deal.

DarkGovernment has a good statement of this submarine's impressive capabilities.

Update March 2019 replaced Picasa slideshow with photo and link to album.

Mole People

I've been reading Science Fiction by Iain M. Banks lately and they are pretty good stories. (Not to be confused with Iain Banks who writes stuff that isn't science fiction. And how do you pronounce Iain anyway? I always thought E N was spelled Ian, this version has an extra I in it. Is it pronounced differently? Like I-ane?) Anyways, he's writing about a civilization that has achieved everything you could possibly hope to achieve and they spend their time amusing themselves mostly. Naturally, there's trouble in paradise, which is good or we wouldn't have a story. But it got me to thinking. If you can have anything you want, would there be any reason to go anywhere? I mean you can create any kind of environment you want, at least any kind that you would be able to survive in, and anything that you just want to see can be rendered perfectly in a display. No reason to go anywhere, unless you just like traveling.

What if a civilization turned inward though, and instead of looking up at the stars people started looking at what was under their feet. Started digging. Learned how to deal with high pressures and high temperatures. I mean that's basically what's keeping us from going any deeper than we have. We could probably go a few miles deeper than we have now, but not very much farther before the pressure and temperature get too high for us to cope with. What if a civilization did learn to cope with these things and bored into the center of a planet and hollowed it out? You would be nearly weightless as you would be surrounded by approximately equal mass on all sides. The pressure would be enormous. You may need a new state of matter to build an interior structure that would keep the planet from collapsing.

You might ask why anyone would ever want to do this. There is one answer: death by gamma rays. Sometimes stars blow up and when they do they can send out a burst of gamma rays. If the star is close enough, and the explosion is big enough, there could be enough gamma rays to get through our planets magnetic field and do some serious damage. The odds are microscopic, but given billions of years, it could happen and it could be disastrous. Putting a big bunch of rock between you and the source is one way to survive such an event.  Half a planets worth of rock might do the trick. Shoot, maybe even half a moons worth. Shoot, there could be an advanced civilization of mole people living inside the moon right now. We should go visit them.

The Mole People | Trailer | 1956

Update February 2017 replaced missing video clip.

Andromeda Galaxy

I'm reading Marilyn's column in Parade Magazine this morning and she mentions that the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the few objects outside of our own galaxy that is visible to the naked eye. Huh. I remember doing some calculations when I was a kid that said it should appear to be as big as a dinner plate held at arm's length. So I check and according to Wikipedia it "it appears more than six times as wide as the full Moon", so my original calculations were at least somewhere in the ball park. I've never seen the thing, so I can't personal vouch for this.

wikiHow has a page explaining how to locate it. It seems to be near the equator, so prime viewing from the Northern hemisphere is about over, and it will be easier to see from the Southern hemisphere for the next six months. But since it's close to the border you should be able to see it regardless. Also, it's not going to look like a dinner plate. To the naked eye it will just look like a star, but with a telescope, the big smear that it is becomes visible. Or so they say.

Wikipedia gives the apparent dimensions of Andromeda at 190' x 60', which looks like the dimensions of a barn. NED (NASA/IPAC EXTRAGALACTIC DATABASE) clears that up. Besides indicating feet in architectural drawings, the apostrophe is also used to indicate minutes of arc (I knew that, I had just never seen anyone actually use it that way). 190' at 60 minutes per degree is a tad over three degrees. Your thumb held up at arms length is about one degee, so while it's not as big as a dinner plate, the whole smear of Andromeda should be noticable.

A Good Job

This week's episode of The Good Wife (Wrongful Termination) revolved around the suicides of three employees at one company, which reminded me of the time I interviewed for a position with Intel's Supercomputer Group back in the 90's. Three people in that group had recently committed suicide there as well. I didn't get the job. That was probably a good thing. This was back when I was still under the illusion that Intel was an engineering company. I eventually figured out it was not an engineering company, it was more of a political cluster fuck.

There was a news item this week about some muckety-muck from Intel giving a speech in Arizona about how the public schools weren't doing a good job of educating students. Do not forget that Intel is one of those companies that bases it's decision on where to locate it's next plant on how a big a tax break they can get. And now they have the nerve to bitch about the schools. Shitheads.

Which reminds me of the time I got invited to some kind of fund-raising dinner at Nike. If I recall correctly the keynote speaker was another muckety-muck from Intel, and they were soliciting donations to a fund to help the schools, once again after they had scored a big tax break on the plants they built here, like Ronler acres.

I guess it's the nature of all large successful organizations to attract good-for-nothing  politcal opportunists. I am sure there are some good people working at Intel, there are probably some people who really enjoy their jobs, and there is undoubtably some real innovative engineering going on. But I am also sure there are some really rotten people working there, there are a bunch of people who can't stand their job, and there is a whole bunch of useless make-work going on as well.

Quote of the Day

I am working on Colorado State income taxes this morning and this check box pops up on the screen:

I don't know what it means. I am not sure I want to know what it means.

Doesn't matter in any case. Shortly thereafter I threw in the towel and took the whole thing down to my accountant at BKR, except they aren't called BKR anymore. Okay, their new name is Fordham-Goodfellow.

It wasn't this check box that threw me, it was me not noticing form QXZ4209 buried in last years return. I glanced at last years form, which was done by my accountant, and said: shoot, there ain't nothin' to this, I kin do this myself. So I downloaded a copy of H & R Block's TaxCut software and proceeded to wade into the swamp. Made a first pass and printed out what I had so far, and then sat down and compared what I had with last years return. Huh. No form ZQB5302 in my package. Oh. Look at those numbers. Somebody had to sit down with a calculator and wade through a 20 page report and add up all those numbers. Gaaaaah!

This is like the time I replaced the heater core in an old Ford we used to have. I glanced at the shop manual and saw that removing the heater core was a four step process. Well, shoot, that should be easy enough. So come Saturday I sat down to do this job and I look at the intructions and step one is "Remove the dashboard". Arrrggghh! Same exact kind of situation. That time I was younger, had more energy and was determined. And broke.

This time I bailed and gave it to Donna and she accepted it, thankfully.

October 2016 replaced missing image.