This is not a giant pink glass cup but a hot titanium half-sphere done by pressure forging.
The first pictures of the Titanic wreck far below the surface of the Atlantic ocean in the James Cameron’s Titanic Expedition documentary were impressive.
Titanic had sunk to a depth of 12,480 feet, some 2 1/2 miles below the surface of the most treacherous ocean on Earth.
There are only five submersible craft in the world capable of diving below 12,000 feet. At that depth, the water pressure is 6,000 pounds per square inch. One small flaw in the vessel’s superstructure would mean instant death for all on board.
One of them is ALVIN, the legendary Navy’s only currently operational deep-sea scientific sub that first explored the wreckage of the Titanic. ALVIN can dive 2.4 miles down. ALVIN has already over forty years of service.
ALVIN is going to be replaced by a bigger successor that could go up to four miles under which will open up 99% of the ocean floor for exploration. In fact, I should say upgraded due to raw materials cost increase since the beginning of the new submersible program. In this case, it is Titanium which has had a 5x increase in cost.
As consequence, The next generation of ALVIN project budget has exploded and the schedule has slided and it will not be ready until 2015 for its first dive. The engineers and scientists decided to create an sub hybrid by keeping the ALVIN tail where are located the equipments system and propulsion system, and adding the ALVIN successor’s personal sphere where the crew takes place.
As the Titanic wreck pictures were awesome, the result of the manufacturing process is equally amazing.
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