Navy Technology to Help NOAA Find Sunken History...
- Thread starter jeff k
- Start date
old man
Bronze Member
Jeff K. Informative post. Do you have any idea if this technology will be available commercially to the rest of the diving community ?
piratediver
Sr. Member
Old man: I am one of the participants in this so I will try and report back to this list with some details. AUV's are available now but are very expensive and not quite up to the capabilities of towed systems. They are making great strides now however and will probably soon make their way into our line of work.
Pirate Diver
Pirate Diver
old man
Bronze Member
Pirate Diver, I couldn't ask for better help then that. I really appreciate it.
You wouldn't by any chance be the person that salvaged the Pirate Ship off the Cape would you ?
You wouldn't by any chance be the person that salvaged the Pirate Ship off the Cape would you ?
piratediver
Sr. Member
Old Man: I did the original research to locate it and was the archaeologist that verified it as the WHYDAH. Barry Clifford was the guy who "found" it and continues to work it. I still dive it once in a while as time permits but since I have a "real" job now I just do it for fun.
I worked for a while years ago on the WHYDAH with Rob McClung who is mentioned here once in a while and is a hell of a diver. I also worked with him looking for HMS HUSSAR in the East River near Riker's Island, just about the worst diving I've ever done.We had garbage scows going overhead and current so strong it almost ripped off our masks. We had to get shots from the NYC health department to dive there and wash off our dry suits with bleach and water to kill the bacteria. First and only time I ever got an ear infection.
Pirate Diver
I worked for a while years ago on the WHYDAH with Rob McClung who is mentioned here once in a while and is a hell of a diver. I also worked with him looking for HMS HUSSAR in the East River near Riker's Island, just about the worst diving I've ever done.We had garbage scows going overhead and current so strong it almost ripped off our masks. We had to get shots from the NYC health department to dive there and wash off our dry suits with bleach and water to kill the bacteria. First and only time I ever got an ear infection.
Pirate Diver
- Thread starter
- #6
Underwater gliders take flight to new depths
ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer Sunday, November 23, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A century after the Wright Brothers first took to the skies, the world of flight is pushing to new depths. Researchers are perfecting innovative gliders that can swoop and soar on journeys covering hundreds of miles and lasting for weeks -- all deep beneath the ocean waves.
The fledgling technology, barely a decade old, has already produced robotic submarine gliders that move slowly, with the nimbleness of a blimp. Now next-generation gliders are being developed to fly just as gracefully as their airborne counterparts, diving and climbing on broad wings that slice not air but water.
"They're coming of age," said Clayton Jones, project engineer at Webb Research Corp., an East Falmouth, Mass., company that has sold 21 of the $60,000 ocean gliders it builds.
The submarine robots don't use propellers, jets or flapping wings to get about. Nor do they swim. Instead, they pump ballast water in and out to subtly change their buoyancy. That enables them to alternately rise and fall through the ocean as they glide forward.
The battery-powered gliders have quickly lured the interest of marine scientists who have fitted early models with instruments that measure ocean currents, salinity and temperature. Scientists hope that eventually the gliders could be used to monitor pollution levels, keep tabs on plankton blooms and, quite literally, "swim with the fishes" or other prey.
"They could follow schools of fish -- or Russian submarines," said Scott Jenkins, an engineer and glider expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
The gliders are as efficient as they are stealthy, which has drawn the interest and backing of the U.S. Navy. Potential military applications include mine detection, surveillance and patrol, Navy officials said.
The Navy hatched the glider concept in the early 1960s but the idea soon lost ground to propeller-driven submersibles. The idea was proposed again in the late 1980s when engineers realized the technology could spawn thrifty gliders that could embark on watery flights lasting months and miles at a time.
"What they bring to the table is a persistence, a long-term deployment capability," said Thomas Swean, team leader for ocean engineering and marine systems at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.
The aerodynamic principles that guide ocean gliders are the same that apply to airborne gliders, except the underwater versions can climb every bit as effortlessly as they dive.
