The Men Who Went To The Stratosphere And To The Abyss

I came across the name Piccard a few years ago with Bertrand the grandson of physicist inventor Auguste Piccard. 

Bertrand was a famous high altitude balloonist and aviator having recently completed the round the world flight of a solar powered aeroplane Solar Impulse.

https://youtu.be/brjJmmjeJnQI was also vaguely familiar with the worlds deepest dive in the bathyscape,  ancient greek bathys ( deep ) and skaphos (ship) designed by Jacques Piccard, Bertrand’s father, and Auguste his grandfather. When I researched the background of Auguste I was fascinated by his early scientific exploits in high altitude balloon flights into the stratosphere.   Auguste Piccard was a remarkable Swiss physicist and inventor of genius in the early part of the 20th century.  He invented high altitude pressurised capsules and first free floating experimental deep sea pressurised diving habitat. As a physicist inventor he worked on simple premise ” If you want to go to unknown places,to somewhere no ones ever been before,you invent a device yourself and go off and do it!

The more I looked into his background the more I  became fascinated.

He designed two different pressurised cabin/gondolas one to take him up to the stratosphere (breaking the high altitude record for manned aeronauts) and the other down to the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean. ( Marianne Trench )   He simply used “Archimedes” principle for his capsule to rise and to sink in either air or water,  using negative and positive buoyancy.    Archimedes Principle: A sumbmerged object will experience an upward force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid and an object will float if it is less dense than the fluid.   Both individual cabin/gandolas protected the human observers from the surrounding air and water pressure with life support systems.   Not only did he designed both of them himself but he undertook theses experiments by himself and later with his son Jacques in the stratosphere capsule and the Bathyscarphe FNRS and the Trieste deep diving capsule habitats. .

The reason for designing his pressurised high altitude gondola balloon was to try and identify and record cosmic rays in the stratosphere.

What are Cosmic Rays?   Cosmic rays are any charged particles arriving at Earth from space. Nearly all of them are photons, and some have been accelerated to speeds higher than any achieved by a particle accelerator on Earth.    Photons that constantly smack into Earth’s atmosphere at near the speed of light get their huge energies from exploding stars.        https://youtu.be/vKS3-npxgls

The first experimental flight above the Alps by Professor Piccard and Dr Kiper. During the flight they experience many technical problems with ballast and venting issue of the Hydorgen balloon but landed safely on a glacier high up in the Alps. Early Pathe News reel of the rescue after their record breaking ascent to the stratosphere.

https://youtu.be/t8dHULTy-BUhttps://youtu.be/-veQZq_HiQEhttps://youtu.be/rBcquRM-l0M Auguste  Piccard became interested in the first deep sea dives off Bermuda by  professor Beebe and Barton in their Bathysphere.  He thought the major drawback was the diving habitat being connected by a steel cable  to the support ship which was lowered and risen by a windless winding mechanism. Bebe and Barton dive to 3,000 feet in 1934. The breathing medium they used were cylinders of high pressure oxygen inside their capsule and pans of soda lime to absorb exhaled  Co2 and water vapour.   

Auguste Piccard greatest worry of Bebe & Bartons diving habitat was the breaking of the cable and the habitat being lost to the deep,  through jarring of the cable when the weather became rough on the surface and also when the water started surging and causing oscillating of the dive habitat under the support ship.  

Bebe and Barton were both violently sick on one dive when habitat started swinging to and fro. Auguste thought, quite right to, that it was far too dangerous a prospect being tethered by a cable to the surface on a deep dive to the abyss. 

Auguste also thought it would be hazardous if the habitat sat on the bottom connected to the surface. Hence his retransformation in his mind of a stratosphere balloon into free floating submarine balloon which proved to be the ideal solution for extremely deep dives.

https://youtu.be/vSfb16yscC8The principle of the bathyscaphe:   In spite of the difference between high altitude ballooning and deep sea diving Archimedes principle remains true for both mediums; If the weight of an immersed body is lighter than the weight of the ambient fluid corresponding to its volume, the body willrise: if it is greater ,that is to say, if the body is heavier than the fluid which it displaces, it will descend.   The balloon moves about in the air, where it must at first rise and then descend. The bathyscaphe moves about in the water. Leaving the surface, it must go down to the depths, then rise. The balloon rises because its envelope, inflated by a gas lighter than the ambient air (hot air, town gas, hydrogen or helium), is voluminous enough to support the weight of the car hanging from it. In the same way the bathyscaphe is, in its principle, lighter than water: a float filled with a light substance sustains a watertight sphere which is attached to it.  
What is the substance with a specific gravity less than that of water which is suitable for filling a float. Not a gas it’s far too compressible.

 

Auguste came up with a solution; petrol was chosen as it has a lower specific gravity to water and will float on the sea if it escapes from the float chamber. The petrol by volume had to support the capsule/gondola habitat had to have a large float above the capsule to support its weight whilst at the surface once it started to descendthe petrol by volume would reduce due to the outer water pressure.

 Every atmosphere or 10 metres the pressure doubles taking into acount surface pressure is at one atmosphere or 1 bar at 10 metres it is two bars and at 20 metres its 3 bars or 45psi and so on. 

Therefore at 1,500 m or 4,921 feet the external pressure would be 151 bars or  2,265 psi. Bathysphere Trieste reached a depth of 11,000m or 36,000 ft in the challenger deep. So the surrounding pressure was 16,500 psi phenomenal outer pressure.   When the petrol in the float tank was compressed inside the float water came in at the bottom of the float to replace the loss volume of petrol and the opposite was the case in ascending as the volume of petrol expanded, really simple idea. The float chamber wasn’t a pressure chamber inside pressure always equaled the outside pressure. However the human capsule cabin  underneath the float chamber was a pressure vessel had to be designed and built to withstand tremendous outer external forces.   Ballast: Auguste used a novel idea for the bathyscaphe, using similar small iron shot that he used on free air balloons once you get rid of your ballast in a balloon you can’t go up any higher. The opposite is true for deep diving submersibles you need to release ballast to ascend and it has to be easy foolproof method.   He used small iron shot again but by using a funnel arrangement and having an electric coil he was able to magnetise the shot into solid mass. Once the electric was turned off the shot would slowly run out the bottom of the funnel until enough ballast was ejected for controlled positive buoyancy ascent, as soon as the electric was switch back on the iron shot would revert to a solid mass.

To be continued on my next Blog post, how the France and US Navy eventually got involved with Piccard and his son to achieve the worlds deepest  dive. Which hasn’t been surpassed to this day!

 

Bathyscarphe FNRS 3