At 11:07 PM 2/5/01 -0800, Michael M. Butler wrote:
>In good weather. If seas start getting generally stormy, or if the
>Global Warming crew has got it backwards, there might still be a venue
>for cargo subs. But the other thing is, they're plain hard to maintain,
>even ones that only go 60 meters deep... You're not wrong, I'm just
>thinking at the edges.
There was research done into compliant "shark skin" ("dolphin skin"?)
coatings for subs that greatly decrease drag - and recently a shield of air
around the sub to completely eliminate drag, although at the cost of not
having any control over trajectory. We need more research into these ideas
- a sub traveling at, say, 50 m below the surface would surely avoid all
(most?) weather related effects, and have as smooth a ride as maglev
(barring tidal waves).
How high do waves get, anyway?
Chuck Kuecker
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:35 MDT