An important stage in glider development came last summer, when scientists deployed 15 of the robots in Monterey Bay in the first large field demonstration of the technology.
"We've just handed the adolescents the car keys," Jones said. "They're driving around the block and they're doing what are the first glimpses of what we hope to accomplish."
Still, Jones acknowledges that expectations for these autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, have to be reined in for now.
Problems include the build up of barnacles on long flights, which create drag. At the surface, ships, kelp and curious fisherman also pose risks, said Ralf Bachmayer, a Princeton University glider researcher.
During the August experiments in Monterey, fishermen plucked four of the gliders from the water after the robots briefly surfaced to communicate with scientists by satellite. Three of the gilders were recovered intact; the fourth was found on shore in pieces.
The first generation of gliders look like little more than 6-foot torpedoes fitted with stubby wings that provide the lift needed to move them forward.
For now, experts concede the early robots, built by Scripps, Webb Research and the University of Washington, are basically glorified underwater blimps capable of flights measured in weeks and hundreds of miles.
But engineers designing the next generation of gliders promise huge gains in efficiency, range and speed. Assisting them is the more than 100 years of studies on aerodynamics undertaken since the days of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
"There are no new principles being invoked here," Swean said. "The sea is a very, very harsh environment but it is a fluid. Air and water, except for their densities, are very similar creatures."
The boldest new ocean glider is a large flying wing the Navy is developing with Scripps that should be more B-2 than blimp. Engineers hope to begin testing the 20-foot, delta-winged prototype this February off the San Diego coast.
Preliminary analysis of the design suggests its shape should produce speeds up to 10 times as fast as today's gliders, which fly at a pokey half-mile an hour. It also should fly more efficiently than its torpedo-shaped predecessors.
Other varieties of glider, now being tested, will be even more efficient and forgo the use of batteries altogether. Instead, they will draw their power from the ocean itself, gathering energy from the warmth of the water around them.
"It's like an external fuel tank," Jenkins said. "It's everywhere you go and you just have to sip from it." Such self-sustaining gliders, according to the Navy, could undertake missions that span as many as five years and thousands of miles.
http://www.webbresearch.com/slocum.htm
ANDREW BRIDGES, AP Science Writer Sunday, November 23, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A century after the Wright Brothers first took to the skies, the world of flight is pushing to new depths. Researchers are perfecting innovative gliders that can swoop and soar on journeys covering hundreds of miles and lasting for weeks -- all deep beneath the ocean waves.
The fledgling technology, barely a decade old, has already produced robotic submarine gliders that move slowly, with the nimbleness of a blimp. Now next-generation gliders are being developed to fly just as gracefully as their airborne counterparts, diving and climbing on broad wings that slice not air but water.
"They're coming of age," said Clayton Jones, project engineer at Webb Research Corp., an East Falmouth, Mass., company that has sold 21 of the $60,000 ocean gliders it builds.
The submarine robots don't use propellers, jets or flapping wings to get about. Nor do they swim. Instead, they pump ballast water in and out to subtly change their buoyancy. That enables them to alternately rise and fall through the ocean as they glide forward.
The battery-powered gliders have quickly lured the interest of marine scientists who have fitted early models with instruments that measure ocean currents, salinity and temperature. Scientists hope that eventually the gliders could be used to monitor pollution levels, keep tabs on plankton blooms and, quite literally, "swim with the fishes" or other prey.
"They could follow schools of fish -- or Russian submarines," said Scott Jenkins, an engineer and glider expert at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego.
The gliders are as efficient as they are stealthy, which has drawn the interest and backing of the U.S. Navy. Potential military applications include mine detection, surveillance and patrol, Navy officials said.
The Navy hatched the glider concept in the early 1960s but the idea soon lost ground to propeller-driven submersibles. The idea was proposed again in the late 1980s when engineers realized the technology could spawn thrifty gliders that could embark on watery flights lasting months and miles at a time.
