UP AND DOWN

Up, Up and Away

Down, down and away

The front porch of the NAUTICAL LOG home faces north as does my study, this means on occasions we can see a launch from Cape Canaveral, FL.  Today was such a day as the rocket for Jupiter took off on a five (5) year journey.  Actually NAUTICAL LOG saw today's launch on FOX NEWS and an interesting interview with Graham Hawkes just afterwards.  For those of you who do not know - shame! - Mr. Hawkes is a British designer of undersea vehicles and other nautical wonders but that description does not do justice to his amazing achievements.

It was an interesting contrast as we watched the rocket soar away on its journey into space and Graham Hawkes pointed out that two-thirds of our own planet, mainly underwater, remains unexplored.  Sometime this year, secrecy abounds,  an undersea craft of his design will be manned and dive to the deepest parts of our ocean planet.  The explorers are known to include James Cameron who makes amazing movies, Sir Richard Branson who makes amazing business, and Eric E. Schmidt of Internet fame.

Due to some extraordinary discoveries in materials and designs construction materials available for the construction of undersea craft have changed in recent years.  While the challenges are many batteries and electronics have also advanced.  This has held costs steady or even lowered them and raised the capabilities of undersea craft and indeed surface craft which will be needed in support.  Designed by Graham Hawkes, Sir Richard Branson has a winged submersible and a mother ship ready to go explore, visit their website at www.virginoceanic.com/  to see their entire plan - it is ambitious.

Planned worldwide dives

There is also another team at Triton Submarines, Vero Beach, FL which also is building submersibles to carry persons to deep sea space such as the Challenger Deep.  Their website is at  www.tritonsubs.com/ .  There is yet more data about deepsea exploration at  www.deepsearch.org  for readers to research for themselves.  By the by the dives are in excess of 11,000 metres so these are extremely serious ventures.


Good Watch.

Please remember our fellow seafarers some 800  of whom are being held captive by pirates off Somalia which in addition to its civil war is once again in the grip of famine.