Re: ode to Popular Mechanics

From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Tue Feb 06 2001 - 03:01:31 MST


It appears as if Michael Lorrey <mike@datamann.com> wrote:
|
|> passenger and cargo submarines that go fast and save fuel because they are
|> under the surface turbulence.
|
|Sorry, the excessive surface area of subs versus ships precludes fuel
|savings. Surface ships will always go faster for a given amount of fuel.

I understand there exists an effect possible for submarines, one which creates
a gaseous volume around the submarine, and insulates the submarine surface
from water with a thin layer of a gas (air? water vapour?), thus allowing for
much higher speeds when submerged - even rivalling surface ship speeds. Since
this miltech apparently belongs to the cutting edge, I have found very few
refs to it in the on- and offline literature.



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