Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/11/12/simulation-of-a-sub-implosion.html
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Looks like everyone would get wet.
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Maybe even m0ist.
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Just read up on the Kursk. That will also solve any such desires. Submarines are fucking terrifying, and I don’t even have claustrophobia.
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Remember when anyone tries to glamorize the possibility of space combat, it would be much more like this than like WWII fighter planes.
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Reading the Thresher and Scorpion loss reports are additional sources of nightmare fuel. About the only mercy sinking below crush depth grants is that it’s quick. Analysis I’ve read indicates the implosion happens faster than human synapses fire, so the unfortunate souls aboard are dead before they can realize it.
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But there’s that unfortunate period between knowing you won’t be surfacing and that.
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Shovels and Rope has a chilling song about the former disaster.
Yeah. That’s the nightmarish part.
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Hmm, if you are referring to the pressure, space is at most “just” a vacuum, one atmosphere of pressure. While pressure underwater increases by one atmosphere every 10 meters of depth. Other than that, space combat if it will ever exist is very unlikely to be manned, an unmanned craft is much better at manoeuvring at accelerations an human could not survive.
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Good idea, not including sailors in the simulation. Thanks for that.
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The Hunley. Then the Hunley again. Then the Hunley for the third and final time. All volunteer crews.
But it adds a degree of realism that, uh…never mind.
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Yes, this is assuming crewed combat was ever a thing, which seems unlikely since we’re already getting rid of that down here. But I meant the sudden death and the focus on stealth as the only possible defense.
Yes, although I’d imagine that the failures are cascading in such a way that you are heading for crush depth. The Captain is shouting orders to try everything. You may well die before you can realize it’s the very end, but you likely know the end is coming.
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The next stage on your journey of terror involves the Byford Dolphin
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Submarines are designed to sink … and surface again, so some otherwise catastrophic casualties are survivable. On the other hand, targets er ahh surface ships only go down once.
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When my brother got out of the Navy Nuke School, I told him not to get on a sub. Submarine movies never end well. It’s always multiple compartments filling up one by one with water.
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Well, the sub in Das Boot ended up being bombed while docked, but even so, there were some truly terrifying scenes in that movie.
At Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, the captured U-505 is on display. I’m not really claustrophobic, but I still have trouble with the idea of living in such close quarters.
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in space, the pressure difference is about one atmosphere. 400 meters below the sea surface, the pressure difference is closer to 40 atmospheres.
besides—
Space battles are boring. This came to me as an unexpected and unwelcome discovery. But consider: Space is vast, and for the most part our vehicles accelerate slowly, at rates measured in milligees—approximately a centimeter per second squared. Yes, there are exceptions, the high-impulse flare of a nuclear-thermal rocket and the continuous-centigee burn of a starship. And in the final seconds and minutes of an engagement, there is the gut-punching shove and roar of chemical thrusters, prodigiously wasteful of reaction mass, jinking and weaving and desperately trying to make or break a targeting lock. But for the most part, space battles are a slow dance of orbital dynamics and continuous low-thrust acceleration for days or weeks or even years: a dance that culminates in a terrifying minute of battering, deafening evasive maneuvers followed by sudden death or survival, and more weeks or months of slow, steady thrust. If anything, the course of a space battle resembles a gambling game in which both sides make some preparations in private, expose other aspects of their strategy to their rivals—and the match is determined by a final throw-down. But it’s a game which one or more of the participants never gets to play again. There is no guarantee that there will be a winner, but there is always at least one loser. If you peer closely at it, you might even discern a resemblance to certain types of option trades.
Stross, Charles. Neptune’s Brood (pp. 312-313). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. "
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