Into the Depths

While space is being charted by the hour, the ocean deeps that cover 70% of the earth are largely unexplored. Last week the Navy, speeding its researches below the sea (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS) brought to the U.S. the best tool for the purpose in the world. Into San Diego harbor aboard a freighter from Italy came the tubby, homely little bathyscaphe Trieste, launched by Auguste Piccard and his son Jacques in 1953. Last summer the Navy rented the craft for research dives off Capri, recently bought it from the Piccards for $200,000. A new one would have cost $1,500,000--and have been worth every cent.

From the small, thick-walled ball under Trieste's belly, scientists looked upon a world within the world where living men had never been. Already Trieste has descended almost three miles, or 20 times deeper than conventional submarines. It can do this without danger to itself or passengers because it operates under water like a blimp. Its 50-ft. hull is a float carrying 28,000 gallons of gasoline, which is 30% lighter than sea water and compressible. The float does the job of a balloon's gas-filled bag, while the passenger ball hangs below. Water enters the float, equalizes the inside and outside pressure, and compresses the gasoline, reducing the craft's buoyancy.

Urgent Mission. Next month Trieste will begin diving off San Diego, where the weather is fair and the bottom deep. Official purpose: "Study of the ocean's physical, biological, geological and chemical characteristics." Trieste's real mission may be more urgent: submarine warfare is clearly going deep, deep, deeper. Conventional subs now dive about 750 ft., and some advanced models are capable of 1,000 ft. One growing antisub problem is that present sound gear penetrates accurately to only about 800 ft. Another is that depth charges sink too slowly (14 ft. per second) to hit a fast sub sailing deep at high speed, and the explosion is reduced by pressure. U.S. submariners are also reportedly anxious to design a vessel capable of operating as deep as 12,000 ft.

How can Trieste help? It may improve sonar gear by showing how to cut through the ocean's sound-distorting layers of temperature and noisy marine life. Already it has found life right at the bottom. Another finding: layers of different temperature form "tunnels" that carry sound waves for thousands of miles. In one, an exploding 4-lb. charge of dynamite can be heard from San Diego to Hawaii.

Strange Sub. Trieste research on how to kill an enemy sub far down is likely to change depth charges considerably. There is little point in making them bigger; nuclear charges fall no faster than others and are more expensive. But a curious discovery is that more energy may be released when a sphere is collapsed under water than when it is blown outward against pressure. To measure this, Navy scientists once sent a 6-in.-diameter hollow ball 3,500 ft. to the bottom. Collapsed by a spring trigger when it hit, it exploded with as much force as a "sizable" charge of TNT.

If Trieste proves the case for a 12,000-ft. sub, its design may be strange. Since only the crew and controls need protection from pressure, all the power and ordnance equipment of such a sub could ride "outside" them in an outer hull filled with oil. Like the thin steel of the bathyscaphe's gasoline float, which feels no appreciable pressure, the sub's outer hull need not be thick and pressurized. It could be made of lightweight aluminum or lithium for greater speed.

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