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On 23 Nov 95 at 8:42, Steven Lindblom wrote:
> >Of the various liquids chosen as incompressible fillers, I hereby do NOT
> >recommend a choice that Cousteau and Picard made once! They dived in a
> >`bathyscaphe', which is a hollow steel ball with a float. The float needed to
> >be filled with something incompressible, so they chose petrol (= gasoline)!!!
> >OK, it worked.
> The purpose of the gasoline was not as an imcompressible fluid,
> but as an easily obtainable lighter-than-water gas to float the
> bathyscape, which operated exactly as a lighter-than-air ballon,
> only underwater. In short, the gas was acting in water as
> helium/hydrogen in air. The designers doubtlessly felt the
> flammabililty would be of little problem thousands of feet below
> the surface; and that the pollution aspects (not that anyone gave a
> damn in those days) were justified by the scientific value of the
> missions.
I recall that the crew of the first "Bathyscaphe", the FNRS-2
(FNRS-1 was a stratospheric balloon) had to enter the sphere while on
deck of the support ship, then the hatch had to be bolted shut, then
the bathyscaphe lowered into the sea, and then filled with gasoline.
The time-consuming procedure was virtually impossible to perform if
the sea was not perfectly flat... Subsequent bathyscaphes were far
more seaworthy (they could be towed through all sorts of weather) and
had an access well for the crew.
-----------------Pour la Republique Francaise du Quebec-----------------
In a Republic, society should be like school, whose prime mission is to
teach citizens how to judge for themselves by their own natural light.
In a democracy, it is school that must look like society, and it's prime
mission is solely to produce people adapted to the job market.
Regis Debray in "Are you a democrat or a republican?"
- Marc Dufour -- [\]ACUC 6 31874 & TDI -- http: will soon be relocated -
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