brickpanzer

Thank you guys so much for doing this AMA! I've been following your company for a long time now, as a highschool student fascinated with the engineering of submarines and submursibles.

My first question would be; how did you get into your profesion? Near as I can tell, its not something you can go to school for. Largely because it seems to be a very niche job market. Next, I was curious if you had ever considered setting aside your trademark acrylic bubble just to make a DSV, something to rival ships like alvin or the mir subs. On a bit more of a personal intrest note, I've been working on building my own ROV to explore the lakes of my home state of Colorado, and I was thinking about trying to implement a variable ballast system in it so that it could more easily navigate the deeper (80m) lakes here. How would you sugest I go about doing this, if at all? Lastly, I was curious if any of you had ever heard of the computer game Subnautica. For a long time I had been afraid of the ocean and all that it contained, but playing that game helped me face my fears and now I'm fascinated with ocean exploration!

Thanks again!

Subs that are entirely autonomous are actually called ROVs, and they are actually fairly common. They are technically simpler, as they are able to withstand much greater pressure as they have no need for life support systems or any kind of cabin of any sort. This is why many ROVs are utilized for extreme depth exploration, as they are easily outfitted with a plethora of research tools, and are just as - if not more - capable of exploring the depths as live humans. Submersibles without active power sources are possible, but extremely limited in function. Their dive capabilities are usually limited to how much oxygen could be stowed on board, or how long of a snorkel they have. Movement also becomes much more difficult, as thrust systems have to be powered by hand. Many of the worlds first submarines actually worked this way, requiring teams of submariners to turn a crank in unison, similar to viking and greek long ships of yore.

No, actually, and there's good reason for this. Many creatures that live at extreme depths are biologically very different from humans or shallow water creatures. As humans, we have evolved over time so that our bodies match our environment, meaning that the pressure inside our body is the same as the pressure outside. The same is true of deep diving creatures, the stark difference being that pressures at extreme depth are immense, meaning that the pressure inside of deep sea creatures must also be immense. This means that often when they are brought to the surface, their physical bodies actually expand and begin to misshape because they are no longer subject to the extreme pressure at depth. The opposite would be true of humans. Humans would begin to compress, essentially shrinking our size from how we are on land. This is why recreational divers can only venture so deep; the human body cannot withstand the pressure of the water. In that same vein, deep sea creatures could never survive at shallower depths because the decompression would kill them. So, for us to venture into the depths, we have to engineer vehicles that can withstand the ocean environment while also sustaining a small environment inside that we can survive in.

The problem with that is that we as humans aren't very good at replicating nature on a mechanical level yet. Sure, we could make a robo-squid, but why bother when propellers do the same thing with more force and are simpler to repair? The reverse applies to nature, being that you don't often see any animals with wheels or boat screws.

To be honest, it never really crossed my mind to document the project like that. I'm practically done with it however, as I need only to save up some more money to purchase a camera and servos, as well as the materials needed to create several LED spot lamps, so I'm not sure if it would even be worth documenting this late into the construction phase. Although I did intend to upload the raw film from any explorations I take it on, I'd just have to make a YT channel for that.