"What they bring to the table is a persistence, a long-term deployment capability," said Thomas Swean, team leader for ocean engineering and marine systems at the Office of Naval Research in Arlington, Va.
The aerodynamic principles that guide ocean gliders are the same that apply to airborne gliders, except the underwater versions can climb every bit as effortlessly as they dive.
An important stage in glider development came last summer, when scientists deployed 15 of the robots in Monterey Bay in the first large field demonstration of the technology.
"We've just handed the adolescents the car keys," Jones said. "They're driving around the block and they're doing what are the first glimpses of what we hope to accomplish."
Still, Jones acknowledges that expectations for these autonomous underwater vehicles, or AUVs, have to be reined in for now.
Problems include the build up of barnacles on long flights, which create drag. At the surface, ships, kelp and curious fisherman also pose risks, said Ralf Bachmayer, a Princeton University glider researcher.
During the August experiments in Monterey, fishermen plucked four of the gliders from the water after the robots briefly surfaced to communicate with scientists by satellite. Three of the gilders were recovered intact; the fourth was found on shore in pieces.
The first generation of gliders look like little more than 6-foot torpedoes fitted with stubby wings that provide the lift needed to move them forward.
For now, experts concede the early robots, built by Scripps, Webb Research and the University of Washington, are basically glorified underwater blimps capable of flights measured in weeks and hundreds of miles.
But engineers designing the next generation of gliders promise huge gains in efficiency, range and speed. Assisting them is the more than 100 years of studies on aerodynamics undertaken since the days of Orville and Wilbur Wright.
"There are no new principles being invoked here," Swean said. "The sea is a very, very harsh environment but it is a fluid. Air and water, except for their densities, are very similar creatures."
The boldest new ocean glider is a large flying wing the Navy is developing with Scripps that should be more B-2 than blimp. Engineers hope to begin testing the 20-foot, delta-winged prototype this February off the San Diego coast.
Preliminary analysis of the design suggests its shape should produce speeds up to 10 times as fast as today's gliders, which fly at a pokey half-mile an hour. It also should fly more efficiently than its torpedo-shaped predecessors.
Other varieties of glider, now being tested, will be even more efficient and forgo the use of batteries altogether. Instead, they will draw their power from the ocean itself, gathering energy from the warmth of the water around them.
"It's like an external fuel tank," Jenkins said. "It's everywhere you go and you just have to sip from it." Such self-sustaining gliders, according to the Navy, could undertake missions that span as many as five years and thousands of miles.
http://www.webbresearch.com/slocum.htm
piratediver
Sr. Member
Salvor: to be honest with you I have never read it. That project has had so many critics, especially from archaeologists that I am immune to them all by now. I know what we have found and continue to find and it is incredible what we are learning about pirates because of it. There is a 5 year, nation wide tour of the best stuff going on now, opening in Philadelphia on May 30.
Pirate Diver
Pirate Diver
FISHEYE
Bronze Member
- Feb 27, 2004
- 2,334
- 404
- Detector(s) used
- Chasing Dory ROV,Swellpro Splash 2 pro waterproof drone,Swellpro Spry+ wa,Wesmar SHD700SS Side Scan Sonar,U/W Mac 1 Turbo Aquasound by American Electronics,Fisher 1280x,Aquasound UW md,Aqua pulse AQ1B
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When i lived in hawaii on oahu in 1974 i worked for maui divers.(they are the company that harvest black coral 1000 feet or more down)at the makai range pier on the windward side is where they had thier office and where they kept thier sub at the end of the pier.If you look at the pic,the building halfway down the pier housed a AUV.It was built by the university of hawaii.It was a un manned non powered underwater glider.The way it worked.they towed it out past the reefs on a barge.A crane put it in the water.The sub blew its ballasts and it would glide down to the bottom of the ocean.Then it would blow the ballasts and then glide back to the surface.Then do it again and again.It actually went all the way to LA in calif.It looked alot like a big sailplane.The security guard at the pier let me take a peek at it one night.they pretty much kept it under wraps after thier test flight to LA.It may still be there.
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